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first hearing, attorneys for Schrems and Facebook battled on technical grounds about whether the student has the status of a private Facebook consumer and if the 25,000 plaintiffs are legally allowed to confer their rights on him.
Schrems is claiming damages for alleged data violations by Facebook, including by aiding the U.S. National Security Agency in running its PRISM program, which mined the personal data of Facebook users.
“I think we can heighten data protection with this lawsuit,” Schrems’ lawyer Wolfram Proksch told reporters after the session.
Facebook’s lawyers did not address the details of the privacy concerns mentioned in his suit and declined to comment further outside of the court room.
A specialist financier will bear the legal costs if Schrems loses the case and will take 20 percent of the damages if he wins, meaning users can join the case at no financial risk.
Schrems also has a case pending at the European Court of Justice, financed by crowdsourcing, which mainly relates to the so-called Safe Harbor agreement governing data transfers from Europe to the United States.
There, the European Data Protection Supervisor told the court that Safe Harbor needed to be changed to safeguard European consumers’ rights and that corresponding requests for such changes had been made to the United States.
British regulators have investigated if Facebook, with more than 1 billion users, has violated their data protection law.
($1 = 0.9286 euros)Q&A With Behind the Steel Curtain’s Jeff Hartman The Baltimore-Pittsburgh rivalry is back and with it comes a Q&A with the managing editor of Behind the Steel Curtain.
On Sunday Night Football, the Baltimore Ravens will take on their arch-nemesis, the Pittsburgh Steelers. Pittsburgh (10-2) carries a seven-game winning streak and Baltimore (7-5) brings in a three-game winning streak. The game won’t decide the division winner this season, but if Baltimore wins, they could propel themselves into the playoffs.
Jeff Hartman is the managing editor for Behind the Steel Curtain, SB Nation’s Steelers website. He graduated from Shepherd University, a Division II school located in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. He contributed to the school’s student-run newspaper, “The Pickett”.
Hartman began writing for Behind the Steel Curtain in May 2014 and became an editor in March 2015. He has also contributed to the Pittsburgh Sports Forum, Rant Sports and appeared on multiple radio shows. He now lives in Maryland, dodging Ravens fans.
Kyle J. Andrews: Pittsburgh was able to pull out a brutal victory on Monday against the Cincinnati Bengals. What does it say about the team?
Jeff Hartman (Behind the Steel Curtain): This isn't the first close game the Steelers have won in 2017. Unlike in past years, this team is gritty and able to scratch and claw their way to victory. Sometimes they cling to a lead, and like on Monday night, they show they can come back from 17-points down and win the game. They are just finding ways to win, which is usually a good sign of a championship caliber team.
KJA: Steelers linebacker Ryan Shazier suffered a spinal contusion when attempting to make a tackle on Monday Night Football. How has his injury affected Steelers faithful?
JH: First, at the moment I write this no one really knows what his injury is. There are rumors it is a contusion, some say a spinal concussion while others still fear some form of paralysis. It is all speculation at this point. As for how it impacted the fan base, it has shaken them to the core. This isn't a 3rd string undrafted player, but a first round draft pick who made the Pro Bowl in 2016. It is a huge loss for the team, but everyone is just worried about his well-being. The not knowing is killing the fans.
KJA: Shazier was one of the best players on Pittsburgh's defense. How much will his loss hurt Pittsburgh? How much will it allow for the team to rally around their injured comrade?
JH: The team will likely use Shazier's injury as a rallying cry, like they have the passing of the ambassador Dan Rooney before the season, but his loss on the field is near catastrophic. Shazier is the fastest linebacker in the NFL, and the entire Pittsburgh defensive scheme is based around his athleticism and speed in the middle. Players like that don't just grow on trees, and the Bengals exploited backups Tyler Matakevich and L.J. Fort after Shazier left. The team signed former Steeler Sean Spence, but again, he is a far cry from the player Shazier is.
KJA: The Steelers beat the Ravens 26-9 in Baltimore in Week 4. However, since reeling off three straight wins after the bye week, they are currently 7-5 going into Pittsburgh. How dangerous do you believe this Ravens team to be?
JH: This team is dangerous, but only because of their defense, in my opinion. The Ravens offense is improving, but I'm not sure if that says much considering how poor they played earlier this season. The one constant for Baltimore has been their defense, and their ability to create turnovers. If the Steelers can protect the football, and run the ball with Le'Veon Bell, they will neutralize the strength of this Baltimore defense. If they fail to do those two things, it could be a long day for the black-and-gold at Heinz Field.
KJA: Baltimore has been able to stop the pass, only allowing 198.6 yards per game (3rd in the NFL). Pittsburgh's passing offense has been deadly as well (264.5 yards per game), ranking fourth in the NFL. Something has to give right?
JH: The biggest difference is how the Steelers' passing attack has improved over the past four weeks. The team is putting the ball in the air, and they are scoring more points than they were when these two teams met earlier this season. This facet of the game boils down to the offensive line. If the Steelers' offensive line, who is still without Marcus Gilbert at RT due to a PED suspension, can keep Ben Roethlisberger clean, there is no doubt the Steelers have the depth and personnel to beat the Ravens' pass defense. The loss of Jimmy Smith is enticing, but the Steelers without JuJu Smith-Schuster also hurts on the other side of things...the two absences probably cancel each other out.
KJA: What is your opinion on the JuJu Smith-Schuster suspension? Is it fair or foul?
JH: The hit itself was flagged for both roughness and taunting. The taunting was a no-brainer, and I get why they flagged the block too. My personal opinion of the block is it was worthy of a flag and fine, but the suspension is just ridiculous...especially when George Iloka will be playing in Week 14 after taking a deliberate cheap shot on Antonio Brown, and Smith-Schuster has to watch.
KJA: With the injuries between both teams (Shazier, Joe Haden Jimmy Smith, Marshal Yanda, etc.) and Smith-Schuster's suspension, will their absences take anything away from this game?
JH: This game is always great, so I don't think it will take away from the rivalry, but I do think the absences of the aforementioned players will certainly hurt the product on the field. When all is said and done, when the Ravens and Steelers go head-to-head, it is usually a great game. I expect that to still be the case on Sunday night.
KJA: What is your prediction for Sunday night’s game?
JH: I think this game is a close one throughout, but the Steelers will be playing with a sense of purpose on multiple levels. They can clinch the division with a win Sunday, and will be playing for Ryan Shazier. The second half the Steelers flip the switch and get the job done.The Atlanta Falcons have zeroed in on a new head coach and are patient enough to wait for him to become available.
The Falcons announced Dan Quinn as their new head coach on Monday. NFL Media Insider Ian Rapoport reported earlier on Monday that an agreement for a five-year deal had been reached in principle.
Rapoport also reported that Kyle Shanahan will join Quinn as the Falcons' offensive coordinator and run an attack loaded with a talented franchise quarterback in Matt Ryan and dominant wide receiver in Julio Jones. Quinn will add Richard Smith as Atlanta's defensive coordinator.
Seattle, meanwhile, is expected to replace Quinn at defensive coordinator with defensive backs coach Kris Richard, Rapoport reported.
Arthur Blank naming Quinn as his new coach has been the worst-kept secret in the NFL the past two weeks.
Quinn helped form and lead one of the greatest defenses of the modern era in Seattle after taking over when Gus Bradley departed for Jacksonville.
Following the Super Bowl loss to the New England Patriots, Quinn is free to move on to his next challenge.
During Super Bowl week, Seahawks defensive players gushed about Quinn's ability as a schemer and play-caller. Linebacker K.J. Wright described Quinn as a "defensive mastermind."
Defensive end Michael Bennett told Around The NFL's Chris Wesseling that Quinn would make a successful head coach because, "he likes to drop his, uh, lower extremities during big games."
The Falcons' defense needs a lot of juice, especially up front where Atlanta's pass rush was one of the worst in the NFL under the Mike Smith regime. While Quinn won't have nearly the pieces to play with that he enjoyed in Seattle, defensive backs Desmond Trufant and Robert Alford provide a tangible base.
With a ready-made offense, a few added pieces on defense and Quinn's penchant for "lower extremity" dropping, the Falcons should be in for a quick turnaround after a disappointing 6-10 season.
The latest Around The NFL Podcast recaps Super Bowl XLIX, including Malcolm Butler's game-sealing interception, Tom Brady's legacy and more. Find more Around The NFL content on NFL NOW.Humans must start removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as soon as possible to avoid saddling future generations with a choice between extreme climate change or spending hundreds of trillions of dollars to avoid it, according to new research.
An international team of researchers – led by Professor Jim Hansen, Nasa’s former climate science chief – said their conclusion that the world had already overshot targets to limit global warming to within acceptable levels was “sufficiently grim” to force them to urge “rapid emission reductions”.
But they warned this would not be enough and efforts would need to be made to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by about 12.5 per cent.
This, the scientists argued, could be mostly achieved by agricultural measures such as planting trees and improving soil fertility, a relatively low-cost way to remove carbon from the air.
Other more expensive methods, such as burning biomass in power plants fitted with carbon-capture-and-storage or devices that can remove carbon from the air directly, might also be necessary and would become increasingly needed if steps were not taken soon.
An academic paper in the journal Earth System Dynamics estimated such industrial processes could cost up to $535 trillion this century and “also have large risks and uncertain feasibility”.
“Continued high fossil fuel emissions unarguably sentences young people to either a massive, implausible clean-up or growing deleterious climate impacts or both,” said the paper.
“We conclude that the world has already overshot appropriate targets for greenhouse gas amount and global temperature, and we thus infer an urgent need for rapid phasedown of fossil fuel emissions [and] actions that draw down atmospheric carbon dioxide.
“These tasks are formidable and … they are not being pursued globally.”
Cuts to emissions of greenhouse gases such as methane, nitrous oxide and ozone would also be required.
The study is to be used as part of a ground-breaking lawsuit brought against the US Government by 21 children in which the plaintiffs claim their constitutional right to have a health climate in which to live in is being violated by federal policies.
If the case succeeds, environmentalists believe it could force the Trump administration to reduce greenhouse gases and take other measures to prevent global warming.
The paper pointed out that the last time temperatures were this high, during the Eemian period, global sea levels were about six to nine metres higher than they are today, suggesting significant rises are still to occur.
The paper said that the Paris Agreement, the tumbling price of renewable energy and the recent slowdown in the increase of fossil fuel emissions had led to a sense of optimism around the world.
But, speaking to The Independent, Professor Hansen said he believed this optimism was misplaced.
“The narrative that’s out there now … is that we’ve turned the corner,” he said.
“On the contrary, what we show is the rate of growth of climate forcing caused by increased methane [and other gases] is actually accelerating. That’s why it’s urgent.”
Asked to assess the world’s current progress in fighting climate change, he said the “s*** is hitting the fan”.
Professor Hansen, now a scientist at the Columbia University Earth Institute in the US, said he believed the court case had a chance of winning.
A court would not be able to tell the Government what to do, he admitted, but would be able to say that failing to deal with the problem was unconstitutional and require politicians to produce an effective plan.
The paper said the need for “prompt action implied by these realities [of climate change] may not be a surprise to the relevant scientific community” because of the available evidence.
“However, effective communication with the public of the urgency to stem human-caused climate change is hampered by the inertia of the climate system, especially the ocean and the ice sheets, which respond rather slowly to climate forcings, thus allowing future consequences to build up before broad public concern awakens,” it said.
“All amplifying feedbacks, including atmospheric water vapor, sea ice cover, soil carbon release and ice sheet melt could be reduced by rapid emissions phasedown.Exclusive: President Trump’s calls for reorienting American foreign policy look to be disintegrating in his first two weeks in office as he embraces the neoconservative hostilities toward Iran and Russia, as Andrew Spannaus notes.
By Andrew Spannaus
The Trump Administration’s goal of de-escalating tensions with Russia is meeting stiff resistance in Eastern Europe where many reject the notion that a diplomatic solution can be reached over the issues of Ukraine and NATO expansion.
This reality was on clear display at the 10th Europe-Ukraine Forum held in Rzeszow, Poland, from Jan. 27 to 29, which brought together over 900 government officials, politicians and analysts from across Europe, to discuss how to respond to the new political situation in the United States while continuing to provide support to Kiev’s efforts to bind itself closer to the West.
The atmosphere at the Forum – an annual event organized by the Eastern Institute of Warsaw – was more muted than last year, as the reality of the “realpolitik” likely to be adopted by President Trump’s administration sinks in.
The previous forum in 2016 was opened by the American neoconservative Philip Karber, president of the Potomac Foundation, who lamented the “sophistic” reasoning of those who argue against providing military assistance to Ukraine and said he couldn’t wait for the next presidential administration to arrive (when it appeared likely it would be headed by Hillary Clinton or a traditional Republican). Karber noted that President Barack Obama had refused to fully arm the Ukrainians in their battle against Russia.
This wasn’t just idle talk coming from Karber, as we found out a few months later in 2016, thanks to leaks published by The Intercept last July. It appears that Karber had gone repeatedly to the front lines of the fight in Ukraine to draw up his own – inflated – intelligence reports regarding Russian intervention. He sent the reports to General Philip Breedlove, at the time the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, who in turn used Karber’s figures to challenge the lower estimates drawn up by official intelligence agencies.
General Breedlove then went a step further, seeking to mobilize pressure on President Obama to provide lethal assistance to Ukraine. Despite enlisting the help of prominent individuals such as former Secretary of State Colin Powell and one of Breedlove’s predecessors at NATO, retired Gen. Wesley Clark, Breedlove’s efforts proved ineffective. Although President Obama continued to direct harsh criticism at Russia in public, behind the scenes his message to the General was: “do not get me into a war.”
Harlan Ullman, senior adviser to the Atlantic Council, wrote to Breedlove about his attempt to “leverage, cajole, convince or coerce the U.S. to react” to Russia: “Given Obama’s instruction to you not to start a war, this may be a tough sell.”
The hope for a more aggressive stance against Russia by the future U.S. administration obviously didn’t take into account the possibility that the next President would be Donald Trump. In January 2016, few gave Trump any chance to actually win the election, and thus the assumption was that by this time, Hillary Clinton or a Republican such as Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush would be occupying the White House.
Trump’s election seemed to upend the U.S. establishment’s push for a more aggressive stance towards Russia that has been on full display since last fall in particular. The news media and political class have, in fact, focused almost hysterically on alleged Russian intervention into the U.S. elections, despite crucial gaps in the evidence presented to the public and the question of whether Russian President Putin would have taken such a risk when it appeared Clinton was a shoo-in to win.
The WikiLeaks disclosures – primarily confirming Clinton’s close ties to Wall Street and the Democratic National Committee’s help in undermining Bernie Sanders’s campaign – were not initially considered a major factor in Clinton’s defeat, which she principally blamed on FBI Director James Comey’s last-minute reopening and re-closing of the investigation into her use of a private email server for State Department business. No one has suggested that Putin was behind Comey’s actions or Clinton’s server decision.
Trump’s Uncertainty
The early Trump administration has sent mixed signals regarding relations with Russia. Trump’s initial comments indicated that the U.S. would seek a diplomatic deal to reduce tensions around Ukraine, including by potentially recognizing the pro-Russian referendum in Crimea, in exchange for a broader deal with Russia involving cooperation against terrorism or nuclear arms reduction. However, Trump’s United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley on Thursday vowed to continue sanctions against Russia until it surrendered Crimea.
At the Europe-Ukraine Forum, the earlier expectation of reduced tensions with Russia was grudgingly accepted by some, but outright rejected by most. Many speakers called for an even more aggressive stance on NATO expansion to include not only Ukraine, but also Sweden, Finland and any other country in Russia’s neighborhood.
Tomasz Szatkowski, Undersecretary of State of the Polish Ministry of National Defense, also said Poland would volunteer to lead a group of nations in creating a first-response network, ready to organize out-of-area military missions in response to Russian aggression. Other officials agreed with the idea of creating an alliance between a group of countries going from the Baltics down through Eastern Europe, to put pressure on the European Union and the United States to head off any potential diplomatic accords with Putin.
The fear among these participants was that Ukraine would lose out in any U.S.-Russian diplomatic accord. They argued further that if nothing is done to counter Putin’s alleged expansionism then Russia will inevitably move into Eastern Europe in order to restore its former empire.
However, this view is based on the assumption that the conflict in Ukraine broke out simply because the Russian president woke up one morning and decided it was time to expand Russian military power again. It ignores what the West did up to 2014, such as expanding NATO towards Russia’s borders and providing support through both official sources and numerous NGOs to “pro-democracy” groups, some of which wanted regime change not only in Kiev but in Moscow.
A prominent example is the head of the U.S. taxpayer-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Carl Gershman. As journalist Robert Parry has reported, NED funded scores of “democracy promotion” projects in Ukraine, contributing to undermining the previous elected government and touching off the civil war between Ukrainian nationalists from the west and ethnic Russians from the east. Gershman also has called for the overthrow of Vladimir Putin in Russia.
A False Narrative
Although the West’s propaganda narrative has obscured the circumstances around the ouster of Ukrainian President Yanukovych on Feb. 22, 2014, the violent putsch has been called the “most blatant coup in history” by George Friedman, the founder of Stratfor and Geopolitical Futures. At the time of the coup, a diplomatic deal had been struck for new elections by the end of the year, but far-right militia groups stepped in to seize control of the government institutions and the coup regime was quickly declared “legitimate” by the U.S. government and its allies.
A key player in the change in power was U.S. Undersecretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who was recorded in a pre-coup phone call saying “Fuck the EU” with regard to Europe’s role as a mediator for a diplomatic solution, and also hand-picking the person who would become the new prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, with the comment “Yats is the guy.”
This direct intervention by the West provoked a predictable reaction from Russia, which moved quickly to ensure that Crimea would not end up under the NATO umbrella and then provided support to ethnic Russian rebels in the east of Ukraine who battled Ukrainian troops spearheaded by the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and other ultra-nationalist militias.
The intensity of the conflict in Ukraine decreased considerably after a ceasefire agreement was hammered out in early 2015. However, on Jan. 28, barely a week into the Trump administration, new fighting broke out around the city of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine. Staunchly anti-Russian media outlets and politicians immediately tried to leverage the situation to block any moves by President Trump to press ahead with a diplomatic solution.
However, at the Forum in Rzeszow, there were at least some voices calling for a recognition of the new reality ushered in by the change in approach in Washington. In private discussions several government officials noted that with further NATO expansion probably off the table at this point, there is no alternative to dialogue.
A few speakers, such as Markku Kangaspuro of Finland and former Ukrainian government official Oleksandr Chalyi, admitted publicly that there cannot be total war with Russia, and that at this point a political solution seems to be the only way forward. The most that can be done, from the standpoint of those who aim to counter Russia’s influence as much as possible, is to try to limit and mitigate a potential deal between Trump and Putin.
Andrew Spannaus is a freelance journalist and strategic analyst based in Milan, Italy. He is the founder of Transatlantico.info, that provides news, analysis and consulting to Italian institutions and businesses. His book on the U.S. elections Perchè vince Trump (Why Trump is Winning) was published in June 2016.This report about a couple of down-and-out dogs is incredible (video)
Here at The Lost Ogle, we usually don’t spend a lot of time on heart-warming news stories. This is because they are generally trite, sappy and focus on a bunch of people you’ll never meet and really don’t care about.
Well, this story is a little bit different. Yes, it’s trite and sappy, but it’s about dogs. Dogs are awesome. They’ll never cut you off in traffic, never ask you to stay late for work and never tag a shitty photo of you on Facebook. Dogs are basically perfect, except for when they go potty inside or chew up your shoe. And even then you don’t really care, because once again, it’s a dog.
Anyway, this story about a couple of dogs from Tulsa is pretty awesome:
video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player
I’ll admit it. I’m a big softy when it comes to dogs. I can go to a thousand weddings or watch a documentary about genocide and not even blink an eye, yet I’ll occasionally find myself shedding a tear whenever the Dog Whisper cures some dog that barks too much. I really am that pathetic.
Anyway, thanks to that video I’m about to go spend 20 damn minutes on PetFinder.com in search of another dog to adopt. I already have Rowdy (a.k.a. The Cavanaugh Slayer), but he could use a companion, just as long as the companion isn’t blind and have random bladder-releasing seizures. I like dogs and everything, but not that much.You can hear us shouting "Fuck off, dictator!", "I'm not your sex toy!", or "Religion is slavery!" You can see our half-naked bodies facing Berlusconi, Putin or the Pope. You can feel how deep our anger is by looking in our eyes. We are feminism's shock troops, a spearhead unit of militants, a modern incarnation of the word fearless.
We are Femen. Our nakedness attacks the raw nerve of the historic conflict between women and "the system". We are nothing less than its most visual and fitting embodiment. Our activists' bodies represent undisguised hatred for the patriarchal order, and display the new aesthetics of a rejuvenated woman's revolution.
Russian president Vladimir Putin, left, is accosted by a Femen activist in Hanover as the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, looks on. Photograph: Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images
Femen is our attempt at rethinking the history of feminism in its entirety. We believe that if women are left with little more than satisfying sexual desires as a life purpose, then our sexuality must become politicised. We are not denying our potential to be treated as sex objects. On the contrary, we are taking our sexuality into our own hands, turning it against our enemy. We are transforming female sexual subordination into aggression, and thereby starting the real war.
Make no mistake about it: we are at war. This is an ideological war, a war of traditionalism against modernity, oppression against freedom, dictatorship against the right to free expression. We are targeting the three principle manifestations of patriarchy: religion, the sex industry, and dictatorship.
"I didn't have time to see if they looked good or not, whether they were blondes or not" – such were the words of Putin after our most recent act of diversion, when Femen activists confronted him in Hanover, shouting to his face, "Fuck you, dictator!" Putin was quick to smile, but a Kremlin official was already demanding that Germany punish our activists. Within half an hour, four criminal cases had been opened against the dictator's assailants.
This is our reality. Femen activists are arrested, beaten up or even kidnapped, as happened to us in Belarus after our protest ridiculing president Alexander Lukashenko in Minsk.
Machismo can be defeated only through feminine rebellion. No authoritarian leader is interested in popular opinion, which would personally hurt him. Femen's tactics aim to do just that: hurt and humiliate them personally. Tossing shoes at Bush is nothing compared to our attack against Putin. Never before had he found his holy body, under the protection of dozens of professional security guards, so imperilled.
We were amateurs when we demonstrated against Putin in 2011, in Kiev, dozens of kilometres away from our target. But we improved our skills when we besieged the polling station in Moscow in 2012, just 20 minutes after our Putin had left the place. One year later, we faced him and bared our breasts in defiance.
Putin is a homophobe and an oligarch embodying the merger of church and state, putting his personal interests before those of 150 million people in the process. Only recently has he announced that Russia is not a country for gay people, just as our George H W Bush, in his time, said the US was not a country for atheists. Putin is not stopping at that, so we are going to stop him.
How, you ask? Yes, dear readers, with our bare breasts alone! We are responding by knocking down the great oligarch and his security-service clowns, and with them, the image he has been so carefully cultivating.
Femen is a huge experiment. Every day we find new ways to destroy the patriarchy, new words with which to answer our opponents. We are calling for a global sexual revolt against the system. We cannot tell you of our upcoming plans, or what the final result of our struggle will be, but we're working on them around the clock. The only thing I can say for sure to all those against whom we are fighting is that we are not about to let you enshrine such shit as yourselves in a cult.In a 2013 file photo, hundreds of trucks wait to enter Pakistan at the the border crossing at Torkham Gate in Afghanistan.
KABUL, Afghanistan — A senior leader of the Islamic State group in Afghanistan was killed Monday, a day before representatives of Afghanistan and Pakistan pledged to mount a joint effort to defeat the militants.
A government spokesman said Afghan forces had killed Saad Emarati, whom he identified as a key Islamic State commander in the region.
Tuesday’s meeting of the trilateral commission, which includes the two countries and NATO, came three days after an attack claimed by Islamic State on a demonstration of Shiite Hazaras in Kabul killed at least 80 people and injured more than 200.
It was the deadliest attack in the Afghan capital since U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban in 2001 and the first in the city to be claimed by the Sunni militant group. The Islamic State’s operations have been largely confined to eastern mountainous regions along Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan.
Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammad Radmanesh said all sides at the meeting of the commission, which normally deals with border issues, emphasized they would work together to defeat the militants.
On Monday, NATO spokesman Brig. Gen. Charles H. Cleveland said international cooperation would be needed to tackle Islamic State in Afghanistan.
“At the end of the day, these issues of terrorism are regional issues and they absolutely require not only Afghan participation, but Pakistani participation and certainly international community participation at all points and at all locations to be able to address these threats,” Cleveland said.
The Associated Press reported Tuesday that Afghan forces had launched a new military offensive against the Islamic State in eastern Afghanistan.
Meetings of the commission are held about four times a year. Radmanesh said border tensions were also discussed, and a statement by the Afghan Defense Ministry said all sides were committed to solving the ongoing border disputes between the two countries.
Last month, several people died in cross-border clashes over Pakistan’s moves to tighten border controls at the well-trafficked Torkham crossing.
Qadir Sediqi contributed to this report.
wellman.phillip@stripes.com
Twitter: @PhillipWellmanGRAND RAPIDS, MI - Where in Michigan are residents using the most water on a daily basis? County-level data from the U.S. Geological Service helps answer that question. The data, from 2010, shows the number of gallons - on a per-capita basis - that residents use on a daily basis. The data was released as part of
is highlighting the problems plaguing America's drinking water infrastructure, which is not aging gracefully in most states.
RELATED:
The data are broken into two categories: Self-supplied water, such as wells, and publicly-supplied water. The data is only for domestic use, and doesn't capture industry water use. The data shows some counties have a relatively even split between self-supplied and publicly-supplied water use. Others, though, lean more heavily toward self-supplied. The data also shows that, on a per-capita basis, some counties use upward of 90 gallons per day of publicly-supplied water, while one county used just 28 gallons per day.
by Caspio
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Brian McVicar covers education for MLive and The Grand Rapids Press. Email him at bmcvicar@mlive.com or follow him on TwitterIn one of the most difficult Shooting Challenges yet, you were asked to not only paint with light, but paint forms and figures that were actually interacting with or modifying a human subject. The results were so, so, so cool.
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Lead Shot - Star Child
Out of all the shots I tried, this one was my son's idea and came out pretty good. Using one of their LED swards that changes colors. Using a Canon 7D with the 18-135 lens. ISO 400, f16 with 15 second shutter. No Photoshop processing other than sizing.
[Ed note: It's as if he's coming through a portal.]
-Brandon Flowers
Touched By an Angel, The New Batch
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We're located in Hilo, Hawaii, so we try to have a wide variety of backgrounds, from tropical forests to urban/industrial buildings. We use a Canon 40d camera, with a Sigma 50 mm 1:1.4 lens, and use long exposures and a crew of friends to try different shots. The photo was taken with a 32 second exposure, at 1.6 and iso 100. We aim to depict colors and lights towards movie, comic, and video game references. This shot was inspired by the ideas of urban angels as well as the comic book "Constantine." We took the shot in a flood canal off a forest road a few nights ago, and were trying to outline the graffiti or find the best ones for a good background while torching our models with flashes and making them stand still in with cars headlights ruining shots and causing a lot of respawns.
-Kelsey Ito
Smoking Will Always Make People Look Cool
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Canon EOS 1000D, 27s f13 @ ISO 100
A self portrait. What's the most practical thing you can do with a trail of fire surrounding you?
Light it up...
My thanks to my dear mum for her help with this shot.
-Bart Tieman
Forcefield
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I have photographic proof (taken with a Canon PowerShot s90, f/2.0, 8 second exposure at ISO 160) that my new Dynomorphic Tachoid Bubble Shield is impervious to Dalek fire! However, I did have to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.
-Brian Hall
Some Light Gaming
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My friend Greg had the idea to make a video game out of light and have him playing it. The first idea was to do Super Mario Bros... we ended up doing pong. All the credit goes to Lauren, Greg, and Sean (in the photo) for doing the actual painting. I just took the picture.
Bulb (roughly a minute exposure), f16, iso200, d300s with a 16-35 f4 at 16mm. On camera SB-800 fired front curtain.
-David Ullman
Skeletor
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Camera: Canon Rebel T2i
Lens: Canon EFS 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS
Settings:
Shutter: 93 seconds (bulb mode w/remote)
Aperture: f/16.0
Focal Length: 18mm
ISO: 100
I set up the camera on a tripod, took my position and pressed the remote. This was actually my first attempt, all the others didn't seem quite as good. I stood in the corner of the room and traced over myself with a small LED in the hopes that it would look like a skeleton, starting with the feet and working up, 'drawing' the hands last.
[Ed note: So simple, so effective.]
-Will Norton
Bonus Entry (taken a day late but I couldn't resist)
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Last week, when I saw the batman pics, the first think I thought was: It's soooo cool, I need to make something like that, and to submit it to gizmodo, it would be so nice if they publish it!
Me and my friend Martin organized everything and we went to the top of the hill in a ruined monastery (Heidelberg, Germany). We arrived at 10pm and we stayed there till 3am. At the end, this was the only pic we really liked, so here it is. The title could be "Dark Angel". He watches over you when Batman is on duty :p
The setup: Iphone for music on background (:p) Nikon d700 with Sigma 17-35, tripod. This picture is obtained with the sum of 53 different pics of the sky with startrails. I set up the camera for 2" self-timing, then 30" exposure time, 1600 ISO, f8. I pressed that button 53 times, every 30" :s Then we took a picture for the body painting, same exif as before. With a torch I painted Martin's body and after with light candles I made the wings. I took roughly 250 pictures, spent 5 hours outside, drunk 2 beers (actually we were too busy for drinking beer) and got really scared by a mouse...but I think it worth it.
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WINNER - TRON
Canon 1D Mark IV, Canon EF 24-70mm F2.8 L @ 24mm, 30 second shutter, ISO 100, f16, two small lights from Walmart for the floor and the tires and rider and a large shop light for the trailing light
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Out with the girlfriend for some beers and wings and we started brainstorming for ideas for this weeks photo challenge, end result was the Tron bike idea. We put down tape so we could keep the the lines on the floor straight and used garbage can lids as guides for the tires. It was just the two of us so it took two photos to create the grid on the floor, 1st photo for the lines left to right and the 2nd photo for the lines back to front and a 3rd photo to get her on the bike with the tires and the lines on her and the trailing light. The images were then layered together in photoshop. Took us 75 images to get the 3 that we liked and it was in the garage in the middle of the day so we had to black out the windows and keep the doors closed.. Let just say it was really hot in the garage.
[Ed note: Holy @&#;%]
-Satnam Sidhu
Kudos to everyone for pushing themselves technically and creatively this week. Thanks for sharing, and see full size images at flickr.
The Gallery (click here for one page view)
Bodypaint shooting challenge gallery Out of all the shots I tried, this one was my son's idea and came out pretty good. Using one… Read more ReadFOXBOROUGH — Wes Welker didn’t get to participate in all this fun last season.
The Patriots receiver was sitting in box seats at Gillette Stadium, his injured knee propped up, while his teammates took on the Ravens in the wild-card round.
Welker rehashed those days in his first media session of the week yesterday, and later drew a few snickers — whether he intended to or not — with his playful choice of words about the Jets-Patriots matchup.
Welker’s dry sense of humor may have been on display as he dropped |
IGO), they showed up as spikes in the readings from its two L-shaped detectors in Louisiana and Washington state. For the first time ever, scientists had recorded a gravitational-wave signal.
“There it was!” says LIGO team member Daniel Holz, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago in Illinois. “And it was so strong, and so beautiful, in both detectors.” Although the shape of the signal looked familiar from the theory, Holz says, “it's completely different when you see something in the data. It's this transcendent moment”.
The signal, formally designated GW150914 after the date of its occurrence and informally known to its discoverers as 'the Event', has justly been hailed as a milestone in physics. It has provided a wealth of evidence for Albert Einstein's century-old general theory of relativity, which holds that mass and energy can warp space-time, and that gravity is the result of such warping. Stuart Shapiro, a specialist in computer simulations of relativity at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, calls it “the most significant confirmation of the general theory of relativity since its inception”.
But the Event also marks the start of a long-promised era of gravitational-wave astronomy. Detailed analysis of the signal has already yielded insights into the nature of the black holes that merged, and how they formed. With more events such as these — the LIGO team is analysing several other candidate events captured during the detectors' four-month run, which ended in January — researchers will be able to classify and understand the origins of black holes, just as they are doing with stars.
Still more events should appear starting in September, when Advanced LIGO is scheduled to begin joint observations with its European counterpart, the Franco–Italian-led Advanced Virgo facility near Pisa, Italy. (The two collaborations already pool data and publish papers together.) This detector will not only contribute crucial details to events, but could also help astronomers to make cosmological-distance measurements more accurately than before.
“It's going to be a really good ride for the next few years,” says Bruce Allen, managing director of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Hanover, Germany.
“The more black holes they see whacking into each other, the more fun it will be,” says Roger Penrose, a theoretical physicist and mathematician at the University of Oxford, UK, whose work in the 1960s helped to lay the foundation for the theory of the objects. “Suddenly, we have a new way of looking at the Universe.”
A matter of energy
Physicists have known for decades that every pair of orbiting bodies is a source of gravitational waves. With each revolution, according to Einstein's equations, the waves will carry away a tiny fraction of their orbital energy. This will cause the objects to move a bit closer together and orbit a little faster. For familiar pairs, such as the Moon and Earth, such energy loss is imperceptible even on timescales of billions of years.
But dense objects in very close orbits can lose energy much more quickly. In 1974, radio astronomers Russell Hulse and Joseph Taylor, then of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, found just such a system: a pair of dense neutron stars in orbit around each other. As the years went by, the scientists found that this 'binary pulsar' was losing energy and spiralling inwards exactly as predicted by Einstein's theory.
The two black holes detected by LIGO had probably been losing energy in this way for millions, if not billions, of years before they reached the end. But LIGO did not register the gravitational waves coming from them until 9:50:45 Coordinated Universal Time on 14 September, when the wave's frequency rose above some 30 cycles per second (hertz) — corresponding to 15 full black-hole orbits per second — and was finally high enough for the detectors to distinguish it from background noise.
But then, in just 0.2 seconds, LIGO watched the signal surge to 250 hertz and suddenly disappear, as the black holes made their final 5 orbits, reached orbital velocities of half the speed of light and coalesced into a single massive object (see 'What made the wave').
The LIGO and Virgo teams soon went to work extracting every bit of information possible. At the most fundamental level, the signal gave them an existence proof: the fact that the objects came so close to each other before merging meant that they had to be black holes, because ordinary stars would need to be much bigger. “It is, I think, the clearest indication that black holes are really there,” says Penrose.
The signal also provided researchers with the first empirical test of general relativity beyond regions — including the space around the binary pulsar — where there is comparatively little space-time warping. There was no empirical evidence that the theory would keep its validity at the extreme energies of merging black holes, says Shapiro — but it did.
The signal held a trove of more-detailed information as well. By scrutinizing its shape just before the final cataclysm, the scientists found that it closely approximated a simple sine wave with a steadily increasing frequency and amplitude. According to B. S. Sathyaprakash, a theoretical physicist at Cardiff University, UK, and a senior LIGO researcher, this pattern suggests that the orbits of the black holes were nearly circular, and that LIGO probably had a bird's-eye view of the circles, looking almost straight down on them rather than edge-on.
In addition, the LIGO and Virgo teams were able to use the frequency of the observed wave, along with its rate of acceleration, to estimate the masses of the two black holes: because heavier objects radiate energy in the form of gravitational waves at a faster rate than do lighter objects, their pitch rises more quickly.
By recreating the Event with computer simulations, the scientists calculated that the two black holes weighed about 36 times and 29 times the mass of the Sun, respectively, and that the combined black hole weighed about 62 solar masses1. The lost difference, about three Suns' worth, was dispersed as gravitational radiation — much of it during what physicists call the 'ringdown' phase, when the merged black hole was settling into a spherical shape. (For comparison, the most powerful thermonuclear bomb ever detonated converted only about 2 kilograms of matter into energy — roughly 1030 times less.) The teams also suspect that the final black hole was spinning at perhaps 100 revolutions per second, although the margin of error on that estimate is large.
The inferred masses of the two black holes are also revealing. Each object was presumably the remnant of a very massive star, with the larger star approaching 100 times the mass of the Sun and the smaller one a little less. Thermonuclear reactions are known to convert hydrogen in the cores of such stars into helium much faster than in lighter stars, which leads them to collapse under their own weight only a few million years after they are born. The energy released by this collapse causes an explosion called a type II supernova, which leaves behind a residual core that turns into a neutron star or, if it's massive enough, a black hole.
Scientists say that type II supernovae should not produce black holes much bigger than about 30 solar masses — and both black holes were at the high end of that range. This could mean that the system formed from interstellar gas clouds that were richer in hydrogen and helium than the ones typically found in our Galaxy, and that were poorer in heavy elements — which astronomers call metals.
Astrophysicists have calculated that stars formed from such low-metallicity clouds should have an easier time forming massive black holes when they explode, explains Gijs Nelemans, an astronomer at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands and a member of the Advanced Virgo collaboration. That's because during a supernova explosion, smaller atoms are less likely to be blown away by the blast. Low-metallicity stars thus “lose less mass, so more of it goes into the black hole, for the same initial mass”, Nelemans says.
Two by two
But how did these two black holes end up in a binary system? In a paper2 published at the same time as the one reporting the discovery, the LIGO and Virgo teams described two commonly accepted scenarios.
The simplest one is that two massive stars were born as a binary-star system, forming from the same interstellar gas cloud like a double-yolked egg, and orbiting each other ever since. (Such binary stars are common in our Galaxy; singletons such as the Sun are the exception, rather than the rule.) After a few million years, one of the stars would have burned out and gone supernova, soon to be followed by the other. The result would be a binary black hole.
The second scenario is that the stars formed independently, but still inside the same dense stellar cluster — perhaps one similar to the globular clusters that orbit the Milky Way. In such a cluster, massive stars would sink towards the centre and, through complex interactions with lighter stars, form binary systems, possibly long after their transformation into black holes.
“It is, I think, the clearest indication that black holes are really there.”
Simulations made by Simon Portegies Zwart, an astrophysicist at Leiden University in the Netherlands, show3 that massive stars are more likely to form in dense clusters, where collisions and mergers are more common. He also finds that once a binary black-hole system forms, the complex dynamics of the cluster's centre would probably kick the pair out at high speed. The binary that Advanced LIGO detected may have wandered away from any galaxy for billions of years before merging, he says.
Although the LIGO and Virgo teams were able to learn a lot from the Event, there is much more that gravitational waves could teach them, even in the case of black-hole mergers.The detectors showed that immediately after the black holes merged, the waves quickly died down as the resulting black hole settled into a symmetrical shape. This is consistent with predictions made by theoretical physicist C. V. Vishveshwara in the early 1970s, a time when “gravitational waves and black holes both belonged to the realm of mythology”, he says. “At that time, I had not imagined that it would ever be verified,” says Vishveshwara, who is director emeritus of the Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium in Bangalore, India.
But LIGO saw only just over one cycle of the Event's ringdown waves before the signal became buried once more in the background noise — not yet enough data to provide a rigorous test of Vishveshwara's predictions.
More-stringent tests will be possible if and when LIGO detects black-hole mergers that are larger than this one, or that occur closer to Earth than the Event's estimated distance of 1.3 billion light years, and thus give 'louder' waves that stay above the noise for longer.
Alessandra Buonanno, a LIGO theorist and director of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam-Golm, Germany, says that a more detailed picture of the ringdown stage could reveal how fast the final black hole rotates, as well as whether its formation gave it a 'natal kick', imparting a high velocity.
In addition, says Sathyaprakash, “we are especially waiting for systems that are much lighter, so they last longer”. Such events could include the mergers of lighter binary black holes, of binary neutron stars or of a black hole with a neutron star. Each type would deliver its own signature chirp, and could produce a signal that stays above LIGO's threshold of sensitivity for several minutes or more.
“GW150914 is in some sense a very vanilla system,” says Chad Hanna, a LIGO member at Pennsylvania State University in University Park. “It's beautiful, of course, but it doesn't have all the crazy things that one might expect.”
Space artistry
One phenomenon that Sathyaprakash is eager to observe is a 'precession' of the black holes' orbital plane, meaning that their paths trace a kind of 3D rosette. This is a relativistic effect that has no counterpart in Newtonian gravity, and it should produce a characteristic fluctuation in the strength of the gravitational waves. But orbital precession occurs only when two black holes have axes of rotation that point in random directions, and it disappears when the axes are both perpendicular to the orbital plane. The occurrence of a precession could provide clues to how the black holes formed.
It's hard to be sure about that possibility because there are many uncertainties in simulating supernovas. But astrophysicists suspect that parallel spins generally signify that the original two stars were born together out of the same whirling gas cloud. Similarly, they think that random spins result from black holes that formed separately and later fell into orbit around each other. Once the observatories find more mergers, they may be able to determine which type of system occurs more frequently.
Although detecting more events will help LIGO to do lots of science, its interferometers have intrinsic limitations that make it necessary to work together with a worldwide network of similar detectors that are now coming online.
First, LIGO's two interferometers are not enough for scientists to determine precisely where the waves came from. The researchers can get some information by comparing the signal's time of arrival at each detector: the difference enables them to calculate the wave's direction relative to an imaginary line drawn between the two. But in the case of the Event, which recorded a difference of 6.9 milliseconds, their calculations limited the field of possibilities merely to a wide strip of southern sky.
Had Virgo been online, the scientists could have narrowed down the direction substantially by comparing the waves' arrival times at three places. With a fourth interferometer (Japan is building an underground one called KAGRA, for Kamioka Gravitational-Wave Detector, and India has its own LIGO in planning), their precision would improve much more.
Knowing an event's direction will in turn remove one of the biggest uncertainties in determining its distance from Earth. Waves that approach from a direction exactly perpendicular to the detector — either from above or from below, through Earth — will be recorded at their actual amplitude, explains Fulvio Ricci, a physicist at the University of Rome La Sapienza and the spokesperson for Virgo. Waves that come from elsewhere in the sky, however, will hit the detector at an angle and produce a somewhat smaller signal, according to a known formula. There are even some blind spots, where a source cannot be seen by a given detector at all.
Determining the direction will therefore reveal the exact amplitude of the waves. By comparing that figure with the waves' amplitude at the source, which the researchers can derive from the shape of the signal, and by knowing how the amplitude decreases with distance, which they get from Einstein's theory, they can then calculate the distance of the source to a much higher precision.
This situation is almost unprecedented: conventionally, astronomical distances need to be estimated by looking at the brightness of known objects in locations that range from the Solar System to distant galaxies. But the measured brightness of those'standard candles' can be dimmed by stuff in between. Gravitational waves have no such limitation.
Raising the alarm
There is another important reason why scientists are eager to have precise estimates of the waves' provenance. The LIGO and Virgo teams have arranged to give near-real-time alerts of intriguing events to more than 70 teams of conventional astronomers, who will use their optical, radio and space-based telescopes to see whether those events produced any form of electromagnetic radiation. In return, the LIGO and Virgo collaborations will be sifting through data to search for gravitational waves that could have been generated by events, such as supernova explosions, seen by the conventional observatories.
Some 20 teams tried to follow up on the Event, mostly to no avail. NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope did see a possible burst of γ-rays about 0.4 seconds later, coming from an equally vague but compatible region of the southern sky4. But most observers now consider it to be a coincidence. Such γ-rays could, in principle, have been produced when gas orbiting the binary black hole was heated up during the merger, says Vicky Kalogera, a LIGO astrophysicist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. But “our astrophysical expectation has been that the gas from stars that formed the binary black hole has long dispersed. There shouldn't be any significant gas around”, she says.
Going forward, however, matching gravitational waves with electromagnetic ones could usher in a new era of astronomy. In particular, mergers of neutron stars are expected to produce short γ-ray bursts. Researchers could then measure how far the light from those bursts is shifted towards the red end of the spectrum, which would tell astronomers how fast the stars' host galaxies are receding owing to the expansion of the Universe.
Matching those redshifts to distance measurements calculated from gravitational waves should give estimates of the current rate of cosmic expansion, known as the Hubble constant, that are independent — and potentially more precise — than calculations using current methods. “From the point of view of measuring the Hubble constant, that's our gold-plated source”, says Holz.
The LIGO and Virgo teams estimate that they have a 90% chance of finding more events in the data that LIGO has already collected. They are confident that by the time the next run finishes, the event count will be at least 5, growing to perhaps 35 by the end of a run scheduled to start in 2017.
“To be honest,” says Holz, “I find it really hard to believe that the Universe is really doing this stuff. But it's not science fiction. It really happened.”0 SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Whatsapp Pinterest Print Mail Flipboard
SARAH PALIN IS COSTING YOU A LOT OF MONEY
Sure you knew she was annoying, but did you know she was costing us hundreds of millions of dollars?
During her RNC speech as Republican VP candidate Palin claimed, “I fought to bring about the largest private-sector infrastructure project in North American history. And when that deal was struck, we began a nearly forty billion dollar natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence.”
And during the vice-presidential debate, Palin made this claim again: “we’re building a nearly $40 billion natural gas pipeline — which is North America’s largest and most expensive infrastructure project ever — to flow those sources of energy into hungry markets.”
And here’s where our story of grift, graft and greed begins.
During the campaign, The New York Times reported that the reality of the project was “far more ambiguous than the impression Ms. Palin has left at the convention and on the campaign trail.” This is because the contract to build a 1,715-mile pipeline to bring natural gas from Alaska to the Lower 48 existed only on paper. There is no pipeline. There never was.
Not only has the pipeline not been built, but as Palin’s signifying “accomplishment” during her brief time as Governor was written — the bill Palin championed to such an extent it was often referred to as the Palin Pipeline — left the state vulnerable to losing over 500 million dollars. Or should I say, it left us vulnerable to paying over 500 million dollars because Palin thought that the US Federal Government should shoulder all the financial risks of AGIA while writing a contract that guarantees profit for the private corporation (or Alaska will pay damages). Sort of like those bail outs Palin’s followers so object to, wherein we taxpayers subsidize the risk and the private company gets to take the profit. Palin’s signature achievement was to shell out 500 million dollars of our money for a bad idea, conceived mostly out of arrogance and widely criticized at the time as being wildly flawed.
According to the Juneau Empire, the bill was so poorly conceived that the state was urged to cut it losses at the time by former state petroleum economist Roger Marks, who said, “State leaders made faulty assessments in their quest to land the long-sought pipeline project.”
On August 27, 2008, Palin signed AGIA (Alaska Gasline Inducement Act) into law awarding Canadian energy company TransCanada a license and 500 million dollars as an incentive to someday build and operate the $26-billion pipeline to transport natural gas from the North Slope. A license. That’s all. If the project isn’t built, the state could be beholden to TransCanada for treble damages.
Not only were there rumblings about Palin’s connections with TransCanada and accusations that the bidding process had been tainted by Palin’s interaction with TransCanada during the process, but said accusations resulted in an AP investigation which determined that a flawed bidding process had existed that narrowed the field to a company with ties to Palin’s administration.
But just as Palin built a Sports Complex in Wasilla on land the city did not hold title to, the state of Alaska did not have any guarantee that they could bring gas through Canada to the lower 48. Furthermore, BP and ConocoPhillips own the leases in Alaska, not TransCanada, to whom the Palin administration awarded the contract. In other words, this contract never guaranteed the delivery of natural gas to US markets.
In fact, this contract never even addressed how the gas would get to the lower 48. The gas might be sold to China. It might be sold to Canada, if they were willing to pay more money for it. So in no way was this ever intended to be an energy solution for America. It was intended to make money for Alaska while the US taxpayer footed the bill. $18 Billion was appropriated as part of the Alaskan Natural Gas Pipeline Act of 2004 and more funds and loan guarantees will need to be committed if the pipeline is ever to be built. That’s in addition to the bail-out of TransCanada should the contract not proceed. It should be noted that all energy seems to get such perks — but why then the complaints when Democrats want to subsidize alternative energy? Palin refers to alternative energy subsidies as all kinds of threatening baloney, knowing full well that she is the Queen of subsidizing private energy corporations but she doesn’t have the excuse that it was for America’s energy needs. It was never for America. That “delivery to hungry markets” mantra was just as opaque as “drill, baby, drill”.
I believe this is one of those “Bail Outs” the Tea Party keeps screaming about.
The main problem with AGIA, however, is that producers have long held that “unreliable tax terms” (that would be Palin’s windfall profit taxes which are based on profit and hence impossible for producers to calculate in advance) kept them from pursuing a pipeline before AGIA was even introduced.
Cut to today: Open season on the bidding to build the project has closed, and there are no bids. The Parnell administration (for all intents and purposes, Palin administration, as he is carrying on the rest of her first term after she quit unexpectedly mid term) is trying to spin this into a win, suggesting that negotiations are ongoing, but not having to negotiate with the oil companies was the entire purpose of AGIA.
Andrew Halco reports:
“Most likely, TransCanada’s Palmer said, the bids will be conditional, leading to protracted negotiations. Bidders might ask for an ownership stake in the pipeline as a condition, or special tax breaks from the state. Or he said, they might want TransCanada to be responsible for construction cost overruns instead of seeing those extra costs added to transportation charges. According to several dozen quotes on the issue from administration officials over the last three years that were chronicled on countless blogs, AGIA’s must haves were supposed to be met without debate to protect the state.”
Palin’s big claim, the entire point of AGIA, was, “We’re not negotiating.”
Sounds familiar, eh?
AGIA was a part of Palin’s hubristic and simplistic idea of how the world works. She thought she could march in and tell the oil and gas companies how they were going to do business in Alaska, and while she was at it, she lobbied a huge windfall profit tax on them. It was part of her image of herself as a tough, Alaska first kinda gal. And it’s a charming idea.
It’s the kind if idea that makes it possible to understand why Palin was so appealing to people before they got to look under the hood. She was gonna make those oil companies pay. We’d all like to see that. The problem is that actual governing is not that simple and good or even reasonable legislation is a difficult to craft once everyone has weighed in on a subject.
It turned out that Palin was just as corrupt as the guy before her; she was just a better salesman. Not only was she corrupt, but also she made Bush look like he had a PhD in policy with her Rovian bulldozer approach to governing. And lastly, Palin billing herself as a fiscal conservative is not only disingenuous, it’s a disgraceful misrepresentation of reality. According to the ADN, “In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation, although she has cut, by more than half, the amount the state sought from Washington this year.”
Alaska could have to bail out TransCanada to the tune of $400 million to $2 billion. And when I say Alaska, I mean America. And by America, I mean the American taxpayer. That’s fiscal conservatism, Republican style. We pay a lot of money so they can lie about their accomplishments. Meanwhile, they moan about the deficit every time a Democrat tries to save the economy from the Republicans’ fiscally disastrous leadership.
Every time Palin goes on Fox News to allege that Obama is a socialist, try not to remember that she just fleeced us out of over 500 million dollars and we still don’t know what kind of kick backs, if any, she got for awarding the contract to TransCanada. But we do know that she padded her resume with millions, if not billions, of our tax dollars. We’re out at least 500 million and we’re back to square one in trying to get natural gas to the lower 48.
Pony up, people. Palin has another lie to sell you. Think of it as the Sarah Palin Bail Out.
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:was today relaxed in violence-hit Baksa and Kokrajhar and neighbouring Chirang districts of where 34 persons were killed in the mayhem unleashed by NDFB-Songbijit militants since Thursday last.
With no fresh incident reported so far, the district administrations relaxed the prohibitory order imposed since Friday night for eight hours from 10 AM at Baksa, for six hours at Kokrajhar and for seven hours from 10 AM at Chirang respectively.
Flag march by the continued to instill confidence among the people even as the security forces were patrolling the affected areas to prevent further outbreak of violence, the sources said.
No fresh attacks were reported since Friday from Baksa and Kokrajhar districts falling under the Bodoland Territorial Areas districts (BTAD), which also includes Chirang and Udalguri districts, the sources said.
IGP L R Bishnoi claimed a major attack was averted yesterday with the killing of two NDFB-S militants in an encounter at Baksal village in Udalguri district where they had gone to unleash violence in nearby villages.
Bodies of two women, feared drowned while attempting to flee, were recovered at Durmonighat under Barpeta Road police station yesterday taking the toll to 34.
Thousands of people, who fled their homes during the violence, were being provided shelter by the government in relief camps.NICHOLS HILLS, Okla. -- Kevin Durant remembers how his Christmases as a kid always had a degree of uncertainty of whether there would be presents under the tree.
Now that he's an NBA All-Star and a multimillionaire, he wants to make the holidays a little bit brighter for children in need.
Durant, the NBA's scoring leader, chose Oklahoma City-based Citizens Caring for Children as the recipient of his annual "Kevin's Christmas" charity event.
He surprised about 120 foster children Saturday with a visit and gifts, including an iPod shuffle, Thunder-themed Skullcandy headphones and Nike gear.
"I just wanted them to feel special on Christmas," Durant said. "As a kid, you really don't know the significance of what Christmas really means except for getting gifts and being joyous around this time. So, I want them to feel special. Hopefully, this is something that they're always going to remember for the rest of their lives.
"I'm happy to say I was a part of that."
Durant also gave the organization a flat-screen television, an Xbox 360, a Wii and video games that the children can play in their activity center. It'll replace a failing 13-inch TV.
"They really are a lot of times forgotten during the holidays," said Amy Mitchell, the agency's executive director. "We all go home and spend time with our families and they're separated from theirs, so it's so special that they took the time to do this for these kids."
After a pizza party and some free time for the kids to shoot hoops, Durant called each child up individually to hand out a bookbag filled with gifts that will be among the few received by some of the children.
Citizens Caring for Children also holds a toy drive to ensure each child gets a gift, but some live in group homes and don't have foster families to provide for them.
"All of them are living without their families, so being able to spend time with somebody like Kevin Durant during the holidays is so special to them. I think it makes being away from their families a little bit easier," Mitchell said. "It's still hard. But to know that somebody like him takes the time out of his schedule to be with them, to show them that he cares and that they're special really means a lot."
Durant signed a five-year, $85 million contract extension this summer after becoming the NBA's youngest scoring champion ever and leading Oklahoma City to its first playoff appearance. But he didn't always have money.
"My mom surprised me and my brother a lot. She'd always say we weren't going to have a Christmas because we couldn't afford it, but then she would come back and [we would] wake up on Christmas day with a lot of gifts," Durant said.
"I had a lot of great Christmases and it's a blessing to try to do that and give back to the younger kids."
Last year, Durant took three young boys on a shopping spree at the mall and coordinated a "Giving Tree" event for 100 children in need. The previous year, he distributed coats, gloves, hats and other items to about 60 children at an inner-city after-school program.
During his rookie year in Seattle, he took 26 needy children on a shopping spree and then took them to dinner.
"I always look forward to it. It's something new, something bigger every year that I try to do," Durant said. "My mom did a good job of coordinating everything and coming up with great ideas. Everything went right as planned, and everything's perfect right now.
"I'm excited, I'm happy and hopefully we can continue to just do this every year and put smiles on kids' faces."
The Thunder's Serge Ibaka and Morris Peterson also held a charity event Saturday, distributing toys at a pizza party for about 200 children.
"For us to give back to the less fortunate is obviously a blessing.... Growing up, I didn't see NBA players. I didn't get to interact with them," Durant said. "For me to provide something that I didn't have growing up means a lot to me. I'm just happy I've got this opportunity, and I'm having fun."
In addition to the toy drive, Citizens Caring for Children is also trying to gather donations of new coats, pajamas and other clothing in addition to duffel bags that they can distribute to children.
Those will serve the kids' everyday needs, now that Durant has helped out with the holidays.
"Kevin's the Santa this year," Mitchell said. "He's a very tall Santa."This article is about the original name of the Latter Day Saint (LDS) church founded by Joseph Smith. For other LDS and non–LDS denominations that use "Church of Christ", see Church of Christ (disambiguation)
A reconstruction of the original Peter Whitmer home in Fayette, New York.
The Church of Christ was the original name of the Latter Day Saint church founded by Joseph Smith.[1] Organized informally in 1829 in New York and then formally on April 6, 1830, it was the first organization to implement the principles found in Smith's newly published Book of Mormon, and thus represents the formal beginning of the Latter Day Saint movement. Later names for this organization included the Church of the Latter Day Saints (by 1834 resolution),[2] the Church of Jesus Christ,[3] the Church of God,[3] the Church of Christ of Latter Day Saints,[4][5] and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (by an 1838 revelation).[6][7]
Smith and his associates asserted that the Church of Christ was a restoration of the 1st-century Christian church, which Smith claimed had fallen from God's favor and authority because of what he called a "Great Apostasy". After Smith's death in 1844, there was a crisis of authority, with the majority of the members following Brigham Young to Utah Territory, but with several smaller denominations remaining in Illinois or settling in Missouri and in other states. Each of the churches that resulted from this schism considers itself to be the rightful continuation of Smith's original "Church of Christ", regardless of the name they may currently bear (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), Community of Christ, The Church of Jesus Christ (Bickertonite), Church of Christ (Temple Lot), etc.).
This church is unrelated to other bodies bearing the same name, including the United Church of Christ, a Reformed church body, and the Churches of Christ, an offshoot of the Campbellite movement. Today, there are several Latter Day Saint churches called "Church of Christ", largely within the Hedrickite branch of the movement.
Doctrinal development prior to 1830 [ edit ]
The first Latter Day Saint references to the "church of Christ" are found in passages of the Book of Mormon that Smith dictated from April to June 1829. During the course of this dictation, the outlines for a community of believers or church structure gradually became apparent. Such a structure would have authority from God, ordinances such as baptism, and ordained clergy. Some time in April 1829, Smith dictated a story of Alma the Elder, the former priest of a wicked king, who baptized his followers by immersion, "having authority from the Almighty God", and called his community of believers the "church of God, or the church of Christ".[8] The book described the clergy in Alma's church as consisting of priests, who were unpaid and were to "preach nothing save it were repentance and faith in the Lord".[9] Alma later established many churches (or congregations), which were considered "one church" because "there was nothing preached in all the churches except it were repentance and faith in God."[10] In addition to priests, the book mentions that the clergy of these churches also included teachers.[11]
Nevertheless, in May 1829, a revelation by Smith described the "church" in informal terms: "Behold, this is my doctrine: whosoever repenteth and cometh unto me, the same is my church: whosoever declareth more or less than this, the same is not of me, but is against me: therefore, he is not of my church."[12] Smith's further dictation of the Book of Mormon also stated that there were "two churches only; the one is the church of the Lamb of God, and the other is the church of the devil".[13]
As a result of the book's references to baptism and the organization of churches, Smith prayed for clarification and direction. Soon thereafter, in May 1829, Smith and Oliver Cowdery said they were visited by John the Baptist in angelic form, who conferred the Aaronic priesthood on them, which included the authority to baptize in Jesus Christ's name. Smith and Cowdery then baptized each other by immersion. They also baptized dozens of people, as early as June 1829.[14] These converts, however, did not belong to a formal church organization. Nevertheless, this community of believers referred to themselves as "the Church of Christ", and included converts in three New York towns: Fayette, Manchester, and Colesville.
In June 1829, Smith dictated a revelation stating that "in [the Book of Mormon] are all things written, concerning my church, my gospel, and my rock. Wherefore if you shall build up my church, and my gospel, and my rock, the gates of hell shall not prevail against you."[15] Some time between June and December 1829, Cowdery said he received a revelation about "how he should build up his church & the manner thereof". This revelation was called the "Articles of the Church of Christ", and it indicated that the church should ordain priests and teachers "according to the gifts & callings of God unto men". The church was to meet regularly to partake of bread and wine. Cowdery was described as "an Apostle of Jesus Christ". According to David Whitmer, by April 1830, this informal "Church of Christ" had about six elders and 70 members.[16]
Organization of the church [ edit ]
On April 6, 1830, Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, and a group of approximately 30 believers met with the intention of formally organizing the Church of Christ into a legal institution. It is uncertain whether this occurred in the home of Peter Whitmer, Sr. in Fayette, New York, or whether it occurred in the log home of Joseph Smith, Sr. near their property in Manchester. Soon after this formal organization, small branches were formally established in Manchester, Fayette, and Colesville. Although the purpose was to effect a legal organization, it may have had no legal effect since no records of incorporation have been found in either the Manchester–Palmyra area, the Fayette area, or in several other counties around this time period, as required by state law at the time: the church evidently did not follow the required legal formalities.[17]
Location of the organization [ edit ]
Prior to 1834, all church publications and documents stated that the church was organized in the Smith log home in Manchester, New York.[18] The first Smith log home was located on the Samuel Jennings property in Palmyra, just north of the town's southern border and subsequent the Smith Manchester property.[19][20] The Smiths may have constructed a second log home on their own property.[21] Beginning in 1834, several church publications began to give the location of the organizational meeting as Fayette, at the home of Peter Whitmer, Sr. The Whitmer |
wanting release from external control] but there is no other
place to go. My last hope is that with my death I may pass into the world of
my dream, and know peace at last."
The sleep is still in my eyes
The dream is still in my head
I heave a sigh and sadly smile
And lie a while in bed
I wish that it might come to pass
Not fade like all my dreams
Just think of what my life might be
In a world like I have seen
I don't think I can carry on
Carry on this cold and empty life
Oh...noo. [suicidal despair -- it is surprising to find this *defeat* of the Individual in Rush lyrics.]
My spirits are low in the depths of despair [mystic altered state causes synthetic manic-depression]
My lifeblood spills over.. [search "blood"]
Attention all Planets of the Solar Federation
Attention all Planets of the Solar Federation
Attention all Planets of the Solar Federation
We have assumed control. [We have incorrectly *assumed* that we ever had control, as egoic controller agents.] [theme of radical shift of control-center in altered state - ambiguous if Individuals or collectivist Priests/governors have won]
We have assumed control.
We have assumed control.
Lyrics by Neil Peart
[About marijuana, which is a companion drug for LSD. Compare song "Chemistry", including "burning p-hotter"]
Our first stop is in Bogota
To check Columbian fields
The natives smile and pass along
A sample of their yield
Sweet Jamaican pipe dreams
Golden Acapulco nights
Then Morocco, and the East,
Fly by morning light
We're on the train to Bangkok
Aboard the Thailand Express
We'll hit the stops along the way
We only stop for the best
Wreathed in smoke in Lebanon
We burn the midnight oil
The fragrance of Afghanistan
Rewards a long day's toil
Pulling into Katmandu
Smoke rings fill the air
Perfumed by a Nepal night
The Express gets you there
Lyrics by Neil Peart
A pleasant faced man steps up to greet you
He smiles and says he's pleased to meet you
Beneath his hat the strangeness lies
Take it off, he's got three eyes [3rd eye of perception, to see our hidden nature; refers to mystic dissociative state. (Twilight Zone episode "Will The Real Martian Please Stand Up?" http://fusionanomaly.net/twilightzone.html)
Truth is false and logic lost [Egoic logic contains error, now corrected]
Now the fourth dimension is crossed [especially, time is seen as frozen]
You have entered the Twilight Zone
Beyond this world strange things are known [they *are* known, though strange]
Use the key, unlock the door [the potent chemical key] [search for "key"; occurs several times - "the key to heaven's door", "I learned to turn the keys"]
See what your fate might have in store [experience of Fatalism]
Come explore your dreams' creation [world and self experienced as constructs]
Enter this world of imagination [world of illusion-like mental constructs]
You wake up lost in an empty town ['wake up' mystically] [scene empty of self] (TZ pilot episode "Where Is Everybody?")
Wondering why no one else is around ['no one' lives in the homunuclus-illusion]
Look up to see a giant boy [yourself-across-time, or satan or god] (TZ episode "Stopover In A Quiet Town" has a giant girl)
You've just become his brand new toy [sense of being a puppet]
And no escape, no place to hide [sense of entrapment, robbed of feeling of power]
Here where Time and Space collide [dissolution of ego boundaries into spacetime] [compare phrase "In between time" in the song "Between the Wheels"]
[How to learn lessons from the mind itelf - independently of authorities.]
You know we've told you before
But you didn't hear us then
So you still question why
You didn't listen again [this says, "go back and inspect the song "No One at the Bridge very closely"; the shout of "Listen!" introduces that song]
*When* could Rush possibly have told us anything before this album? In the albums before 2112:
1. _Rush_
2. _Fly by Night_
3. _Caress of Steel_
1. The album _Rush_ couldn't count, because it's not a messsage-oriented album and the word "we" couldn't apply, as Neil wasn't included in the album Rush.
2. _Fly by Night_ has many allusions to mystic phenomena. This is part of the pointing, the telling, that Lessons refers to. I feel that this album was not quite mature though, as a vehicle for intelligibly communicating the mystic phenomena.
3. _Caress of Steel_ also has many expressions alluding to the standard altered state experiences. Most of all, in the song "No One at the Bridge", which is possibly the best high philosophy song ever written, as it deals with the helpless confrontation of fate that cancels the power of the self-controlling, cybernetic steersman.
The mind can be its own teacher of higher knowledge. Every so often in history, meditators throw off the writings and the authorized teachers, in order to study their own mind directly. "The lessons come from within your own head, not through authorities."
In Lessons, Rush tells us especially clearly, the Lessons (referred to in the song Lessons on 2112). This is the lesson of the cancellation of egoic, Satanic autonomy.
The Lessons are taught on a heavy sea of blurred vision with waves rolling by (No One at the Bridge), as the ship of freedom is pulled toward the vortex of enlightenment and the helmsman cries out supplication to the god of Fate, in an empty sky of doom. In this episode, the Satanic pentagram of self-will turns upside-down, as the logic of ego's system of autonomy, power, will, freedom, and reason, inflates itself to the point of exposing its inner contradictions in a logical explosion of self-deconstruction, "in a final flash of glory, never more to witness the night" (Cygnus X-1). Cygnus X-1 is about a foolishly daring trip to the black hole that takes control and shatters oneself.
Lyrics by Alex Lifeson
Sweet memories
Flashing very quickly by [in mystic state, memories are recognized as present mental constructs rapidly presented to present pure awareness]
Reminding me [that all experiencing is in the form of mental constructs presented to awareness]
and giving me a reason why [remembering altered state cognition] [gives a reason to go on living; see end of Fountain of Lamneth]
I know that
My goal is more than a thought
I'll be there
When I teach what I've been taught [taught by the mystic state]
You know we've told you before [in our previous 2 acid-rock albums] ["we've told you before" is important: it establishes that the mystic-state encoding system is understood and owned not just by a single band member, but by all three]
But you didn't hear us then [you didn't pick up allusions to the alt-state]
So you still question why
You didn't listen again ["listen" is a direct reference to the important song No One at the Bridge, which was introduced on the previous album by shouting "LISTEN!!!"] [the standard state doesn't pick up on the encoded signals; decoding requires the mystic altered state] [for those who *did* listen to and understand "No One at the Bridge", they understand this criticism to be aimed at the inexperienced mass of listeners, rather than the experienced few]
Sweet memories I never thought it would be like this [it's surprising]
Reminding me Just how close I came to missing
I know that This is the way for me to go [the mystic altered state is the way for the ego to go away, to disappear, to die]
You'll be there When you know what I know [it's a place any mind can know] [you will be gone when you have mystic knowledge as I do] And I Know [I have knowledge of cybernetic Truth; I am enlightened]
You know we've told you before [in No One at the Bridge, especially]
But you didn't hear us then
So you still question why [why we phrase things as we do. If you were Experienced, you would understand, rather than question, the phrasing]
You didn't listen again
Lyrics by Geddy Lee
All of the seasons
And all of the days
All of the reasons
Why I've felt this way
So long
So long
Then lost in that feeling
I looked in your eyes
I noticed emotion
And that you had cried
For me
I can see
What would touch me deeper
Tears that fall from eyes
That only cry?
Would it touch you deeper
Than tears that fall from eyes
That know why? [tears of enlightened, revelation state] [search "tears", as in the song "Fountain of Lamneth"]
A lifetime of questions
Tears on your cheek
I tasted the answers [eat LSD dose; compare "spit it out" - "don't swallow the poison"]
And my body was weak
For you
The truth [love for Cybernetic Truth]
Lyrics by Neil Peart
Waiting for the winds of change
To sweep the clouds away
Waiting for the rainbow's end
To cast its gold your way
Countless ways
You pass the days
Waiting for someone to call [come?]
And turn your world around [common mystic "whirling" theme]
Looking for an answer to
The question you have found [see "the key, the end, the answer"; LSD or the mystic state is the answer, the key, to the question. The question is the ego (egoic control power) as a puzzle to be solved]
Looking for
An open door ["use the key, unlock the door"] [the door is an open one if you have "the key to heaven's door"]
You don't get something for nothing
You don't get freedom for free [you must abandon metaphysical freedom to know truth and have the only true freedom of Indivdual power you can have]
You won't get wise [won't become enlightened]
With the sleep still in your eyes ["sleep" = lack of altered-state experience and understanding of cybernetic truth]
No matter what your dreams might be [no matter how you conceive of the ego or apply it to pursuit of goals, you will never understand the true nature of ego's existence without awakening via mystic-state experience]
What you own is your own kingdom [search "king" and control - complex theme]
What you do is your own glory
What you love is your own power [power is a complex theme] [egoic thinking loves the apparent power of the ego, "your own power"]
What you live is your own story
In your head is the answer [the solution to the cybernetic puzzle is discovered in the mind in altered-state introspection] [also consider head = controllership/goverorship, can be severed as in Bastille Day]
Let it guide you along [the key, the altered state, is the Teacher and Guide]
Let your heart be the anchor [in the altered state one desperately needs an anchor to stabilize self-control and steersmanship; compassion is the anchor against destructive (even sacrificial) transgression]
And the beat of your own song
Neil's statement is pregnant with subtle meaning: "We also began a series of puns with that album, in that the King is a puppet King. There have been a lot of criticisms of the Throne over the past couple of decades as being a heritage that we really can't disregard, but certainly don't take as seriously as we used to."
Translation: "Throne" refers to ego as cybernetic steersman, a purely self-directing sovereign agent. Popular culture and schools of spirituality have criticized the ego, from the 50s Zen movement through the 60s pscyhedelics movement and ensuing New Age spirituality movement, but we really can't just dismiss this necessary mental construct. After experiencing ego death, the ego does remain, but it is no longer taken as a literal reality.
This cover shows a puppet king with strings ascending into the heavens. Compare the cover of Metallica's album Master of Puppets (the acknowledgements of those liner notes include Rush), which shows a graveyard with puppet strings attached to each headstone. During the peak of a full-intensity LSD session, a common experience is to feel oneself to be a helpless puppet of the universal process. Compare also the song Little Dolls by Ozzy Osbourne from Diary of a Madman. These albums all have LSD themes and puppet or doll themes. The doll theme also occurs in the song Twilight Zone (Rush: 2112 album).
The Death of King Ego
In the liner notes of the album Different Stages, one clipping is a newspaper ad for the Farewell to Kings tour. It shows a skull wearing a crown. This is a reference to ego death triggered through LSD. It uses the same skull imagery as seen often in the Grateful Dead, but with the added concept of the death specifically of the king -- that is, the death of kingship. This is essentially synonymous with the puppet-king concept shown on the cover of the album A Farewell to Kings. The "king" is our sense of independent governorship or cybernetic steersmanship. On LSD, one perceives, very commonly, that one's power of origination is largely illusory. One may create and originate thoughts and acts of will, but this is seen as merely subservient, 2nd-order origination. The ego, or oneself, is not a prime mover; it is merely a mover which is moved. You will do what the universal process forces you to do, what it has determined and pre-set that you shall do. All preordained, king ego finds himself as a prisoner in chains, a victim of fate -- a slave of fate. The king/slave relationship is seen in the Crucifixion as well. This is the highest realm of philosophy, the philosophy of ego death and self-motion, free will and virtual (not actual) moral agency.
Cover of A Farewell to Kings (38KB)
When they turn the pages of history
When these days have passed long ago
Will they read of us with sadness
For the seeds that we let grow
We turned our gaze
From the castles in the distance
Eyes cast down
On the path of least resistance
Cities full of hatred
Fear and lies
Withered hearts
And cruel tormented eyes
Scheming demons
Dressed in kingly guise
Beating down the multitude
And scoffing at the wise
The hypocrites are slandering
The sacred halls of Truth
Ancient nobles showering
Their bitterness on youth
Can't we find
The minds that made us stong
Can't we learn
To feel what's right and wrong
Cities full of hatred
Fear and lies
Withered hearts
And cruel, tormented eyes
Scheming demons
Dressed in kingly guise [ego is demon-illusion acting as king] [search "king"]
Beating down the multitude
And scoffing at the wise
Can't we raise our eyes
And make a start
Can't we find the minds
To lead us closer to the Heart
"To seek the sacred river Alph
To walk the caves of ice
To break my fast on honey dew
And drink the milk of paradise..."
I had heard the whispered tales
Of immortality
The deepest mystery
From an ancient book. I took a clue
I scaled the frozen mountain tops
Of eastern lands unknown [explored the mystic altered state]
Time and Man alone
Searching for the lost --- Xanadu
Xanadu --- To stand within The Pleasure Dome
Decreed by Kubla Khan
To taste anew the fruits of life
The last immortal man
To find the sacred river Alph
To walk the caves of ice
Oh, I will dine on honey dew
And drink the milk of Paradise
A thousand years have come and gone
But time has passed me by
Stars stopped in the sky
Frozen in an everlasting view [time-freezing in altered state]
Waiting for the world to end [common apocalypse theme of altered state]
Weary of the night [exhausting all-night battle/tripping]
Praying for the light [search "pray", "supplication"]
Prison of the lost --- Xanadu [search "prison"]
Xanadu --- Held within The Pleasure Dome
Decreed by Kubla Khan
To taste my bitter triumph
As a mad immortal man
Nevermore shall I return
Escape these caves of ice
For I have dined on honey dew
And drunk the milk of Paradise
And the men who hold high places
Must be the ones to start
To mould a new reality
Closer to the Heart
The Blacksmith and the Artist
Reflect it in their art
Forge their creativity
Closer to the Heart
Philosophers and Ploughmen
Each must know his part
To sow a new mentality
Closer to the Heart
You can be the Captain
and I will draw the Chart
Sailing into destiny [fatalism]
Closer to the Heart [realizing Cybernetic Truth crucially demands nonviolence, non-transgression of convention moral actions]
A modest man from Mandrake
Travelled rich to the city
He had a need to discover
A use for his newly-found wealth [surprise: he doesn't "use" it by giving it away; he ends up "holding it up as a challenge to the hungry"]
Because he was human
Because he had goodness
Because he was moral [morality = challenging the hungry to better themselves and gain money on their own power]
They called him insane [morality is logically unfounded]
Delusions of grandeur
Visions of splendour
A manic depressive [search "depress", "despair"] [synthetic manic-depression of altered state]
He walks in the rain
Eyes wide open [pupil dilation]
Heart undefended
Innocence untarnished
Cinderella Man
Doing what you can
They can't understand
What it means
Cinderella Man
Hang on to your plans
Try as they might
They cannot steal your dreams
In the betrayal of his love he awakened
To face a world of cold reality
And a look in the eyes of the hungry
Awakened him to what he could do
He held up his riches
To challenge the hungry [complex wording - he does not give them his money, he holds it out as a challenge and inspiration to them]
Purposeful motion
For one so insane
They tried to fight him
Just couldn't beat him [Rand's architect who wins]
This manic depressive
Who walks in the rain
When the dragons grow too mighty
To slay with pen or sword
I grow weary of the battle [search "battle"]
And the storm I walk toward ["toward storm" = drawn toward the maelstrom strange attractor of mystic ego death]
When all around is madness [= psychotomimetic aspect of LSD, perceptual waving]
And there's no safe port in view [danger of loss of control on LSD during cybernetic transcendence of control systems]
I long to turn my path homeward
To stop awhile with you
When life becomes so barren
And as cold as winter skies
There's a beacon in the darkness
In a distant pair of eyes
In vain to search for order
In vain to search for truth
But these things can still be given
our love has shown me proof
From the Rush FAQ: Cygnus X-1 is the name given to an X-ray source in the constellation of Cygnus, believed to be a black hole. For a more detailed explanation, check issue 567 of TNMS, available via anonymous ftp from syrinx.umd.edu in the rush/digest directory. [to do: excerpt here]
Note the irregular heartbeat at the end. Turn the balance all to one side, turn down the treble, and turn up the bass. An irregular heartbeat is a signature physiological effect of LSD. In this context of the question of what happens after passing through the black hole, the answer is "life but..." ego death in life, with allusion to heart attack and death. He's still alive, but a doctor might say he might be dying of a heart attack. Heart palpitations - Whose heartbeat is at the end of the Rush album "Farewell to Kings", at the end of the song "Cygnus XI", in one channel?
The following clip is the end of Cygnus X-1 - heart palpitations as in heavy LSD use. Recorded mono from left channel only, boosted bass, increased volume at start and end.
Uneven heartbeat (79 KB) (16 Kbps) High compression works well for this clip since the treble is rolled off anyway. The.wma extension on this super-compressed file is added to please WinAmp 2.21, otherwise the signal is uneven. You can try renaming the file if necessary.
587 KB (128 Kbps), straightforward mp3 file extension
Heartbeat chart from Cygnus X-1 -- 30 KB, mono from left channel only, boosted bass, increased volume at start and end
55 heart beats in 37 seconds. That's 90 beats per minute. This heartbeat is fast and uneven, sometimes pausing.
The reason that this is important is that Cygnus XI is about mystic ego death during an intense LSD trip. The heartbeat is erratic, as happens 2/3 of the way through an intense trip when using a strong dose such as 1000 milligrams (10 hits). Whoever's heartbeat that is, that person is an expert LSD user in the latter portion of a high-dosage session. I expect that it is Peart's heartbeat, because he is the mystic lyricist and must have great experience and poise enough to think of this and capture it, whereas the others in and around the group might not.
This erratic heartbeat is almost never mentioned in the research literature -- it is subtle and only known to a few, intense-dosage LSD users. On the other hand, LSD users often think they are going to die, and one reason for this -- though they forget it later -- is that breathing becomes so shallow it seems to stop completely (think of the bodily tricks of the Indian gurus) and that the heart races and then halts, erratically. It is quite reasonable to call the ambulance when your breathing halts and your heart is very erratic, palpitating in a (benign) heart attack. But the experienced tripper knows that these physiological effects are sacred and normal and associated with the ego death and ego-transcendence state, the mystic state of cognition. I need to write more about these two layers. I always write about the mystic state of *cognition* but I would capture the experience much more realistically and vividly if I dwelled more on the accompanying *physiological* effects of the altered state.
Hugh Syme (Creem, 1983): "Permanent Waves is the result of a conversation which I had with Neil out at his home in the country. We spoke all evening about Rush growing up, and how we were going to do these EKG readings of each member as they were recording. We were going to tape their temples and chests and have real heartbeats of them while they were playing. So Permanent Waves was going to be a technical statement, and we were going to treat that with red and gold foil, and do a nice study in design- as opposed to a photographic thing. "I walked out and, in the doorway, said 'Wait! Let's try something with Donna Reed, with her permanent Toni hairdo, and have her walking out of a tidal wave situation.'
In the constellation of Cygnus
There lurks a mysterious, invisible force
The Black Hole
Of Cygnus X-1 [strange-attractor of insight about the nature of control; dawning ego-death insight]
Six Stars of the Northern Cross
In mourning for their sister's loss
In a final flash of glory
Nevermore to grace the night...
Invisible
To telescopic eye
Infinity
The star that would not die
All who dare
To cross her course
Are swallowed by
A fearsome force [ego disappears and control is recognized to emanate from Ground of Being rather than originating from ego-as-governor/creator]
Through the void
To be destroyed
Or is there something more? [do I die when my ego dies, or is there more?]
Atomized --- at the core [cognitive dis-integration/fragmentation]
Or through the Astral Door --- [through the Door of the altered state]
To soar...
I set a course just east of Lyra
And northwest of Pegasus
Flew into the light of Deneb
Sailed across the Milky Way
On my ship, the 'Rocinante'
Wheeling through the galaxies,
Headed for the heart of Cygnus
Headlong into mystery
The x-ray is her siren song [seeing through the normally solid-seeming ego and cognitive layer, acts as a strange attractor; this attractor like the sirens' singing leads to crash the ego, leads to ego-death]
My ship cannot resist her long [search "ship" as in the key song "No One at the Bridge"] [ego's power is helpless to resist being trumped and taken over by the power of the Ground of Being that is the controller and creator of the ego, of every act and thought and act of will that the ego normally seems to originate]
Nearer to my deadly goal [the control singularity vortex and its ego death]
Until the Black Hole
Gains control...
Eye in vortex (75 KB)
Spinning, whirling, [common altered-state theme of whirling]
Still descending
Like a spiral sea, [search "spiral" as in 2112]
Unending
Sound and fury
Drowns my heart
Every nerve
Is torn apart.... [dis-integration and fragmentation of mental constructs in the loose cognitive binding state]
[irregular heartbeat from heavy LSD dose] [indicates that after the flaming sword of ego death, personal existence yet remains/continues]
To be continued
[Continued immdiately below in Cygnus X-1 Book Two: Hemispheres.]
Nerve network space vortex (358KB jpg)
This album-side is a cautionary rebuttal of Rand as an unbalanced thinker.
[Continued from immediately above, Cygnus X-1 Book One: The Voyage.]
When our weary world was young
The struggle of the ancients was begun.
The gods of Love and Reason
Sought alone to rule the fate of Man. [search "fate", "destin"]
[concern with fatedness. Fatalism is making a major comeback in contemporary metaphysics, as people finally understand what exactly the position entails -- it's much harder to refute than determinism, as it makes fewer assertions about *how* the future is preset.]
They battled through the ages,
But still neither force would yield.
The people were divided,
Every soul a battlefield.
[Apollo = Rand, reason, order, ego, ordinary state of consciousness, mundane normalcy and security]
"I bring truth and understanding,
I bring wit and wisdom fair,
Precious gifts beyond compare.
We can build a world of wonder,
I can make you all aware.
I will find you food and shelter,
Show you fire to keep you warm
Through the endless winter storms.
You can live in grace and comfort
In the world that you transform."
The people were delighted
Coming forth to claim their prize
They ran to build their cities
And converse among the wise.
But one day the streets fell silent,
Yet they knew not what was wrong.
The urge to build these fine things
Seemed not to be so strong.
[So much for Fountainhead - building skyscrapers does not fulfill the whole needs of the human psyche.]
The wise men were consulted,
And the Bridge of Death was crossed
In quest of Dionysus,
To find out what they had lost.
[As a solution to the emptiness of egoic rational existence, people took Kykeon in the Greek mysteries at Eleusis, or took LSD in other forms. This brought ego death and took them across the river Styx.]
[Dionysus = intoxication, LSD, enthusiasm, excitement, intoxicated frenzy, revelation, radical freedom, transcendent concerns.]
"I bring love to give you solace
In the darkness of the night,
In the Heart's eternal light.
You need only trust your feelings;
Only love can steer you right.
I bring laughter, I bring music,
I bring joy and I bring tears. [search "tears", as in the song "Fountain of Lamneth" and song "Tears"]
I will soothe your primal fears.
Throw off those chains of reason
And your prison disappears."
[Dionysus fulfills the half of the psyche that starves to death in the dull prison-world of the Randian ego.]
The cities were abandoned,
And the forests echoed song.
They danced and lived as brothers;
They knew love could not be wrong.
But the winter fell upon them
And it caught them unprepared,
Bringing wolves and cold starvation,
And the hearts of men despaired.
[Egoic rationality without transcendence is a wasteland. But intoxication and freedom and transcendence without Reason and order cannot sustain life or pleasure.]
[The battle of transcendence vs. ego, experienced in the self-battle at the peak of tripping.]
The Universe divided
As the Heart and Mind collided,
With the people left unguided
For so many troubled years.
In a cloud of doubts and fears,
Their world was torn asunder into hollow Hemispheres.
[Rand's reason/ego, without transcendence, is hollow and not sustenance. Transcendence or tripping, without reason and order, is similarly hollow and empty of worth.]
Some fought themselves, some fought each other.
[How do you fight yourself? The battle of self-control at the peak of tripping, which exposes the governorship of the ego-agent as an illusion that cannot even govern itself. "Every muscle tense to fight the enemy within."]
Most just followed one another,
Lost and aimless like their brothers,
For their hearts were so unclear,
[Like the 60s boomers with their vague Revolution.]
And the truth could not appear.
Their spirits were divided into blinded Hemispheres.
[There it is. Rand's spirit, her "genius"/jinn, is blind. Reason without transcendence is blind and cannot fulfill the real breadth of human needs.]
Some who did not fight
Brought tales of old to light.
[These would be the mystic advanced meditators and trippers of old, explorers of the astral plane, the transcendent level of cognition and higher altered-state experiencing.]
My Rocinante' sailed by night
On her final flight.
[Here we have another vessel like Ozzy's "ship upon the shore/shelf", and the ship of loss-of-helmsman-power in "No One at the Bridge".]
To the heart of Cygnus' fearsome force
We set our course.
[Taking ten hits of LSD, sets us upon a collision course with higher truth, to bring reason to full fruition in transcendent knowledge about the illusory nature of ego.]
Spiralled through that timeless space
To this immortal place.
[The sense of time (and space) stops, ego death is now, physical death seems infinitely removed.]
I have memory and awareness,
But I have no shape or form.
[Body unreality in schizophrenia, mystic state, or LSD altered state.]
As a disembodied spirit,
[Common mystic perception; time and space and body are experienced as equivalent concrete illusions -- all just mental constructs.]
I am dead and yet unborn.
[Ego death - there never was an ego-entity, to be born or die.]
I have passed into Olympus
As was told in tales of old,
To the city of Immortals,
Marble white and purest gold.
[Marble: the concretization of perceptual constructs. Shifting shadows and details. Heavenly bright white and gold are from pure-awareness-feedback.]
I see the gods in battle rage on high,
[Rand would not talk of seeing gods.]
Thunderbolts across the sky.
[Thunderbolt = psychoactive mushrooms after a storm, and psychedelics in general. Here is a picture of LSD-soaked blotter representing the chemical ego-death experience as a lightning bolt inside the mind:]
I cannot move, I cannot hide,
[Common LSD and mystic themes. Loss of control-power, feeling of being monitored by a higher awareness, from inside.]
I feel a silent scream begin inside.
[Compare Ride the Lightning lyrics.]
Then all at once the chaos ceased.
A stillness fell, of sound and peace.
The warriors felt my silent cry
And stayed their struggle, mystified.
["Mysti-fied." The immense, panicked struggle of self-control over itself stops suddenly.]
Apollo was atonished; [Rand would be astonished, reason is astonished by higher Truth about the ego construct and its relation to personal power.]
Dionysus thought me mad.
[Interesting wording: he "thought me mad". It is possible to "think yourself (into becoming like) mad." LSD is a psychotomimetic, mystic insight overlaps with the insights of the schizophrenic.]
But they heard my story further,
And they wondered, and were sad.
[There is a profound sadness to revelation, to the full blossoming of comprehension of our true nature.]
Looking down from Olympus
On a world of doubt and fear,
Its surface splintered
Into sorry Hemispheres.
They sat a while in silence,
Then they turned at last to me.
"We will call you Cygnus,
The god of Balance you shall be."
[Not the god of Ego -- but the god of Balance, as opposed to Rand's gross imbalance and ignorant condemnation of transcendent knowledge.]
We can walk our road together
If our goals are all the same.
We can run alone and free
If we pursue a different aim.
Let the truth of love be lighted,
Let the love of truth shine clear.
Sensibility, armed with sense and liberty,
[Freedom and liberty are portrayed as only *part* of the equation.]
With the Heart and Mind united in a single perfect Sphere.
[This is nothing like an ode to Rand's ego-only, reason-only philosophy, which has a little about art but only to support reason, and actively rejects all forms of mysticism and religion as empty of any value.]
A boy alone, so far from home,
Endless rooftops from my window.
I felt the gloom of empty rooms
On rainy afternoons.
Sometimes, in confusion,
I felt so lost and disillusioned,
Innocence gave me confidence
To go up against reality.
[The innocent tripper attempts to control himself and secure his power. When he ultimately fails and becomes fully rationally enlightened, he has innocently, accidentally achieved that comprehension which millenia of philosophers have attempted and failed.]
All the same, we take our chances,
Laughed at by Time,
[In the LSD peak, you are killed and trumped by time. Time and the future do not move, therefore freedom and personal power are fatally compromised.]
Tricked by Circumstances.
Plus ca change,
Plus c'est la meme chose,
The more that things change,
The more they stay the same.
[Change does not change; change is stationary. Change is permanent and relative and pre-existing, just an effect or appearance.]
Now I've gained some understanding
Of the only world that we see.
Things that I once dreamed of
Have become reality.
These walls that still surround me
Still contain the same old me,
Just one more who's searching for a world that ought to be.
[How mass culture works to cripple the highest achievers. How the little frightened minds would prevent even the inspired thinkers and scientists from exploring LSD.]
There is unrest in the forest,
There is trouble with the trees,
For the maples want more sunlight
And the oaks ignore their pleas.
The trouble with the maples,
(And they're quite convinced the're right)
They say the oaks are just too lofty
And they grab up all the light.
But the oaks can't help their feelings
If they like the way they're made.
And they wonder why the maples
Can't be happy in their shade.
So the maples formed a union
And demanded equal rights.
"These oaks are just too greedy;
We will make them give us light."
Now there's no more oak oppression,
For they passed a noble law,
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe, and saw.
(instrumental)
1. Buenas Noches, Mein Froinds!
2. To sleep, perchance to dream...
3. Strangiato Theme
4. A Lerxst in Wonderland
5. Monsters!
6. Danforth and Pape
7. The Waltz of the Shreves
8. Never turn your back on a Monster!
9. Monsters! (Reprise)
10. Strangiato Theme (Reprise)
11. A Farewell to Things
[self-indulgence, Alice in Wonderland, dreaming, strangeness, monsters, perceiving unreality of things/objects while tripping, and the death of kings as the death of the inner egoic governors/controllers - not exactly Rand territory.]
Neil Peart (Sounds, April 1980): "The woman on the cover is really a symbol of us. If you think that's sexist in a negative way -- well, it's really looking at ourselves so I don't think it can be. The idea is her perfect imperturbability in the face of all this chaos. In that she represents us. "In the basic sense, all that cover picture means is forging on regardless, being completely uninvolved with all the chaos and ridiculous nonsense that's going on around us. Plus she represents the spirit of music and the spirit of radio, a symbol of perfect integrity and truth and beauty and..."
Consider "Grace Under Pressure" -- same idea. How to retain poise during ego death and the psychotimemetic state, without freaking out?
Begin the day with a friendly voice,
A companion unobtrusive
Plays the song that's so elusive
And the magic music makes your morning mood.
Off on your way, hit the open road,
There is magic at your fingers
For |
Values — but here San Francisco, we've been known to abide by a different set of principles. Acting, no doubt, under director orders from His Majesty Satan, one local group is sticking it to the Republicans with a fairly delicious stunt that's at once promotional and political. Kink.com, your friendly neighborhood BDSM pornographers, will offer free access to its online fetish films to all Republican delegates. Maitresse Madeline Marlowe, a director at Kink.com who has quite the way with words, put it this way in an open letter:
Dear Republican Delegates,
We read with dismay that the Republican Party platform committee has endorsed a plank declaring “porn a public health crisis” and a “menace.” While it may not fit with your morals, studies have repeatedly shown that access to adult entertainment is positively correlated with decreases in sex crimes, better performance in bed, and more feminist views of women. (We understand that last one might not be a net positive for you, but we like it.)
Next week, you’ll vote to approve or reject that platform, and we want you to have an informed decision. That’s why we’re offering every credentialled (sic) Republican delegate free access to our sites from now until November 8. Kink has been a leader in ethical production of adult film for nearly two decades, and are proud to celebrate a diverse articulation of sexuality and gender. Unlike those your platform committee, we know the difference between fantasy and reality, the importance of informed decisions about sex, and the necessity of sexual representation. Porn isn’t harmful, but shame around sexuality is.
Now, since social conservatives might be concerned that their, uh, research, might be brought to bear against them, Marlowe proposes the following to ensure their privacy:
All we’ll need from you is proof of your delegate credentials, sent via email. We also understand the value of anonymity in accessing adult material, so as with any of our members, your request will be kept private. Heck, if you’re really concerned, you can even use a burner account — provided that you can adequately demonstrate the credentials (and your age) without revealing your name. We’re not here to shame or expose you you, we’re here to enlighten you.
Delivering one last plug, Marlowe encourages those "bound" delegates who support Donald Trump to check out a recent film of hers: "Make America Gape Again", a severely disturbing porn flick that depicts a group of men wearing Trump masks having sex with a woman representing America.
"Even the Republicans on our site loved it," Marlowe says of her work.
Related: Trump Literally Schlongs America In Horrifying New Kink.com VideoThe teenage driver of a Ferrari that crashed in flames last week in Alpharetta died Wednesday, police said.
Alpharetta police spokesman George Gordon said Alpharetta resident Akshay Panducherry died from injuries received in the Oct. 19 wreck. Panducherry suffered burns over 80 percent of his body and was being treated at the burn unit at Grady Memorial Hospital.
Also seriously burned was a passenger, Harshavardhan Patlolla, 21, of Alpharetta. Relatives identified the two men as cousins, according to Channel 2 Action News. Patlolla remained hospitalized.
A “high rate of speed” was a factor in the accident, Gordon said after the accident.
Ferraris are equipped with a black box, similar to the devices found in airplanes, but Gordon said investigators could not get any information from it.
“The vehicle did contain the black box but it was destroyed by fire,” Gordon said Wednesday. “However, our crash team investigators will identify adequately the speed of the vehicle at the time of the crash.”
The F430, which was manufactured from 2004 to 2009, has an estimated top speed near 200 mph, according to Road & Track magazine. Police, however, have not speculated how fast Panducherry was driving.
The wreck occurred on Webb Bridge Road in north Fulton near Alpharetta High School. The car was traveling eastbound on Webb Bridge Road just before 4 a.m. when the crash occurred. Gordon told news media the driver narrowly missed a bridge abutment while leaving the roadway.
Police found the car about 60 yards into a wood line, engulfed in flames. Gordon said Panducherry and Patlolla crawled out of the car after the crash.
The high-powered Italian sports car was a birthday gift Panducherry had received from his father a week earlier, according to Channel 2.
Gordon said the investigation into the accident continued.Jul 2, 2016 Ξ Comments are off
By Louis Chan
AsAmNews National Correspondent
A reporter at KRON-TV in San Francisco is facing intense criticism for posting video of an Asian American family eating at an In & Out with chopsticks.
Stanley Roberts is best known in the city for airing his segment People Behaving Badly.
He catches people doing bad things and shames them on TV. For instance, he might show someone who’s not handicapped misusing a handicap parking permit.
In this case, he posted a 30 second video of the family eating on his Facebook page.
“Never seen anyone eat with chopsticks before?” one person commented on his Facebook page.
“I can’t see anything wrong with this family,” wrote another. “The only thing I can see is how rude is this person taking video of someone! Are you happy with someone doing this to you?”
“Wow, so rude just taking a video of people trying to chill and eat some food,” wrote another. ”
Robert responded with a “get over it.”
He later explained further. “Posting things on this page does not immediately make it Behaving badly. It’s a cool video of a family eating In and Out with chopsticks. Something a guy like me from Philly has never see before. There was no hidden meaning, no sarcasm no ill will. It’s was simply a 30 second video of a family from Japan eating fries with chopsticks that I thought was hella cool.”
Many people aren’t buying it and one has started a change.org petition demanding an apology.
“As a Chinese person living in Bay Area…. I find this video very disturbing and offensive,” said Anthony Cheng, the petition organizer. “That family is just having a meal using chopsticks. Forks or chopsticks are eating utensils, nothing wrong with that. Why does Stanley Roberts think that this family is behaving badly? If I see someone eating pizza or burger with forks or knives should that be viewed as weird??? This video should be taken down immediately and we want an apology from Stanley Roberts and KRON 4 news.
It’s hard to read into someone’s motivations about why he does something. Robert posted the video with the comment “Do you notice anything unusual about these people eating at In-and-Out Burger. #prettycool.”
Maybe Roberts did think it was pretty cool.
Perhaps his viewers should all chip in and invite him out to a night in Chinatown.
Roberts has worked at KRON-TV since 1998, according to the station’s website. Before that he worked in Los Angeles. Yet, he’s never seen someone eating non-Asian food with chopsticks. Perhaps Mr. Roberts should live a little.
AsAmNews is an all-volunteer effort of dedicated staff and interns. You can show your support by liking our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/asamnews, following us on Twitter, sharing our stories, interning or joining our staff.Fender Amplification has just announced the release of a cool little pair of combo amps, Greta and Excelsior, which make up the new Pawn Shop Special line of amplifiers. Made for the tabletop, you won't have to spend countless hours scouring pawn shops to take home one of these beauties.
For more info, head to Fender's website, and be sure to check out our NAMM 2012 hub for all the latest news from this year's show.
From Fender: Housed in the playfully diminutive form of a vintage tabletop radio, the Pawn Shop Special Greta model is quite possibly the most unusual Fender tube amp ever (in fact, you’ll be hard pressed to find the name “Fender” anywhere on it). It’s a charming two-watt tabletop beauty with a 4” Special Design speaker, old-school VU meter with “clean to overload” indicator display, simple volume and tone controls, and a 1/8” back-panel auxiliary input perfect for iPod or other media player use.
Excelsior
Its vintage-style enclosure has front and rear wood panels finished in bright red, gold-finished metal top and sides for increased shielding, “Greta” script badge on the front panel and tabletop feet. Under the hood and on the back panel, Greta features a single 12AT7 output tube and 12AX7 preamp tube, with a ¼” instrument jack and ¼” line out jack (for preamp use with another amplifier).
Undoubtedly one of the most distinctive tube combo amps produced in Fender history, the alluringly refined Pawn Shop Special Excelsior harbors tones from polite, to raw and raucous. Its brown textured vinyl covering, smartly stylish “E” grille design and bold crossed-swords front-panel badge convey a decidedly stately vibe with a marked air of cold-war cool.
The 13-watt Excelsior elegantly encloses a single 15” Special Design speaker, with bottom-loaded primary chassis and top-loaded control chassis for operating convenience and low noise (powered by two 6V6 output tubes and two 12AX7 preamp tubes). Distinctive features include “instrument,” “microphone” and “accordion” inputs that each have individually optimized circuitry; tremolo circuit with speed control, bright/dark tone switch (for treble or bass emphasis), volume control and ¼” internal speaker disconnect that lets the amp drive an external speaker enclosure.
For playing at home, smaller gigs and studio sessions, the Excelsior is a class act that brings a fresh and unconventional new vibe to your playing.If coaches are looking for some secret strategy for World Cup success, forbidding your players from engaging in sexual intercourse is not the answer. Four teams publicly banned their players from having sex at the World Cup, and all those teams have been eliminated.
Russia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Chile and Mexico—all of which banned hanky panky—will not have a chance to play for the championship. To be fair, plenty of teams that didn’t ban sex (like Italy, Spain, Switzerland and England) have also been eliminated. So let’s not mix up correlation and causation.
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Teams that had more creative rules about sex have had mixed results in the tourney. Brazil (which allows you to have sex, just not “acrobatic” sex), Costa Rica (which forbid sex in the first round but not the second) and France (where all night sex is forbidden) are all still in contention. Nigeria, where players can sleep with their wives but not their girlfriends, is out of the tournament.
MORE: World Cup: The Crazy Rules Some Teams Have About Pre-Game Sex
Write to Eliana Dockterman at eliana.dockterman@time.com.WASHINGTON - Walmart (WMT) has pulled a T-shirt offered by an outside seller from its online store after a journalist advocacy group told the retailer it found the shirt threatening.
The shirt, listed on Walmart.com through third-party seller Teespring, said: "Rope. Tree. Journalist. SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED."
"This item was sold by a third-party seller on our marketplace and clearly violates our policy," Walmart said. "We removed it as soon as it was brought to our attention, and are conducting a thorough review of the seller's assortment."
Teespring, which is owned by KA Design, allows people to post shirt designs. The company did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment.
A shirt with the same sentiment had been spotted at a rally during the presidential campaign.
The Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) said Walmart notified it about five hours after its complaint that the shirt was being removed.
"It is our belief that at the least, T-shirts or any other items bearing such words simply inflame the passions of those who either don't like, or don't understand, the news media," Dan Shelley, executive director of the RTDNA, said in a letter to Walmart leaders. "At worst, they openly encourage violence targeting journalists. We believe they are particularly inflammatory within the context of today's vitriolic political and ideological environment.
The Deadliest Assignment: Where reporting can get you killed
The group cited statistics showing that nearly three dozen journalists have been physically assaulted in the US this year. At least 48 journalists have been killed in other countries around the world, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
In August, Teespring removed a "rainbow swastika" T-shirt from its own site and said it would increase oversight of its product line. Before pulling the T-shirt, KA Design had said the swastika symbol is thousands of years old and represents peace, love, life and other ideas.Pre-merger history Edit
National City problems Edit
Takeover by PNC Edit
Criticism Edit
Aftermath Edit
Conversion to PNC Edit
The National City name, as expected, lasted well into 2009 since it would take PNC some time to integrate the two banks together.[37] PNC began to phase out the National City name in favor of PNC on November 7, 2009,[31] starting with Pennsylvania (where the two had the most overlap), Florida, and the Youngstown & Steubenville, Ohio regions.[32] That day also saw the rebranding of National City Mortgage into PNC Mortgage and NatCity Investments fully merged into PNC Investments. In addition, National City's bank charter was merged into PNC's, effectively having the retail banking branches having yet to convert being legally known as PNC Bank, N.A., d/b/a National City Bank.[38] The conversion of National City to PNC was completed in June 2010, in the following phases:[38] February 19, 2010 [39] Central & Southern Ohio (including Cincinnati, Dayton, and the state capital of Columbus [40] ), Southeastern Indiana, and all of Kentucky.
Central & Southern Ohio (including Cincinnati, Dayton, and the state capital of Columbus ), Southeastern Indiana, and all of Kentucky. April 12, 2010 [41] Northern Ohio (including National City's home market of Cleveland, [42] Akron, Canton, and Toledo) and all of Michigan.
Northern Ohio (including National City's home market of Cleveland, Akron, Canton, and Toledo) and all of Michigan. June 14, 2010[43] The rest of Indiana and all of Illinois,[44] Missouri, and Wisconsin.
Legacy EditBrooklyn’s tech boom will get another boost with a slick “Tech Triangle” development project that includes a massive helium observation balloon overlooking it all.
The $3 billion ambitious plan — which covers the area from DUMBO, to the Downtown hub to and the Brooklyn Navy Yard — is slated to be unveiled today, officials said.
“Some things we will undertake immediately, and some, like the streetscapes and public spaces, will be longer-term,” said Tucker Reed, president of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership.
Renderings for the project call for a network of green, parklike spaces and pedestrian and bike paths.
Plans also include a topiary arbor, a Cadman Plaza cafe and a curved footbridge leading to Borough Hall.
Along Water and Sand streets beneath the Manhattan Bridge, planners envision a seasonal pop-up structure fantasy land of mini-golf, performance stages, lounges and wading pools.
There are several initiatives to revitalize unused or abandoned spaces, including the city’s first vertical dog run — replete with slopes and ramps — in DUMBO, and planted terraces, picnic tables and ping pong tables on a dead end street near the Brooklyn Bridge. And floating 600 feet above it all, near Brooklyn Landing, is a proposed tethered helium observation balloon called Brooklyn Rising — symbolizing the area’s revitalization. Riders would have “unprecedented views” of the city and harbor, according to the plans.
Officials hope the changes will continue to lure tech firms to the borough, where tech revenue is estimated to hit nearly $6 billion by 2015.
“This is really a comprehensive plan to guide the area’s growth over the next decade,” said Tucker Reed, president of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership. Some of the projects already have funding; other will require partnerships with city government and the private sector.
Also on the wish list is the reopening of the anchorage to the Brooklyn Bridge, which has been closed since the 9/11 attack, which could house a revenue-producing waterfront museum and event space.
Under the blueprint, an open, parklike Columbus Park and Cadman Plaza “could have “the elegance of a Parisian promenade,” planners predicted.This listing is limited to devices that have been tried and reported to work or not with some limitations if your particular device is not listed you will have to attempt to see it works on your own as the number of Flash memory sticks available keeps growing each day.
USB Flash drives that work with the Xbox include:
3System USB Flash Disk USB Drive 32 MB (1998 blocks)
A-DATA 2GB FLASH DRIVE PD2-G20 (50000+ blocks)
A-DATA 2GB FLASH DRIVE PD9 Series (50000+ blocks)
Aigo 128MB USB Memory Stick (7997 blocks)
Apacer 256Mb USB Key (Paradigit) HANDY STENO 2.0
AVB 64 MB USB 1.1 Mobile Drive (4030 blocks, ID 0ea0:6803)
Axine 32Mb USB Memory Stick (2042 blocks) Works good
Belkin 32MB USB Memory Stick
Belkin 128MB USB Flash Drive (7998 blocks)
Windows sees it as "3System USB Flash Drive"
Windows sees it as "3System USB Flash Drive" Captiva USB BAR 128 MB (7989 blocks)
Centrios DSC-314 without a SD card (935 blocks)
Checkpoint Software 64 MB USB-Stick (ID 0204:6025)
(identified as "USB Flash Disk")
(identified as "USB Flash Disk") Commodore Floppy -on- stick 128MB (7989 blocks)
COMSOL 16MB
COMSOL 128MB
CnMemory 64MB USB1.1 (iCreate Technologies Corp., use "MechInstaller-1.0-FATX-8MB-to-32MB.img", 4014 blocks)
CnMemory 128MB USB2.0
CompUSA 128MB USB 2.0 SKU: 332150
Corsair Flash Voyager (512 MB)
Corsair Flash Voyager (1 GB)
had to low level format first
had to low level format first Creative Labs Muvo MP3 Player 32MB (1918 blocks)
Creative Labs Nomad Muvo MP3 Player 128MB (7997 blocks)
*Once used this is unreadable in a standard pc as anything other than a 16.7kb memory stick*
*Once used this is unreadable in a standard pc as anything other than a 16.7kb memory stick* Creative Labs MuVo TX FM MP3 Player 128MB
(VID_041E&PID_412O must be reformatted back to FAT32 afterwards to work again!)
(VID_041E&PID_412O must be reformatted back to FAT32 afterwards to work again!) Creative Labs Muvo TX Slim MP3 Player 128MB
(VID:041E PID:4112, must be reformatted back to FAT afterwards to work again!)
(VID:041E PID:4112, must be reformatted back to FAT afterwards to work again!) Creative MuVo TX FM MP3 Player 256MB
(Must first be formatted to FAT32 before plugging into XBOX) (15604 blocks)
(Must first be formatted to FAT32 before plugging into XBOX) (15604 blocks) Creative Labs Muvo V200 256MB (15604 blocks)
DaneElec 256MB - Although it may not work for some, mine worked. Perhaps a different controller was used. I used the 256MB image
Dell 64MB (I needed the 64mb image, but 'Write to 32mb' button instead of the 64mb)
Dell 128MB (we received an e-mail that this usb flash drive was not compatible with someones Xbox, it also may of only been his Xbox or an exception)
(we received an e-mail that this usb flash drive was not compatible with someones Xbox, it also may of only been his Xbox or an exception) Dolphin PowerCAM 2.0 Megapixel Digital Camera FASTUSB-1015
Digital Research MP3 player 32MB (5092 blocks)
Digitrex DSC-1300 camera, in Mass Storage mode (8MB)
EasyDisk 32MB (2014 Blocks)
EasyDisk 128MB (7997 Blocks)
EXCALIBUR 64MB Flash Drive
Feiya Technology Corp. 128MB (aka QPS.m / QPS multimedia usb 2.0 key)
Flash/SM Super Talent 2.0 VID&PID: Vid_090c&Pid_1000
Freecom USB Stick 32 MB (1998 blocks)
FujiFilm FinePix S5000 with 256MB xD card
FujiFilm FinePix S5500 with 16MB xD card
FujiFilm FinePix A210 with 64MB xD card
FujiFilm FinePix A210 with 16MB xD card
Fujitsu Siemens 64MB Menustick
Fujitsu Siemens SB-512 MemoryBird USB-2.0
Gateway 16MB USB Flash Drive (998 blocks)
Windows sees it as "USB NAND FLASH DISK", VID:0c45 PID:1060
Windows sees it as "USB NAND FLASH DISK", VID:0c45 PID:1060 Gateway 32MB USB Flash Drive (1998 blocks)
Windows sees it as "MFG FLASH DRIVER", Vendor=0c45 ProdID=1060
Windows sees it as "MFG FLASH DRIVER", Vendor=0c45 ProdID=1060 GXT Mobile Data Drive - 1GB, 50000 blocks
Hama 6-in-1 USB Card Reader (Model-Nr.: 46958) with Lexar Media 16MB CompactFlash (992 blocks)
HP Photosmart 315 with 8 MB SanDisk CF Card
HP Photosmart C618 Digital Camera
IBM 32 MB USB Memory Key (1998 blocks)
iCreate Technologies Generic USB Flash Drive (128MB, Ven: 1043, Dev: 8006, 8045 Blocks)
Integral 32Mb USB Flash Drive (32Mb 20xx Blocks, Ven:Dev 0ea0:6803, lsusb shows "Ours Technology, Inc. OTI-6803 Flash Disk")
Iomega Micro Mini USB Drive (64MB, 3995 Blocks)
KBGear JamP3 Player (9998 blocks)
KingMax USB2.0 Flash Drive 512MB - KS/PD2-512M (31994 blocks)
Kingston DataTraveler 32 MB (1998 blocks), 64 MB (3934 blocks), 128 MB & 256 MB (15740 blocks)
Kingston DataTraveler Elite 2GB (50000 blocks) - must be formatted as Fat32 previously
Lexar JumpDrive 2.0 Pro 256 MB (JD256-40-501 RevB) (15740 blocks)
Lexar JumpDrive Secure 128 MB (7869 blocks)
*Be Careful, you may not be able to get it working in Windows again. Had to RMA.*
*Be Careful, you may not be able to get it working in Windows again. Had to RMA.* Lexar JumpDrive Secure 256 MB (15740 blocks)
*Be Careful, you may not be able to get it working in Windows again. Had to RMA.*
*Be Careful, you may not be able to get it working in Windows again. Had to RMA.* Lexar JumpDrive Secure 512 MB (31706 blocks)
*Be Careful, you may not be able to get it working in Windows again. Had to RMA.*
*Be Careful, you may not be able to get it working in Windows again. Had to RMA.* Lexar JumpDrive Secure 1 GB (50000+ blocks)
*Be Careful, you may not be able to get it working in Windows again. Had to RMA.*
*Be Careful, you may not be able to get it working in Windows again. Had to RMA.* Lexar JumpDrive Sport 64 MB
Lexar Jumpdrive Sport 128MB (7776 blocks)
Lexar Jumpdrive Sport 256MB Mega-X-Key doesn't recognize, though, the hacked version does.
Lexar Jumpdrive Sport 512MB (31706 blocks)
worked after FAT32 formatting on a Windows 2000 Professional equipped PC.
worked after FAT32 formatting on a Windows 2000 Professional equipped PC. Lexar JumpDrive Sport 1GB (50000+ blocks)
Lexar JumpDrive Elite 128MB
Lexar Jumpdrive Traveller 128MB JDA128-00-501 (7776 blocks)
Lexar Jumpdrive Expression 512MB (31706 blocks)
Linksys Instant USB Disk 64 MB (Model USBM64M) (3998 blocks)
Logic3 16MB USB (991 blocks)
logik mp3-256mb lcd
Logik USB MP3 player with audio recorder and lcd-display (256 MB)
M-watch 32MB(VID:0EA0 PID:6828)
Medion USB 128 MB (7997 blocks)
Memorex 64 MB (4030 blocks) & 128 MB
Memorex ThumbDrive 256MB (16116 blocks)
Memory in Black USB memory pens from 32 to 512 MB, both PQI-based and Opti-based models
Micro Advantage 64MB (4008 blocks)
Micro Memory USB1.1 256MB (15996 blocks)
Minolta DiMAGE F300 with 64MB SD-Card
Minolta DiMage XG with 16 MB SD-Card
Minolta DiMage Xt with 16 MB SD-Card (Toshiba)
M-Systems DiskOnKey 8MB (486 blocks)
MyMusix 128MB MP3 Player, must be plugged in before powering on the Xbox (7940 Blocks)
Nikon Coolpix (test with 1x 16 MB and 2x 128 MB CF/SD cards)
Nikon Coolpix 995 w/128MB SanDisk CompactFlash
Ocean 8 MB (490 blocks)
OCZ Mini-Kart 2GB (50000+ Blocks)
OCZ Rally 1GB Dual Channel USB 2.0 (50000+ Blocks)
Olympus C-50 Zoom Digital Camera with any size XD memory (***NOTE*** was tested on a 1.5 and 1.1 and only worked on the 1.5) (15996 blocks on 256mb xD)
Olympus D-510 Zoom Digital Camera with 64 MB SmartMedia (3990 blocks)
Olympus D-550 Digital Camera with 128 MB SmartMedia (7997 blocks)
Olympus D-380 Digital Camera with 64 MB SmartMedia (MechInstaller - Open 8-32MB image and write to 64MB)
Olympus Stylus 410 Digital Camera with 256mb XD - for mechinstaller - open 8-32 image a nd write to 256m
Oregon Digital MP3 Player (256MB)
Oti 32 MB
Panasonic 16Mb Secure Digital Card 990 blocks (Comes with most Panasonic Digital Cameras) reformatted and worked with copying from and to using the camera and a RCA Lyra MP3 port
Paradigit 128 MB USB2.0 memory stick (aka Apacer memory stick) (7837 blocks)
PINE Excalibur 64MB USB Flash Drive (can be reformated for FAT32)
PNY 64 MB (3998 blocks)
Prolific USB Flash Disk 256 MB (15996 blocks)
QPS multimedia (see Feiya Technology Corp. above)
RCA Lyra 128Mb Mp3 Player
Rundisk 64Mb (into your memory)works only in port3 and you have to wait in the dash menu for 12 seconds before going into memory to fin it, has to format32 first (4164 blocks)
Rundisk 128Mb USB 2.0(into your memory)works great has to be format32 first(8099 blocks)
RiDATA 128MB USB 2.0 works great. use MechInstaller-1.0-FATX-128MB.img
Samsung 64Mb USB disk (4030 blocks)
Samsung 512Mb USB disk (31994 blocks)
San Disk cruzer mini 32 MB
San Disk cruzer micro mini blocks, ID 0781:7104, Rev 0.26, works best in port 3 for some reason)
San Disk cruzer micro 256 MB, use 256 MB image, but for me it was necessary to select "Write to 32 MB stick" instead of "Write to 256 MB stick" => how to write to 32 MB stick?? anyone?
San Disk Cruzer Micro With Skins USB Flash Drive 256MB, Sandisk partn. SDCZ4-256-E10 15676 Blocks
Seitec 128Mb USBBar (7989 blocks)
Shintaro 128Mb
Shintaro 512Mb USB 2.0 Pocket Disk (31738 blocks) VENDOR ID:067B (Prolific Technology, Inc.); PRODUCT ID:2515 DEVICE:0100 Small, silver/clear plastic case. Comes in blister pack with extension, neck strap and driver CD.
Sony 64MB MicroVault (USB 2.0) - 3998 blocks - for MechInstaller, open 8-32MB.img, write to 64MB stick. Has security features, see JetFlash below (?)
Sony 256Mb MicroVault (USB2.0). Use the 256Mb Mechinstaller FATX image
Sony 256MB MicroVault Tiny (USB 2.0) Model USM256H - Use with the 256MB FATX image.
Sony PSP with 32MB PSP memory card
Soyo CigarPro2 (USB 2.0, 128MB--the green plastic one) - shows up as "Prolific USB Flash Disk" on WinXP (7997 blocks)
Staples branded 64MB thumb drive (3873 blocks) - Available in Staples stores near the cash registers. Open 8-32MB image and write to 64 MB.
Staples Relay 256Mb item# 638679 swivel design - (was able to dd 256Mb image to it under Linux and it worked great!)
SupportPlus MP3 player DVR 256 MB (15428 blocks)
Sweex 128 MB (not "Sweex 128 MB USB 2.0" gives an error on xbox maybe a version without printed "USB 2.0")
Swissbit 64 MB (Victorinox USB Swissmemory, knife)
Swissbit 128Mo
Swissbit 512 MB (Had to slowly insert stick a few times to get it to work. Might be my cables.)
Technika 128 MB (Registers fine, formats ok, maybe problem with getting file(s) to stay on it, it renames itself to the name of the file you put on there, might be my problem, though.) (7558 Blocks)
TopCom USBPocket Memory 32MB works, but you have to remove the Password protection using your PC first PASSID.EXE (included) has an option to disable it default PW=1111.
Transcend JetFlash 64 MB - see below
Transcend JetFlash 128 MB - Depending on model, there are 6 JetFlash types and
Transcend JetFlash 256 MB - Part No: TS256MJF110
TwinMos MobileDisk III 64 MB (3998 Blocks)
TwinMos MobileDisk III 128 MB (7993 Blocks)
TwinMOS MobileDisk III K24-256 256 MB (15868 Blocks), works with "MechInstaller-1.0-FATX-8MB-to-32MB.img", write to 256MB stick
TwinMos Mobile Disk IV K21/M24/K24 128MB (7933 Blocks) - Works fine with all xbox saves and softmod installers, once little switch on side is set to "on"
Twinmos Mobile Disk USB 1.1 Pocket Pen Drive 64B (seller p/n XPD64) (Manuf p/n FMD064S) (0ea0:6803,Manuf="USB",Prod="Solid state disk")
Typhoon USB Memory Adapter 32 MB (USB 1.1, Art. Nr. 83049, 2014 blocks, for MechInstaller, open "MechInstaller-1.0-FATX-8MB-to-32MB.img", write to 32MB stick)
Universal Smart Drive 64MB - used 8mb-32mb image
USB UltraDrive 32 MB (1998 blocks)
US Modular QuikDrive USB 2.0 256MB (use eraser before putting into xbox) (used 256mb img and chose write to 32mb stick)
Vivatar VivaCam MB ("MechInstaller-1.0-FATX-128MB.img")
Vivitar VivaCam 4100 4.0 mega pixels (card is reconized but be come permanately un-usable in camara as far as i can tell)
Zyon Systems 64MB popdrive - commonly handed out to trade show patrons:) - must be plugged in before xbox is powered on, otherwise nothing.
XONIX 128 mb watch - must be plugged in before xbox is powered on, otherwise nothing.
XONIX 256 mb watch - must be plugged in before xbox is powered on
apple ipod nano 2gb 2nd gen -- works great but xbox formats first time plugged in needs to be restored by pc after unplugged from xbox but works great (50000+ blocks)
Devices that "DO NOT" workThe US Securities and Exchange Commission have said it would lift its temporary order banning short selling of financial shares next Thursday.
The SEC said it took the action after the enactment of a $US700 billion financial rescue package aimed at stabilising fragile markets.
"The Commission's emergency order that prohibits persons from selling short the securities of financial institutions will expire at 11.59pm (eastern time) on Wednesday, October 8, 2008," the statement said.
On September 19, the SEC said it took the action in concert with its British counterpart, the Financial Services Authority, which announced a wider ban on short sales.
The move covered 799 financial institutions and was made "to protect the integrity and quality of the securities market and strengthen investor confidence" amid turmoil on world financial markets.D.J. Williams is appealing his upcoming six-game suspension for violating the NFL's policy on performance-enhancing substances, but his case is not looking good. If anyone has ever had three strikes against them, it's Williams.
According to the Denver Post, the Broncos linebacker failed a drug test he took last August. Not only that, but toxicologists determined that the urine Williams provided lacked the endogenous steroids that all human urine contains. Thus, they wrote that Williams' urine was "not consistent with a normal, healthy male urine specimen."
Williams took another drug test in September and failed that as well. Once again, his urine did not appear to be human. If you're picturing Williams trying to extract urine from an animal, you can stop. He may have been using synthetic urine.
Finally, a third drug test was administered in November. It appears Williams may have caught on by this point, but he still could not escape without an embarrassing mistake: One investigator noticed that Williams dropped a bottle from his waist before the test.
Williams still has some time before his appeal is settled. But unless we're all missing something, he better start preparing for life on the bench.
His attorney, Peter Ginsberg, says the NFL is rushing to judgment, and unfairly.
“This other allegation unfortunately reflects the irresponsible way the NFL is going about its business these days... The NFL made the suggestion but offered no evidence, refused to present anyone involved in either this specimen collection process or the testing of that specimen and simply made an allegation that has made its way into the evidentiary record and the media."
“It's the wrong way to go about addressing a serious matter.”
So who's to blame? The alleged rule-breaker, or the system that's coming down on him in a hurry?
-- Follow Robbie Levin on Twitter @RobbieLevin.In recent years we have seen the development of 3D NAND push up the capacity and push down the prices of all sorts of flash devices, from SSDs to phones, and everything in between. Due to startup cost and longevity needs, we’ve seen 3D NAND focused primarily on permanent storage so far, but it looks like that is soon going to change, and 3D NAND will more widely make its way to removable storage.
This morning at the Photokina trade show in Germany, Western Digital is demonstrating a prototype 1TB SDXC card. This comes just 2 years after the previously-SanDisk portion of the company first demoed a 512GB prototype back at the show in 2014, meaning the new 1TB card comes more or less right on schedule with the breakneck pace of the NAND industry. More importantly, to our knowledge this is the first time that a 1TB SDXC has been shown off in any capacity. And while it’s clearly a prototype – Western Digital isn’t talking about when it’s going to ship – that day will be sooner than later.
At the moment Western Digital isn’t saying too much about the card, and its presence at Photokina is primarily to show off that they can now make such a card. The card is being related under the SanDisk Extreme Pro brand, but performance figures aren’t being published at this time. We have however received confirmation that the card is internally composed of 32 NAND dies, which means we’re looking at a 32 x 256Gbit configuration. So although Western Digital is not saying so at this time, the card is almost assuredly using the company’s jointly developed 256Gbit 48 layer “BiCS” 3D NAND, or a newer incarnation thereof. In fact 1TB is the first SDXC |
-- as a truly incredible number of caption boxes would point out over the next 14 years -- a satellite in geosynchronous orbit 23,300 miles above Earth. The reason? At this point, the roster had gained so many new members that, as shocking as it might sound, they had actually outgrown Rhode Island.
In addition to the members that had already been established, the larger roster included:
Green Lantern John Stewart, occasionally pinch-hitting for Hal Jordan when he did things like fall in the shower and knock himself unconscious, which happened with alarming regularity for a guy with a magic wishing ring on his finger. Firestorm, who was actually two people who were joined together with the power to alter molecular structures and qualify for the car pool lane. Zatanna, the backwards-talking spellcaster who, at this time, had ditched her beloved top hat/bowtie/fishnet stockings attire for a more generically super-heroic ensemble that involved wearing a snake on her head for reasons I have never been able to understand. Black Canary, who had taken up the burden of being the Justice League's resident fishnet stocking enthusiast after commuting from Earth-2, setting off a series of retcons that would eventually re-establish the character as her own daughter after Crisis On Infinite Earths. Hawkman and Hawkgirl, early in their career when they only sort of didn't make any sense. The Elongated Man, who had stretchy powers and solved mysteries, most of which could've been accomplished just as easily without the use of stretchy powers. And for some reason, Red Tornado, the worst robot ever, who sucks in both a literal and metaphorical sense.
Seriously, Red Tornado is just awful. It takes a lot to make me hate a character who is a robot who went back in time to punch Hitler, but when he spent the rest of the '70s sitting around a satellite crying -- actually crying! A robot! -- then that'll do it.
And if that roster's not enough, this era of the Justice League was also the one that was mostly marked with the annual "Crisis" team-ups from across DC's Multiverse, including the Freedom Fighters, the New Gods, the Legion of Super-Heroes, and most prominently, the resurrected Justice Society:
With that many characters to work with, the creators figured out that the best way to tell stories was to break the team down into smaller teams in each story, pitting them against multiple threats at once that could be tailored for two or three characters at a time. It became the Justice League's trademark move, and provided some pretty awesome stories that still stand as one of the high marks for the team.
Even if they did involve Red Tornado.
By the mid '80s, the overpowered, unstoppable heroics of the Satellite Era had fallen out of fashion in favor of more youth-oriented, soap-opera style teams like the Teen Titans and Marvel's X-Men. As a result, the decision came down to ditch most of the big-name characters and relaunch it with a new cast, led by...
... Aquaman! Because that's who the kids are into, right? Aquaman? They were also relocated from the satellite to what was thought to be an easier location for the kids to relate to: Detroit. As if that city didn't have enough problems without a gang of third-string X-Men knockoffs running around.
In addition to ol' Fishsticks up there, Zatanna, the Martian Manhunter and the Elongated Man stuck around, but the focus was on the new team:
Vixen, who was a fashion model by day, because when I think of high fashion, I think of two things: One, the haute couture runway shows of Detroit, and two, bright red Wolverine haircuts. She could channel the powers of various animals, and was unquestionably the breakout star of the book, returning to the Justice League on a few occasions and going on to be featured in both the Justice League Unlimited and Batman: The Brave and the Bold cartoons in recent years. Gypsy, a purple robot who controlled the higher functions of the Satellite of Love teenage runaway who could turn invisible and constantly looked like she was on her way to the RenFaire. Steel, who was... I don't know, a robot, maybe? Seriously, no one has ever cared about this guy, and I'm not about to start now. And of course, Vibe, a Puerto Rican gang member and breakdancer who had the power to vibrate things, a character concept that I think you'll all agree has withstood the test of time.
The Detroit League has often been blasted for being one of the low points in comic book history, but is it really as bad as its reputation? Yes. Yes it is. But at the same time, it is pretty notable for having one of the best Justice League stories ever, a four-part saga that featured Batman and revitalized long-time Justice League foe Despero in Justice League of America #251 - 254. It's actually really good -- as evidenced by the fact that two subsequent creative teams, including relauncher Geoff Johns, revisited in sequels -- but believe me, it's the exception.
All right, stop me if you've heard this one: In an effort to attract new readers, DC restructured their universe and put together a bold new team for the new era of the Justice League! The more things change, folks.
Anyway, the first time that happened was in 1987 in the aftermath of Crisis on Infinite Earths, and like the Detroit League, the goal was to build a new team that could exist without a lot of the A-List characters. The difference, though, was that instead of creating an all-new roster, Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire built their League mostly out of pre-existing characters that weren't getting a lot of attention elsewhere:
In addition to Batman and the Martian Manhunter -- the one constant in the League from 1960 to about 2005 -- the new League had a roster that took full advantage of the new playground provided by the streamlined DC Universe:
Black Canary was a new version of the character, Crisis having split her into the older woman who teamed with the Justice Society back in the '40s and her young daughter who was on the League in the present. See how much less complex that is? Captain Atom had previously been owned by Charlton Comics, whose characters were acquired by DC and folded into the DCU thanks to the Crisis, a time-lost military man with atomic powers and very, very shiny skin. Blue Beetle was in the same ex-Charlton boat, having been created by Steve Ditko in 1966 as a legacy character, but it was in this book that pretty much defined him by forging comics' greatest bromance with.. Booster Gold, a time-traveling glory-hound who roped Blue Beetle into his get-rich-quick schemes that at on point involved founding a super-powered resort island frequented by villains. He'd been created by Dan Jurgens a few years earlier, but with his solo series ending in early 1988, the League (and the partnership with Blue Beetle) fit him like a glove. Green Lantern Guy Gardner, who was also virtually defined by this run as the obnoxious loudmouth that GL fans love and everyone else tolerates. Mr. Miracle, a master escape artist from the planet Apokolips and one of the legendary Jack Kirby's greatest creations who was once mistaken for dead when an android simulacrum was killed after he was kidnapped by an interplanetary traveling salesman. Captain Marvel was a part of the team briefly as evidence of DC's smoother universe; before the Crisis he'd been on a parallel world called Earth-S with the rest of the Marvel Family characters DC'd acquired from Fawcett Publications. Fire and Ice, formerly of DC's rarely seen Global Guardians, whose powers are pretty self-explanatory and who provided readers with just as much subtext as Booster and Beetle did. And Rocket Red, a new character created for the International era, an extremely friendly, likeable Soviet Russian soldier in a suit of awesomely chunky power armor that looks like it was built to look like an Apple IIe (and probably was).
The book was a hit, and after two years it split into two comics -- Justice League America and Justice League Europe, giving even more characters a shot at being revived into the bigtime. The European branch saw Animal Man, an all-but-forgotten '60s character who had been revitalized by Grant Morrison, Metamorpho, another semi-obscure '60s character who had recently made a comeback in Mike W. Barr and Jim Aparo's Batman and the Outsiders, and Power Girl, who needed a new origin after the Crisis and ended up with something that was somehow even more complex than being Superman's cousin from another dimension.
The International era is commonly remembered today for the sitcom-style comedy that Giffen and DeMatteis infused with the book, but while it certainly had that, there was plenty of action, too. This is, after all, a comic that named a fictional country after a character from a Mel Brooks movie (Bialya) and then had that country's comedically inept leader get violently killed in a takeover by a super-villain who would later return to break up the whole team.
It wasn't just a funny book, it was a comic that proved stories could be action-packed and funny, and still turn out great.
The '90s brought with them a new style in comics that hit the Justice League and its attendant Task Forces pretty hard. There wasn't any more time for the jokes and fun of the International era -- that day was over. And now it was time to get Extreme.
Thus: Extreme Justice, a thankfully short-lived spin-off of the main Justice League title that's notable for a) being one of the most stereotypical comics of the era, right down to the fact that it hit in '95, when everyone was starting to get sick of comics that looked like this, and b) being one of the absolute worst comics I have ever read.
The new lineup featured Booster Gold in an awesome suit of Power Armor, Blue Beetle, Captain Atom and some other characters nobody cares about, but in the interest of keeping everyone informed, I think this panel just about sums it up.
Yeah, I'd say that anatomy is definitely "remarkable." Probably not in the way they meant, though.
Fortunately, once things hit rock bottom with Extreme Justice, they were ready to be built back up again, which is exactly what happened when Grant Morrison and Howard Porter relaunched the team as JLA.
The team's line-up was ostensibly built around the "Big 7" DC heroes -- Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, Aquaman, Flash (Wally West) and Green Lantern (Kyle Rayner) -- but before long, things were expanded to include new members that formed a rotating cast: The team's line-up was ostensibly built around the "Big 7" DC heroes -- Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, Aquaman, Flash (Wally West) and Green Lantern (Kyle Rayner) -- but before long, things were expanded to include new members that formed a rotating cast:
Huntress, a Mafia princess turned vigilante, brought into the League by Batman to learn how to be a hero without shooting people in the face with a crossbow. Zauriel, an actual Guardian Angel who came to Earth because he fell in love with the woman he was guarding and was recruited to fill the important role of "the guy with wings." Aztek, a warrior with mystic super-technology designed to allow him to fight the shadow god Tezcatlipoca. He was created by Morrison and Mark Millar in his own solo title, but in typical League fashion, joined up when that book was canceled, eventually finishing out his arc pretty spectacularly. Steel, the brilliant scientist and super-powered weapons designer who was inspired by Superman to fight evil with a suit of armor and a giant hammer. Big Barda and Orion, of Jack Kirby's New Gods. Plastic Man, who used his shape-shifting powers in slightly more unscrupulous ways than Elongated Man, like, say, turning himself into a dress for Barda to wear. Just goes to show, if Batman vouches for you, you're in.
It was a pretty high-powered team, and Morrison and Porter (along with fill-in writer Mark Waid) delivered the kind of high-stakes stories that kind of a team demanded. In one story, the League fights the Injustice Gang led by Lex Luthor and the Joker and Darkseid across two different timelines all at once, and in Morrison's final story, everyone on the planet Earth gets super-powers and goes off to space to fight a god-killing sentient computer from beyond time named Mageddon the Anti-Sun. That's a pretty tough act to follow.
Of course, with comics being comics, it had to be followed eventually, and after the end of the Morrison/Waid era, writer Joe Kelly and artist Doug Mahnke were tapped to follow it up.
The quality of Kelly's run is a subject that has very nearly pushed the ComicsAlliance staff into drunken fistfights at the San Diego Comic-Con, but for me, there's no room for discussion on whether or not the new additions to the League were terrible.
Major Disaster (between Batman and Superman in the image above) was a reformed super-villain who changed his life after Superman gave him a stern talking-to during Kelly's run on Action Comics. Back in the '90s, a crossover called Underworld Unleashed saw him gain a new set of powers that involved manipulating causality in a way that was really visually interesting, but that was completely ignored during his time in the JLA in favor of talking about dropping meteors on people. Manitou Raven (top right) was brought back to the present after a bit of time-spanning nonsense that saw the JLA hanging around ancient Atlantis for a while. His entire presence in the book was one long, torturous set-up for a scene where he said " Inuk chuk! " and grew ten stories tall. See, because it's like Apache Chief from Super Friends. Faith (bottom left in the purple and white) was maybe the worst character of all time.
Okay, that last one might require a bit of elaboration: Faith was brought in as part of a replacement league formed to find the time-lost JLA, a new character cast as a "secret weapon" Batman had been keeping in his metaphorical back pocket all these years in a pretty transparent attempt to get her over with fans because hey, Batman said she was cool.
This was the pattern of all of her subsequent appearances, which pretty much just involved everyone talking about how super awesome she was and referring to her as "The Fat Lady," because when the fat lady sings, it's over. Except that her powers don't have anything to do with singing, and I'm not sure that she ever actually used them. Unless her power was an extremely subtle telepathic command to make everyone talk about how great she was to have around, which would make her the most insidious villain in JLA history.
Admittedly, it's entirely possible that she did use her powers at some point in the book and I just missed it. My eyes glazed over about the second time they dropped that "Fat Lady" joke on us, and the next thing I remembered was three years later.
The league got its most recent relaunch in 2006 with a tribute to the Satellite era that I call The Table League, because the first three or four issues of the comic were all about Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman sitting around a table talking about which heroes they should have adventures with instead of actually going on those adventures.
It was worse than it sounds.
One of the big hooks when the book was announced was that you'd get to see the characters Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman chose for their League, but it turned out that --- surprise! -- some stuff happpened that brought a bunch of heroes together, so all the table discussions were a moot point anyway. Especially since the lineup ended up being exactly who you'd expect it to be, with the addition of Red Tornado...
... and Red Arrow :
Truly, a force to be reckoned with.
So after five more years of a fluctuating lineup that saw heroes coming and going as they were involved in various crossovers, finally ending with its most recent iteration that stars Jade (the daughter of the Golden Age Green Lantern), Donna Troy (a character with the most unreadably complex backstory in comics), and Congorilla (a gorilla), that brings us to the present and the new team:
The approach here is pretty clearly a streamlined, back-to-basics approach -- so far back that Wonder Woman lost the pants she was sporting for a hot minute, it seems. The major new addition comes from Cyborg, upgraded to the League from his slot on the Teen Titans, whose built-in cannon seems to have inspired quite a bit of jealousy from Green Lantern. Seriously, that dude looks hell bent on reminding everyone that he can make as many guns as he wants.
As for how they rate against the others, that remains to be seen, but it's a solid group of characters that tend to work well together in terms of personality and powers, and who already have a place in the wider pop culture thanks to movies, cartoons, TV and the highly regarded ouvre of John Wesley Shipp. These are unquestionably DC's most popular, most prominent characters.
And Aquaman.
Seriously, you cannot get rid of that guy.On April 12, 2012, Troopers Lebeau, Wilson and Horjatschun and Sgt. Jacobi were blocking the left travel lane on I-95 northbound in Bridgeport, where tow trucks were removing vehicles involved in a collision.
Trooper Wilson observed and called out via radio that a driver was entering I-95 northbound, traveling the wrong way on the exit 28 off ramp. Troopers Horjatschun and Lebeau quickly moved their assigned vehicles into the right-center and right lanes to stop the driver.
The wrong-way driver swerved right and avoided Trooper Horjatschun, grazing the front bumper of his vehicle.
With no regard for his own personal safety, Trooper Lebeau positioned his vehicle in the left center lane, and was struck head on by the wrong way driver. The collision spun Trooper Lebeau’s cruiser around more than 180 degrees.
The suspect vehicle continued the wrong way on I-95 before striking a bridge barrier and bursting into flames. The operator was trapped underneath the steering wheel and dashboard and was unconscious. Sgt. Jacobi fought the engine fire utilizing two fire extinguishers, while Troopers Wilson and Horjatschun extricated the operator from the vehicle. Trooper Lebeau was transported to a local hospital with multiple injuries.
The quick response all involved was brave and undoubtedly saved lives. Trooper Lebeau earned a Medal for Meritorious Service; Troopers Horjatschun and Wilson, as well as Sgt. Jacobi, each earned a Medal for Lifesaving.CALGARY – At least a dozen homeowners in southeast Calgary woke up Tuesday morning to some unexpected expenses after their vehicle windows were smashed by vandals.
Police say someone broke the driver and passenger side windows on vehicles parked along 45th and 46th Streets S.E., around 23rd Avenue in Forest Lawn.
Steve Miller and Stephan Chauvette were woken by a police officer investigating the damage spree.
“The policeman said it was somebody on a bike, and I guess they went down 45th and were in the inside and got all the passenger windows and then he cut across the park and did five or six cars on this block,” said Miller.
Chauvette says the police officer told him another homeowner has security video now under review.
“They’ve seen someone on a camera on the next street–but it’s not clear enough to see the person–but they’ve seen someone just smashing, riding on a bicycle.”
Residents in the neighbourhood spent the morning cleaning up the mess and making appointments with glass repair shops.
Unfortunately the window replacement deductible on most auto insurance policies is more than the cost to replace the broken glass.
Police ask anyone who may have seen anything to call them at 403-266-1234.
READ MORE: $6,000 stolen car rims returned by social media sleuths, undercover policeJarlath Mullahy, under Karma's eerie red lighting Jon Campbell
Forecasts of doom and gloom followed New York City’s 2003 smoking ban.
Bars would close up shop, owners said. No one would come to a restaurant if they couldn’t smoke in peace after a belly-filling meal. Sure, the world would be safe for the pink-lunged, white-toothed and long-of-breathed. But what about the smokers — this author included — who wanted to blacken our lungs inside, at the bar, while pickling our livers, too?
Rumors of the death of New York City nightlife were, one can safely say, greatly exaggerated. Smokers learned to simply step outside, where the elements drew them together into ever tighter, more defiant knots.
But when the ban was still being contemplated, the authorities made a concession to allay the fears some business owners had. Any bar able to demonstrate that, as of the end of 2002, more than 10 percent of its gross revenue came from the sale of tobacco products could get a special waiver from the law. As long as they didn’t significantly expand or change locations, they would be little oases of smoke in a nauseatingly fresh-smelling city.
It’s been nearly twelve years since the ban went into effect, but eight of those officially sanctioned smoking bars still exist, according to the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. They are glorious throwbacks to an earlier time, one with considerably more mucus and nasty brown boogers. Often unknown, even to smokers, the places carry a whiff of the illicit and the underground. Smoke-easies, if you will.
On a recent Saturday, one of those bars, Karma Lounge, on Second Avenue in the East Village, hosted a few smokers, bellied up at the bar. As snow fell outside, they puffed happily away.
The majority of the smoking bars remaining in New York are pretty smoking-forward. They’re cigar bars, for the most part, with fancy humidors and the like, the kind of place you might expect to see Michael Bloomberg puffing a stogie and sipping a neat scotch that costs as much as your rent. Karma, however, is not that kind of place. It is a dive bar of the most lovable variety, with reasonably priced drinks, a friendly crowd, and ample burn marks on most available surfaces.
As one might imagine, Karma attracts its share of regulars, like Jarlath Mullahy, 40, a Dublin native and carpenter. He’s here about once a week, he says. He didn’t seek out the bar because of its smoking policy — he used to live around the corner and it was a regular haunt for him years ago. But he does make the trip pretty regularly, even now that he lives in Bushwick. Why does he come here, one might ask, knowing full well the answer?
“I don’t know why, because I hate the fucking smell of it in my clothes,” Mullahy says, with a chuckle. At home, he and his wife both smoke outside, and non-smoking bars, he says, keep him from smoking too much in one sitting. But, he says conspiratorially, “I’ll tell you when it’s nice — after a hard day’s work, when you need a cigarette and a drink?” He claps his hands together and gestures at the bar. “Bob’s your uncle.”
A former Indian restaurant, Karma has the décor to match, with fringed fabric covering the doorways and dreamy red lighting. (It also has a formidable air filtration system, so it’s not nearly as smoky as one might expect.) Late-Nineties-era Blackalicious is on the radio. Small tables host hookah pipes, an alternative smoke that a significant portion of the clientele prefers.
Jarlath Mullahy, under Karma's eerie red lighting Jon Campbell
Todd McGovern, 53, a freelance writer and radio producer nursing a cigar and a drink, says he happened upon Karma just a few weeks ago. The bar doesn’t do much to let people know that smoking is permitted, and he was wandering the neighborhood with a friend when they discovered the place. He says he enjoys smoking cigars here, partly because he thinks people find cigar smoke particularly objectionable, even outdoors. It’s a bit of a haven; people won’t bug him here.
Bartender David Machado, 35, a smoker himself, says most of the time the smoke doesn’t bother him. If he’s being honest, the sickly-sweet hookah fumes — he often lights them for patrons — are even less appealing than the tobacco. And while the bar puts a note on its outdoor sandwich board letting potential customers know that smoking is permitted, Machado doesn’t think their unusual privilege is a huge draw, except for regulars who are in the know.
“A lot of people come in, and they’re like, wait, you can smoke in here?” Machado says. “And I do know for a fact that it turns some people off.” He occasionally sees parties do a U-turn at the door.
You might expect the denizens of a bar like Karma to be fiercely against the smoking ban, plotting some kind of insurrection. But while McGovern says he was wary of the ban at first — “I kind of felt like, well, if you can’t smoke in a bar, where can you smoke?” — he has come around in the years since. It’s no fun, he says, hanging out in a hazy bar all night.
“It’s nice going to places and not having your clothes reeking of cigarette smoke,” McGovern says. “People seem to have adjusted to it pretty quickly.”
Machado also supports the ban, which he believes was justified, in large part, as a worker protection measure. In the old days, bartenders, servers, and other employees were forced to inhale secondhand smoke for hours on end, with all the attendant health risks that came with it. Machado says those protections were a good idea. And today, especially with a dwindling number of smoking-permitted bars, he feels like he’s making an informed choice.
“I know what I’m getting into when I smoke,” Machado says. “But other people who were around smoke, that’s something they didn’t sign up for.” And besides, the ban has come with ancillary benefits. If he’s out at other bars, stepping out for a cigarette can be a handy thing. “It’s a good excuse to get out of awkward conversations,” he says.
Mullahy feels the same way. “I’ve met more people because of the ban,” he says. There’s a certain camaraderie when you’re huddled with a group of strangers, in the cold, for the sake of a habit that was never wise, and seems particularly ill-advised in the dead of winter.
“You stand outside having a cigarette and it becomes a common field,” Mullahy says. “You’re all in the same rut.”Konishiki and wife provide needed supplies, meals to Japan earthquake victims Copyright by KHON - All rights reserved Photo courtesy Maki Minamoto [ + - ] Video
Two weeks after a series of powerful and deadly earthquakes hit southern Japan, recovery efforts continue.
Thousands of people don't have a home to go back to and supplies are scarce.
But some aloha came their way as former sumo wrestler Konishiki, aka Saleva'a Atisanoe, and his wife brought some welcome help to earthquake victims in the town of Kumamoto, one of the hardest hit areas.
The couple followed up on the help another local athlete, Enson Inoue, had provided about a week earlier.
Atisanoe and his wife brought two trucks full of supplies and served over 4,000 hot meals to victims in three evacuation centers. The hot meals were the first the evacuees have had since the first earthquake hit on April 15.
The couple, who live in Japan, also provided some needed entertainment as Atisanoe played the ukulele while his wife danced hula.
Copyright by KHON - All rights reserved Photo courtesy Maki Minamoto
Copyright by KHON - All rights reserved Photo courtesy Maki Minamoto
Copyright by KHON - All rights reserved Photo courtesy Maki MinamotoEarlier this month I had the tremendous privilege of visiting our UK service personnel stationed in Cyprus.
As well as seeing our soldiers’ valuable contribution to the UN peacekeeping mission on the island, I also met with crews at RAF Akrotiri who are fighting Daesh in Iraq and Syria as part of Operation Shader.
Along with my colleague Fabian Hamilton, I saw the aircraft and met the crews from 903 Expeditionary Air Wing who keep up the daily stream of jets flying off over the Mediterranean to gather intelligence and strike very precise Daesh targets. We were both struck by just how relentless the pace of work is for our pilots and their dedicated support teams of ground crew and maintenance staff, with everyone on the base playing their part in this challenging operation.
The campaign is making painstaking but nevertheless considerable progress. The air cover that our crews provide has enabled Iraqi forces to drive back Daesh and advance on Mosul, liberating most of the east of the city. The challenge now is to drive Daesh out of the more densely populated west Mosul, and eventually out of Iraq altogether.
But the operation to defeat Daesh in Iraq and Syria is far from over, and it is likely that our Forces will be involved for quite some time. Even when, as we all hope, the daunting task of liberating west Mosul is complete, preventing Daesh from regrouping and making renewed attacks will be vital for enabling citizens to return home, and allowing reconstruction to get under way.
Operation Shader is immensely important, not only for safeguarding the people of Iraq and Syria, but also for protecting British citizens from the global threat posed by Daesh.
It is now almost a year to the day since Daesh suicide bombers killed 32 civilians in Brussels, and Daesh-inspired terrorists have taken lives in Paris, Istanbul, Berlin and Sousse. We know that Daesh is directing attacks from its bases in the region, and its propaganda videos filmed in Mosul and Raqqa have radicalised many attackers across Europe and North Africa.
The dedicated work of our forces in Cyprus is vital to defeating Daesh and its poisonous ideology, and to keeping our own citizens safe.
I know that this responsibility weighs heavily on the servicemen and women whom I met in Cyprus, and yet many people back in Britain may not be fully aware of their service in the skies above Iraq and Syria, night and day, protecting us at home.
But in spite of their service and dedication, the men and women of Operation Shader do not currently qualify for a specific service medal, as opposed to those who have served in theatres like Iraq or Afghanistan.
Although the campaign may be different from more traditional ground offensives, it is right that we recognise the dedication of these forces, and the real risks that our pilots face.
The government has said that it is looking at this, but nearly two and a half years after our forces first began their campaign, it is now time to do the right thing and come forward with an award.
Of course none of the personnel that I met in Cyprus are serving for a medal – they serve out of duty and their unrivalled professionalism. But as these men and women work tirelessly to defend us at home, it is only right that their unique service is properly recognised by the nation with a medal – this really is the very least that they deserve.
Nia Griffith is shadow secretary of state for defenceWasabi is a plant native to Japan, and in the same biological family as mustard, cabbage, and unsurprisingly, horseradish. In a culinary context, it’s most commonly known as the green, spicy stuff that comes with sushi, next to the ginger (although if you’re eating it in the United States, there’s a good chance you’re actually eating horseradish and mustard, dyed green). Wasabi is known for the distinctive, spicy flavor one experiences when eating it, and that experience, it turns out, is mostly detected by our noses. While the oils from wasabi will set off our taste buds, they’re easily washed away by any subsequent food (including sushi or rice). The aroma, on the other hand, sticks with the nasal receptors much longer, and is often more intense than the taste.
Which is why it makes for a good fire alarm.
The problem with fire alarms is that, usually, they involve a loud bell and occasionally, a flashing or strobe light. That’s great for most of us, but for the hearing impaired and for elderly whose hearing wasn’t what it once was, the bell doesn’t do much. A flashing light is helpful but only if you’re awake or otherwise able to notice it. The best alternative, right now, is likely an alarm which can vibrate your bed, but who knows how reliable those are. So a team of Japanese researchers turned to wasabi, rigging an alarm (as seen above) to spray the stuff in case of emergency.
The alarm sprays out allyl isothiocyanate, the oil responsible for the pungent smell of wasabi, horseradish, mustard, and the like, according to CNET. When the alarm detects smoke, it creates a mist-like spray from the oil, with the hopes of tingling the noses of those nearby, alerting them to danger. The device works, too; during one experiment, the alarm worked for thirteen of the fourteen subjects (including the four deaf people in the group) within two to three minutes. (The exception had a stuffy nose, according to Reuters.) The now-patented product hasn’t hit the mass consumer market yet, and the current version costs over $500.
It has, however, received praise. In 2011, it was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize — given to “achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think” — in Chemistry. And perhaps someday soon, it will save lives, as well.
Bonus fact : Another potential target of the wasabi-powered fire alarm? Children. According to a study conducted at Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia (as retold by TIME), “78% of school-aged children slept through a smoke alarm blaring for 30 seconds.” Younger children tend to sleep deeper, and the alarm simply didn’t do its job. Whether wasabi would be a better option is unknown, and either way, in case of emergency, be sure to wake your children.
From the Archives: Knuckle Head: Another Ig Nobel winner.
Related: A book on the Ig Nobel Prizes, 4.4 stars on 7 reviews, and available for only a few bucks used.073 – Urban Permaculture Realism
Paul Wheaton talks to Norris Thomlinson, who lives on 0.2 acres in Portland, Oregon, and has been urban farming. Norris and his partner Tulsey hoped to grow enough food there to feed themselves and a few other people. They realized after a couple years that, unfortunately, they couldn't. They have optimized every square foot of their yard, and even use the roof. Norris has carefully measured what they consumed in calories, and they harvest an average of 750 calories per day--not enough to feed Tulsey, who is petite. They are 5.5 years down the line, and predict that after another 5 years, as their nut and fruit trees mature, they might be able to feed 1 person, without the current outside inputs that they have now.
Animal calories make up half of what they eat, and a lot of calories come from their bee's honey. Some sidenotes are that they weren't very knowledgeable about gardening when they started, and it took them a lot of outside inputs in order to build up the soil (they had poor, rocky soil to start with). They brought in two feet of woodchips, plus coffee grounds and their own urine to balance the carbon with nitrogen. They are now planning on moving to Hawaii, and the place (which sounds awesome and they describe in great detail) is up for sale. (Contact: farmerscrub@blogspot.com)
In Hawaii, they like the idea of needing no heating or cooling, and food growing there year round. They would like to live with 10 people under one roof, and thus recognize they will need much more land than they have had previously. In Portland, they only spent 40 minutes a day gardening. Paul shares how he likes burying whole logs over using woodchips, and shares his concerns with using woodchips. He likes the edge uneven ground creates. Norris had a positive experience with his woodchips. They then talk about sunchokes, aka Jerusalem artichokes. Norris says it is possible to do a sunchoke polyculture by sort of a 3 sisters combo: sunchokes, ground nuts, and chinese artichoke.
They talk about the sunchoke farts, and inulin not being digestible by most humans. Sunchokes are great to grow, but have a low caloric value and require slow-cooking in order to undo the inulin's effects. They are also self-preserving in the soil. Raw or cooked, you can use sunchokes as fodder for chickens. Paul shared his chicken article advice with Norris, and Norris reported back his experience. Paul thinks the paddcock shift system is a lot better than coop and run. Norris shares his favorite edible perennials: garlic, skirret (a carrot-parsnip-like root), French sorrel, mallows for salad, Andean root crops like potatoes, ulluco and mashua, and fennel seed.
Relevant Threads
Urban Permaculture with Geoff Lawton
Urban Permaculture Podcast
Beginner Urban Permaculture
You can discuss this podcast on this thread at Permies.
Get all of the podcasts in convenient, giant zip filesLas Vegas, Nevada (CNN) -- The Boxee Box, a cubelike device that shares Internet content with your TV, won the annual "Last Gadget Standing" competition Saturday at the International Consumer Electronics Show.
The box narrowly beat out Plastic Logic's Que e-reader and the Intel Reader, a device that scans printed text and reads it aloud, in the annual product-demonstration contest, which is decided by audience applause.
The Boxee Box plugs into your TV and allows you to search and store Web content, play it on your television and and share it with your friends on social networks via a keyboard in the device's remote control. The device is scheduled to go on sale this spring and cost about $200.
"It's truly a game-changer," said Boxee marketing vice president Andrew Kippen, who presented the device. "We're really bringing the creativity of the Web onto your TV screen."
The ninth annual "Last Gadget Standing" event |
or novelist or artist. But in recent years, there is not even the smallest sign from any of the rich and powerful who command the nation and the airwaves that they are prepared to lay aside their demoniacal control over this country.
There are two Americas: the official America of endless b.s., and the real America glimpsed in the unhampered and uninhibited writings beneath the surface in the blogosphere. I do see hopeful signs of light in the blogosphere.
I will keep my computer running while I continue to make sure that my Mute button works on other media so that I can tune out the waterfall of official baloney that such bankruptcies or a grinding bear market will elicit. The rich and powerful cannot halt a bear market or all its ramifications. But, sad to say, they know how to use it to their advantage in order to propagandize and solidify still further their grip on the lives of Americans.
The Best of Michael S. RozeffArsenal keeper Szczesny scores stunning new girlfriend as he announces he's dating Polish beauty Luczenko
Arsenal goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny has been in inspired form for the Gunners this season and his new relationship with Polish beauty Marina Luczenko could have something to do with it.
Following Arsenal's 1-1 draw with Everton on Sunday, the Polish shot stopper took to Facebook to post an intimate snap of himself and Luczenko.
Szczesny also posted a short but sweet message with the photograph.
VIDEO Scroll down to Watch Arsenal keeper Szczesny's stunning girlfriend Marina Luczenko
Young love: Wojciech Szczesny (left) and Marina Luczenko shared this image to announce that they're dating
Musician: Luczenko has released several singles and unveiled her debut album in November
He wrote: 'Happy...with Marina Łuczenko'.
The 23-year-old will be hoping to keep a hold of Luczenko, who is a well known music artist, model and actress in her native Poland.
Several members of the Poland national team put their stamp of approval on the new relationship as both Robert Lewandowski and Kuba Błaszczykowski 'liked' the Facebook post.
Similar to the Arsenal defence, Luczenko clearly feels she is in a safe pair of hands as she shared the image on her very own Facebook page.
Celebrity: Luczenko (left) is a well known musician, model and actress in Poland
No 1: Polish star Luczenko announced she is dating Szczesny via her official Facebook page
Stopper: Wojciech Szczesny has helped his Arsenal side to the top of the Barclays Premier LeagueThat headline is Justin Amash’s joke, not mine, but it’s not much of an exaggeration. This is, essentially, the Democratic response: ObamaCare was duly passed, it was an issue in a presidential campaign that the GOP lost, end of story — whether or not there are 51 or even 60 votes in the Senate to defund this thing. He actually used the phrase “elections have consequences,” which must be the first time a member of the *minority* party has ever tossed that into a debate. Like Ramesh Ponnuru says, weren’t Ted Cruz and Mike Lee elected too?
Watching this was the first time I felt that he might be serious about retiring in 2016. The reaction to it on Twitter among righties, even those who have criticized Cruz for his “defund” strategy, was more uniformly, stridently negative than the response to any other display of maverick-iness in recent memory. And understandably so: There’s no reason for McCain to go out and carry Obama’s and Reid’s water on this except his own antipathy to Cruz, Paul, and the other “wacko birds.” It’s not merely the betrayal, it’s the pettiness of it. More so than even Mitch McConnell or Boehner, I think he’s become public enemy number one among Republicans for tea partiers. He’ll have a ferocious primary challenge in three years, and if he intends to defeat it, at some point he’ll have to start making nice with the Cruz/Paul contingent. I think he’d rather quit and enjoy the rest of his term sticking thumbs in their eyes.
“Elections have consequences” was only half the speech, though. The other half has Maverick in high dudgeon over Cruz wondering yesterday whether the opponents of his “defund” strategy would have also, ahem, stood up to Hitler. Given how many interventionists there are on the other side of him on this issue, I’m … reasonably sure that most would have. It’s a lame Godwinian flourish, although RINO-haters no doubt will consider the comparison insulting to Neville Chamberlain, if anything. But seriously: After more than 21 hours of Cruz talking about ObamaCare, the key part of his speech that McCain feels obliged to put front and center with America watching is … a throwaway line about Nazi appeasers? This is what Maverick decided he needed to do with his precious moments on the floor and his credibility as a so-called “reasonable Republican”? Retirement can’t come too soon.Gary Whitta has already nabbed one of the hottest writing gigs out there, penning one of the Star Wars stand-alone films, and now he's signed on to work on another hot space hero project.
Whitta will write the script for Fox's Starlight, based on the comic from Wanted and Kick-Ass creator Mark Millar. The comic, drawn by Goran Parlov, centers on a space hero, Duke McQueen, who saved the universe four decades ago but came back to Earth, where no one believed his fantastic stories. But years later, after he's settled down and grown up, he's recruited for one last adventure.
The first issue from Image Comics came out in March and launched the much-anticipated Millarworld Universe. Starlight #5 hit shelves on Aug. 13. Fox picked up the project for adaptation in late 2013.
Simon Kinberg, who worked on X-Men: First Class and X-Men: Days of Future Past, will produce, reuniting him with Millar as he's also producing an adaptation of Millar’s Kindergarten Heroes. Steve Asbell is overseeing for Fox.
Whitta is writing the script for the first Star Wars spin-off film, which Godzilla helmer Gareth Edwards will direct. The Lucasfilm and Disney project has a release date set for Dec. 16, 2016, but is highly secretive, so there's still no official word on what character the story will center on.
Whitta wrote the script for 2010's Book of Eli and 2013's Will Smith-starrer After Earth. He's repped by UTA, Circle of Confusion and Behr Abramson Levy.
Email: Rebecca.Ford@THR.com
Twitter: @BeccamfordLinearity, Uniqueness, and Haskell Posted on January 8, 2017
There is a group of people consisting of Tweag I/O, ghc head-quarters and JP Bernardy working on a proposal for adding linear types to Haskell. In this blog post I will attempt to put this proposal in some context. I will explain what linearity is and how it relates to its close cousin uniqueness typing, and I will compare the proposal to some other ways of doing things. My hope is that this will make the work more accessible.
Note on syntax: I will attempt to use a consistent syntax throughout this article. Although I will be citing examples from various programming languages (Haskell, Clean, Idris, the Haskell linearity proposal), my syntax will not necessarily match the concrete syntax used in any of those languages. My goal is not to provide a tutorial on using any of those specific languages, but rather to provide the necessary background to understand all of them and the differences between them.
Substructural type systems
Consider the following two Haskell functions:
wasteful :: a -> b -> a wasteful x y = x frugal :: a -> (a, a) frugal x = (x, x)
Although I might have given them unusual names, they have perfectly normal Haskell types. However, they illustrate two properties of the Haskell type system:
Functions don’t have to use all their arguments: wasteful throws y away
throws away Functions can reuse their arguments: frugal uses x twice
From a formal type system perspective, this corresponds to the structural rules weakening and contraction, and we call type systems in which these rules do not apply substructural type systems.
If weakening does not apply, wasteful would not be type correct: functions must use all their arguments. If contraction does not apply, frugal would not be type correct: functions cannot use their arguments more than once. If neither weakening nor contraction applies, functions must use their arguments exactly once.
Examples
To give you an intuition why substructurality is useful, we will consider two examples in this section. Note that although these two examples may look quite similar, we will see later that they are actually of quite a different nature.
An update to a mutable array in Haskell is a monadic operation:
write :: IOVector Double -> Int -> Double -> IO ()
But why exactly? Why can’t we just have
write :: Int -> Double -> Vector Double -> Vector Double
with the understanding that write updates the vector in-place (i.e., really modifying it rather than returning a new array)? Well, if we had such a function, we could then define
haveAndEat :: Vector Double -> ( Vector Double, Vector Double ) haveAndEat arr = (write 0 2.3 arr, arr)
We can’t have our cake and eat it: the definition of haveAndEat suggests that it returns two arrays, one of which is updated and one of which is not; but since write updates the array in-place, both of those two arrays are the same array: before the call to write is evaluated, both would be the original array and after the call to write is fully evaluated both would be modified. The value of that “second” array arr now depends on when another expression ( write 0 2.3 arr ) is evaluated, and hence it has become a stateful value: we have lost purity and all its benefits.
Here’s the thing: trouble started because haveAndEat used its argument arr twice (it’s like frugal ): if we had a type system in which contraction does not apply, we would not be able to define haveAndEat and all would be well.
Protocols
The basic way to open a file in Haskell is
openFile :: FilePath -> IOMode -> IO Handle
There are two problems with this function, as illustrated by the following two programs:
careless :: FilePath -> IO () careless fp = do handle <- openFile fp ReadMode return () anxious :: FilePath -> IO () anxious fo = do handle <- openFile fp ReadMode hClose handle hClose handle
In careless the handle returned by openFile is never closed, and in anxious it is closed twice. We can deal with the first problem by having the garbage collector close handles (through finalizers), and we can deal with the second problem by maintaining some per-handle state even after its closed (alternatively, for applications where lexical scoping is not too restrictive, we can use a function such as withFile which itself takes care of closing the Handle ).
But wouldn’t it be nicer if we could solve these problems at the type level? As you might have realized, careless is a bit like wasteful : it throws away the handle. Similarly, anxious is a bit like frugal : it uses the handle twice. In a type system in which weakening and contraction do not apply, both careless and anxious would be type incorrect. Thus, a substructural type system allows us to express protocols: the handle must eventually be closed, it cannot be used anymore after it has been closed, etc.; we will see another example later.
Limiting the applicability of the structural rules..
Typically we want to restrict weakening and contraction for some arguments, but not for others. For example, consider
writeTwoValues :: Int -> Int -> Double -> Vector Double -> Vector Double writeTwoValues i j x arr = write i x (write j x arr)
Although writeTwoValues uses argument x twice, this should be unproblemantic: the important thing is that it doesn’t use argument arr twice. In other words, the structural rules (contraction and weakening) should be applicable to x, but not to arr.
Let’s agree to call values to which the structural rules do not apply substructural values; this nomenclature is not standard but I think it will help.
.. through types
To a Haskell programmer, the most obvious way to separate structural values from substructural values is through types. This is the approach taken in the functional programming language Clean.
As an example, we might give write the following type:
write :: ω : Int -> ω : Double -> 1 : ( Vector ω : Double ) -> 1 : ( Vector ω : Double )
A value of type ω:a is an “ordinary” value which we can reuse or throw away at will (i.e., the structural rules apply as normal); by contrast, a value of type 1:a is a substructural value which we can not reuse or throw away (the structural rules do not apply). (Technically speaking we are missing some annotations here; here and elsewhere when that happens you can assume a ω: annotation in such cases, unless otherwise indicated. Note that I’m not using Clean syntax to keep the syntax uniform throughout this article.)
This means that we cannot define
haveAndEat :: 1 : ( Vector ω : Double ) -> ( 1 : ( Vector ω : Double ), 1 : ( Vector ω : Double )) haveAndEat arr = (write 0 2.3 arr, arr)
because write insists that the array is substructural, and hence the structural rules do not apply.
Similarly, we can define
frugal :: ω : a -> (ω : a, ω : a) frugal x = (x, x)
but not
frugal :: 1 : a -> ( 1 : a, 1 : a) -- incorrect frugal x = (x, x)
.. through kinds
Another closely related approach, used in the functional programming language Idris, is to separate structural from substructural values through kinds.
Specifically, we split the universe of types into two: the types of structural values (types like Int or Double ), and the types of substructural values (types like Vector ). In this case, the type of write is just
write :: Int -> Double -> Vector Double -> Vector Double
but with the implicit understanding that the kind of Int and Double is different from the kind of Vector Double. The type of frugal becomes
frugal :: forall ( a :: Type ). a -> (a, a) frugal x = (x, x)
where Type is the Idris name for the kind of “normal” types (structural rules do apply). If we then tried to apply frugal to an array, we would get a kind error rather than a type error.
.. through variable bindings
There is alternative possibility: we can instead mark variable bindings with whether or not the substructural rules should apply to those variables; this is the approach that the Haskell linearity proposal takes.
For example, write would turn into something like
write ( i :: ω Int ) ( x :: ω Double ) ( arr :: 1 Vector Double ) =...
We can introduce a convenient shorthand as follows:
write :: Int -> Double -> Vector Double ⊸ Vector Double write i x arr =...
This ⊸ operator is pronounced “lollipop”; a function of type (a ⊸ b) is really a function (\(x ::1 a) ->...) ; a “normal” function of type (a -> b) would then be shorthand for (\(x ::ω a) ->...).
This means we cannot define
haveAndEat :: Vector Double ⊸ ( Vector Double, Vector Double ) -- incorrect haveAndEat arr = (write 0 2.3 arr, arr)
and the type of wasteful becomes
wasteful :: a ⊸ b -> a wasteful x y = x
Let bindings
Of course, if we mark only variables this raises the question what happens to larger expressions. One rule is that when we let-bind a variable
let x = expr in...
and in expr we use some variable (arr ::1...), the the binding of x must also become (x ::1...). For example the following function would also be rejected:
writeThenDup :: Vector Double ⊸ ( Vector Double, Vector Double ) -- incorrect writeThenDup arr = let x = write 0 2.3 arr in (x, x)
Note that this applies no matter what the result type is; for example, the following function is just as incorrect:
dupLength :: Vector Double ⊸ ( Int, Int ) -- incorrect dupLength arr = let len = length arr in (len, len)
Function results
If we define
dup :: a -> (a, a) dup x = (x, x)
then clearly we should also reject
writeThenDup :: Vector Double ⊸ ( Vector Double, Vector Double ) -- incorrect writeThenDup arr = dup (write 0 2.3 arr)
as it is semantically equivalent to the version in the previous section. The rule is here that we can apply a function of type (a -> b) only to arguments constructed without using substructural values. One intuition here is that the result of applying a function to a substructural value is itself a substructural value.
We will see more rules later.
Uniqueness versus Linearity
So far I have avoided the terms unique or linear, but we are now at a point where we should start to distinguish.
Uniqueness
A unique value is one which has not been shared: uniqueness is a guarantee. We relied on uniqueness in the mutable array example: we can only safely apply write to an array if that array is unique. It should be safe to forget guarantees, and in uniqueness typing this is formalized through a subtyping relationship; this means that the following function is type correct:
forgetUnique :: 1 : ( Vector ω : Double ) -> ω : ( Vector ω : Double ) forgetUnique arr = arr
Of course, once we forget that an array is unique we can no longer modify it.
Linearity
Conversely, a linear value is one which may not be shared: linearity is a restriction. We relied on linearity in the Handle example: if openFile returns a linear Handle, then functions which close that Handle twice are not type correct.
In many ways linearity is dual to uniqueness typing, and we can see this quite clearly in the subtyping relation. Although we cannot forget restrictions, we can impose them. For example:
restrict :: ω : ( Chan ω : Int ) -> 1 : ( Chan ω : Int ) restrict chan = chan
In restrict we take a “normal” channel (with no restrictions) and return a linear channel. As an example use case, consider
master :: IO Int master = do chan <- newChan forkIO $ slave1 (restrict chan) forkIO $ slave2 (restrict chan) x <- readChan chan y <- readChan chan return $ x + y
Here we have some master process which creates a new (unrestricted) channel. It then uses restrict to pass this channel as a linear channel to two slave processes slave1 and slave2, and is therefore guaranteed that the two slave processes will each send precisely one value on this channel (we might need to newtype the channel so that sending a value is the only applicable operation).
Pairs
I hope that by now you have a reasonable intuition of the usefulness of limiting the applicability of the structural rules contraction and weakening, and of the difference between uniqueness and linearity.
However, the examples we considered so far were carefully constructed to avoid the complications that arise from propagation. This is where things get a bit more subtle.
Uniqueness
Consider updating a pair of arrays. In standard Haskell we’d write something like
writeTwoArrays :: ( Vector Double, Vector Double ) -> IO ( Vector Double, Vector Double ) writeTwoArrays (arr1, arr2) = do arr1' <- write 0 2.3 arr1 arr2' <- write 1 4.5 arr2 return (arr1', arr2')
The use of the IO monad forced us to decide whether we want to write arr1 or arr2 first. The compiler is not free to rearrange these two calls, much less execute them in parallel. This is unfortunate: after all, updates to two arrays are independent.
In a language with uniqueness typing we can write something like this (we shall see shortly that this type is not entirely correct):
writeTwoArrays :: ( 1 : ( Vector ω : Double ), 1 : ( Vector ω : Double )) -- not quite correct -> ( 1 : ( Vector ω : Double ), 1 : ( Vector ω : Double )) writeTwoArrays (arr1, arr2) = (write 0 2.3 arr1, write 1 4.5 arr2)
Apart from the additional information in the type, this is just ordinary functional programming. However, now consider
haveAndEatTwo arrs = (writeTwoArrays arrs, arrs)
Just like haveAndEat, we should reject haveAndEatTwo for much the same reasons: we cannot the updated pair of arrays and the non-updated pair of arrays, because the arrays are updated in-place.
But how can we see this from the types? After all, write wants a unique array, but writeTwoArray gets a pair of two unique arrays and so it seems type correct; haveAndEatTwo duplicates the pair, but not the arrays and hence seems type correct as well.
This is where uniqueness propagation comes in: if we want to extract a unique element from a pair (like writeTwoArrays does), then that pair itself must be unique. After all, if two people have a reference to the pair, then even if the only references to the elements of that pair are from that pair, there are still multiple references to those elements:
This means that the type of writeTwoArrays is actually
writeTwoArrays :: 1 : ( 1 : ( Vector ω : Double ), 1 : ( Vector ω : Double )) -- correct -> 1 : ( 1 : ( Vector ω : Double ), 1 : ( Vector ω : Double )) writeTwoArrays (arr1, arr2) = (write 0 2.3 arr1, write 1 4.5 arr2)
recording that the pair itself must be unique, too. This means that haveAndEatTwo is no longer type correct, because it would need to duplicate a unique array, which is not allowed.
Note that it’s perfectly fine to construct a non-unique array with unique elements:
mkPair :: 1 : a -> 1 : b -> ω : ( 1 : a, 1 : b) -- correct but useless mkPair x y = (x, y)
However, such a pair is just not very useful as we cannot extract those unique elements.
Linearity (in types)
In linearity the situation is dual: there isn’t necessarily a problem with destructing a pair with linear elements (as long as those elements are then used linearly, of course). This means the following function is fine:
swap :: ω : ( 1 : a, 1 : b) -> 1 : ( 1 : b, 1 : a) -- correct but useless swap (x, y) = (y, x)
However, we cannot construct such pairs; the following is incorrect:
mkPair :: 1 : a -> 1 : b -> ω : ( 1 : a, 1 : b) -- incorrect mkPair x y = (x, y)
We are not allowed to construct a non-linear pair from linear arguments.
Linearity (in variable bindings)
In the linearity-in-types world, the elements of the pair have their own linearity annotations; this means that a function such as
first :: 1 : ( 1 : a, 1 : b) -> 1 : a -- incorrect first (x, y) = x
is type incorrect, because the type of y is 1:b and hence weakening does not apply: we cannot throw y away.
When we track linearity only through variable bindings, we have to be more explicit out this propagation: the rule for pattern matching is that in a case statement such as
case expr of (x, y) ->...
if we use any linear variables inside expr (i.e., variables with binding ::1 ) then x and y must also be linear: an obligation to use a pair linearly translates to two linear obligations to use the elements of the pair linearly. Note that this rule talks about the variables inside expr, not the type of expr ; there is no other choice, because types do not track linearity.
This means that
first :: (a, b) ⊸ a -- incorrect
is type incorrect, though
first :: (a, b) -> a -- correct
is fine. As a more concrete example, consider the Chan use case again: if we pass a pair of channels to a slave process, the slave must send exactly one value on both channels.
(This means that these pairs are multiplicative, not additive. The Haskell linearity does not consider additive pairs at all, so I will not discuss them in this article either.)
Higher order functions
In some ways the situation for higher order functions is very similar to the situation for pairs; however, there are some additional complications.
Uniqueness Typing
Consider the following attempt to outsmart the type system by partially applying const :
const :: 1 : a -> ω : b -> 1 : a -- not quite correct const x y = x sneakyDup :: 1 : a -> 1 : ( 1 : a, 1 : a) sneakyDup x = let f = const x in (f (), f ())
Obviously we should rule out sneakyDup as it claims it can duplicate unique values; but how? Here’s the rule: just like a pair must be unique if we want to extract a unique value from it, a function with unique elements in its closure must be unique if we want to execute it.
However, since we don’t typically record the types of the elements in a function closure, we cannot know whether or not a function has unique elements in its closure when we apply it. Therefore, we have to approximate and instead say that when we construct a function with unique elements in its closure that function itself must be unique. Hence, the type of const becomes
const :: 1 : a -> 1 : (ω : b -> 1 : a) -- correct const x y = x
This allows us to rule out sneakyDup because it uses f twice.
You might object at this point that sneakyDup could use subtyping to forget the uniqueness guarantee of f, and you would be right. For this reason subtyping does not apply to functions. This non-uniformity of the subtyping relation causes all kinds of trouble, not least of which loss of principal types. A large part of my PhD thesis is dedicated to solving this problem, but further discussion of this topic is beyond the scope of this article.
Linearity (in types)
By analogy to the rule for pairs, you might expect that in linearity there isn’t necessarily a problem with applying non-linear functions with linear values in their closure, but instead we cannot construct such functions. Indeed, this is the case. This means that in a linear type system, we get
const :: 1 : a -> 1 : (ω : b -> 1 : a) -- correct const x y = x
and sneakyDup gets rejected for the same reason as in the uniqueness typing example.
This might not look dual to the case for uniqueness typing, but that’s only because in uniqueness typing we had to make some unpleasant conservative approximations, making the uniqueness case identical rather than dual to the linear case. Again, see my thesis for details.
Linearity (in variable bindings)
Let’s consider the sneakyDup example one more time. If we track linearity through bindings only, we get
const :: a ⊸ b -> a const x y = x sneakyDup :: a ⊸ (a, a) -- incorrect sneakyDup x = let f = const x in (f (), f ())
In this case we are rescued by the rule for let-bindings which we discussed above: any let-bound variable must be used linearly if we use any linear variables inside the body. No need to take special precautions with partial application in this case.
But there is a subtlety in a different case. Consider this alternative attempt to outsmart the type system:
(.) :: (b -> c) ⊸ (a -> b) ⊸ a -> c -- incorrect (f. g) x = f (g x) dup :: a -> (a, a) dup x = (x, x) sneakyDup :: a ⊸ (a, a) sneakyDup x = (dup. const x) ()
Something clearly went wrong here, but it’s somewhat subtle. It went wrong in the definition of (.) ; as we saw before, the result of applying a linear function (a function of type (a ⊸ b) ) must itself be treated linearly. However, the same goes for the result of a non-linear function if we have a linear assumption g ::1 (a -> b). This is somewhat comparable to the rule in Clean that functions with unique elements in their closure must themselves be unique, except that here it extends to the results of those functions too. In the typing rules this is simply a consequence of the rule we saw already: we cannot apply a non-linear function (in this example, f ) to an argument which is constructed using linear assumptions (in this case, g ).
Polymorphism
One of the main obstacles to adding support for uniqueness or linearity to a language like Haskell is that the most general (principal) types of many functions get very complicated. For example, in Clean we have
const :: u : a -> w : (v : b -> u : a), [w <= u] const x = \y -> x
After you stare at it for a while, this type makes sense: const receives two arguments of type a and b, and returns something of type a ; moreover, the first argument may or may not be unique ( u ), and similarly for the second argument ( v ); but the result will be unique only if the first argument is; and moreover, if that first argument is unique, then if we partially apply const to just one argument then the resulting function must itself be unique ( w <= u ), due to the rule about functions with unique elements in their closure, discussed above.
Sensible or not, it certainly is a lot more complicated than the type of const in a regular functional programming language
const :: a -> b -> a const x y = x
As another example, the type of fst is
fst :: w : (u : a, v : b) -> u : a, [w <= u] fst (x, y) = x
which similarly reflects that the pair itself must be unique if we want to extract a unique element from it.
In Idris these two functions look like
const : {a : AnyType } -> {b : AnyType } -> a -> b -> a const x y = x fst : {a : AnyType } -> {b : AnyType } -> UPair a b -> a fst ( MkUPair x y) = x
where AnyType is the Idris kind which covers both unique and non-unique types. These functions look much simpler than the functions in Clean, but that’s just because the kinding rules are not spelled out (function space has kind UniqueType if argument has; pair has kind UniqueType if either of the elements has).
One of the benefits of tracking linearity in bindings instead, like in the Haskell linearity proposal, is that these types become much simpler:
const :: a ⊸ b -> a const x y = x fst :: (a, b) -> a fst (x, y) = x
However, we don’t get away completely scot-free. For example, consider composition one last time:
(f. g) x = f (g x)
Does (f. g) use x linearly or not? Well, this clearly depends on f and g : (f. g) uses x linearly only if both f and g do. We can express this as follows:
(.) :: (b -> : u c) ⊸ (a -> : v b) -> : u a -> : uv c
where (a ->:v b) is a generalization of both (a -> b) (letting v = ω ) and (a ⊸ b) (letting v = 1 ), and uv is type-level multiplication of these variables such that uv = ω if either u or v is (I don’t know what concrete syntax is proposed here; the above syntax is my own).
Conclusions
If we want to retrofit uniqueness typing or linearity to Haskell, we need to find a way to do this without changing everything about the language. Both the uniqueness-through-kinds approach used in Idris and the linearity-through-bindings approach used in the Haskell linearity proposal are reasonable ways to do this.
Nonetheless, if we want to give functions their most general type we’d still end up with different, more complicated, types than the types we had before the introduction of uniqueness/linearity. Syntactic conventions can go some way to hide this complexity. Moreover, we don’t of course have to give functions their most general type. We can still use
const :: a -> b -> a (.) :: (b -> c) -> (a -> b) -> a -> c
and so on; this would limit the applicability of these functions in code that does rely on linearity, but I think that’s a reasonable tradeoff. It does raise some questions about type inference, and principal types, but those are not insurmountable problems.
As I have argued elsewhere (for example, see my paper Modelling Unique and Affine Typing using Polymorphism), I do prefer a substructural type system with no subtyping relation. As we have seen, without subtyping linearity and uniqueness become pretty much the same thing, and this gives library authors the freedom to use the type system to express what they want. That said, a linear type system can encode the absence of sharing. For example, we can do something like
withMutableArray :: ( 1 : ( Vector Double ) -> a) -> a
This function creates a new mutable array, and then passes that as a linear object to the callback. In this setup, the definition of withMutableArray (though not its type) guarantees that we start with a single (unique!) reference to a mutable array, and once we pass that array to the callback linearity guarantees that the array will never be duplicated. In a way we are using this negative occurrence of a linear type to model uniqueness typing.
To me a system based on types, rather than variable bindings, is easier to understand; but I’ll readily admit I am biased, having worked on systems in that style for many years. That said, Haskell programmers are used to thinking in terms of types, so a type or kind based approach would seem to fit better with the language. Moreover, we can abstract over types, but we cannot abstract over the syntactic shape of arguments, so if we track linearity in bindings only we will lose some expressiveness.
It’s hard to evaluate a type system without an implementation however. We will need more practical experience to be able to really compare the approaches. Either way, I hope this article has managed to place the Haskell linearity in some context and make it a bit easier to understand. No matter what the final system looks like, I look forward to having support for substructural types in Haskell!
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Arnaud Spiwack of Tweag I/O, one of the primary authors of the Haskell linearity proposal, for valuable feedback on an early draft of this article.How does one go about creating a gtk+ working application? Is it even possible?
Seriously.
TL;DR: The Gtk+ ABI is broken so often that distribution-supplied binaries rarely work.
* * *
Imagine it is the time when Gtk+ 3.0 was released. You have a beautiful application with no bugs. For the sake of argument. Distributions ship it pre-compiled and life is good.
Then distributions update Gtk+ and everything based on GtkGrid breaks. You work around that in your source code, but distributions do not release new versions of your program until its next release.
In the meantime, Gtk+ breaks ABI compatibility for mouse wheel scrolling. Distributions update that and your program ceases to work with mouse wheels. You work around that in your source code, but distributions do not release new versions of your program until its next release.
In the meantime, Gtk+ breaks ABI compatibility of scrolled windows. Windows that used to have sane sizes now have near-zero size and when distributions update Gtk+, users of your application are not impressed. You work around that in your source code, but distributions do not release new versions of your program until its next release.
In the meantime, Gtk+ breaks ABI compatibility of redrawing. Parts of the gui that used to render correctly now stops updating at all. When distributions update Gtk+, your program ceases to work. You work around that in your source code, but distributions do not release new versions of your program until its next release.
Somewhere in the middle of this, Ubuntu decides to break scrollbars using a Gtk+ plugin. Your first hint that this has happened is when Ubuntu users start filing bug reports.
In the meantime, the layout rules for GtkGrid change again. When distributions update Gtk+, your program looks awful. You work around that in your source code, but distributions do not release new versions of your program until its next release.
Your program works with multiple screens. Or rather, it used to work with multiple screens. Then Gtk+ dropped support for it without notice.
Now I hear we are in for another round of breaking rendering because of some Wayland deficiency. It sounds like something that will require a runtime version check to deal with. In the meantime, if any distribution ships with updated Gtk+ but without your program updated, well, things will be broken.
* * *
The sum of all the above is that your application will have serious issues for anyone using the distribution supplied binary. And it is not because of anything you did wrong!
How does one shield oneself from this, i.e., how does one ensure that the binary compiled (say) three years (or months) ago continues to work reasonably? I don’t know. As far as I know, Gtk+ does not support parallel installations of 3.0, 3.2, …; if Gtk+ does support it, then none of the distributions do it. I’m sure it would be painful. Note, that using static copies of Gtk+ is not a viable solution because the binaries |
time with him and I’m never going to see him again,” said Ruehlman.”I had him since he was only eight weeks old. I had him for over two years, now.”Major League Soccer is in the midst of a rebranding process, and a big part of that is the abandonment of their current logo for a new one. What you see above is the end product.
It appears to be a shield with a little tail on its backside.
This means the end of the old MLS logo, which is too bad because the old logo had just passed the “embarrassing 90s” mark and was entering the “lovably 90s” territory.
Yes, that old logo looks like a cheaply done thing made with clip art, but it was our cheaply done thing made with clip art.
The new logo is fine, if a bit generic. It’s a standard shield that looks like any other soccer crest in the world. There’s a “slash” and the aforementioned tail, and there are three stars which some marketing person with the league writes “represent the pillars of our brand: For Club, For Country, For Community.” Pillars of our brand!
On the website MLS even has a Q-and-A section where it answers the question “Q: Why doesn’t the new crest resemble other league logos?” and the answer should be: Well, it kinda does.
The one cool thing is that each team gets its own color logo, which is neat.
What say you about this?The House unanimously approved a bill late Tuesday to discourage the Internal Revenue Service from using civil asset forfeitures to seize money and property from taxpayers.
The bill, known as the Clyde-Hirsch-Sowers Restraining Excessive Seizure of Property through the Exploitation of Civil Asset Forfeiture Tools (RESPECT) Act, would revise the authority and procedures the IRS uses to seize property that has been structured to avoid Bank Secrecy Act reporting requirements. Under the bill, the IRS could only seize property it suspects has been structured to avoid BSA reporting requirements if the property comes from an illegal source, or if the funds were structured for the purpose of concealing the violation of a criminal law or regulation other than structuring transactions to evade BSA reporting requirements.
Within 30 days of seizing property, the IRS would need to make a good faith effort to find all owners of the property, as well as notify the owners of the post-seizure hearing rights established by this bill. The IRS could apply to a court for one 30-day extension of the notice requirement if it can establish probable cause of an imminent threat to national security or personal safety.
If the owner of the property asks for a court hearing within 30 days after the date on which notice is provided, the property would have to be returned unless the court holds a hearing within 30 days after notice is provided and finds there's probable cause to believe the property derived from an illegal source or the funds were structured to conceal the violation of a criminal law or regulation other than a structuring violation. The bill amends the Tax Code to exclude from gross income any interest received from the federal government with respect to an action to recover property seized by the IRS under a claimed violation of the structuring provisions of the BSA.
Randy Sowers, a Maryland dairy farmer whose $60,000 bank account was seized by the IRS Photo: Institute for Justice
The bill was sponsored by Reps. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., chairman of the House Ways and Means Tax Policy Subcommittee, and Joseph Crowley, D-N.Y. The Clyde-Hirsch-Sowers RESPECT Act is named after two small-business owners who had their entire bank accounts seized by the IRS for alleged structuring Jeff Hirsch and Randy Sowers. Hirsch had over $400,000 seized from his convenience store distribution business on Long Island, while Sowers, a Maryland dairy farmer, lost $29,500 to the IRS. Even though neither of them was ever charged with a crime, it took years of legal proceedings before they recovered their funds. They were both represented by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm and advocacy group.
“The IRS used civil forfeiture to steal from innocent, hard-working small business owners,” said Institute for Justice attorney Robert Everett Johnson in a statement. “With Congress so bitterly polarized, it’s encouraging to see hundreds of representatives stand together against this inherently abusive practice.”
A study by the Institute for Justice found that from 2005 to 2012, the IRS seized more than $242 million in over 2,500 cases for alleged structuring offenses. One-third of those cases involved nothing more than making a series of sub-$10,000 cash transactions.
House Ways and Means Committee chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, praised passage of the legislation. “The House sent a clear signal to the IRS this week that bullying law-abiding Americans will not be tolerated,” Brady said in a statement. “After years of bipartisan oversight to hold the IRS accountable for their wrongdoings, the Clyde-Hirsch-Sowers RESPECT Act stands up for the innocent small business owners and farmers who were forced to hand over their hard-earned dollars to the IRS—in some cases losing their livelihoods and life savings. The bill puts in place strong safeguards to prevent the IRS from wrongfully seizing the assets of hardworking Americans. I commend Tax Policy Subcommittee Chairman Roskam and Rep. Crowley for their work to protect taxpayers, and I urge the Senate to pass this important legislation.”
Two wide-ranging civil forfeiture reform bills are also under consideration in Congress. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., has reintroduced the DUE PROCESS Act, which would strengthen safeguards for business owners, while Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has sponsored the FAIR Act, which would prohibit federal agencies from keeping forfeiture proceeds and abolish the so-called “equitable sharing” program, under which the proceeds of seized assets are shared between state and federal law enforcement authorities.
Under “structuring” laws, the IRS has routinely confiscated cash from ordinary Americans because they frequently deposited or withdrew cash in amounts under $10,000. The IRS is able to keep that money without ever filing criminal charges.
An April report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found the IRS’s use of structuring laws “compromised the rights of some individuals and businesses.” In a sampling of 278 investigations, it found no evidence in 91 percent of those cases “that the structured funds came from an illegal source or involved any other illegal activity.”
In October 2014, the IRS’s Criminal Investigation unit introduced a new policy specifying that it would no longer pursue the seizure and forfeiture of funds related to legal source structuring. However, in the same month the policy changed, the TIGTA report noted, The New York Times reported that IRS Criminal Investigation had been seizing funds in structuring investigations without filing a criminal complaint, leaving property owners to prove their innocence. Many of them gave up trying.
In July, Roskam noted that the IRS had reviewed 454 petitions for the return of property forfeited under the structuring laws and returned more than $6 million to property owners. The IRS also transferred 250 petitions to the Department of Justice for review, but the DOJ has only acted on 73 of the petitions. The Justice Department approved returning money in only 32 percent of cases—far below the IRS’ recommendation of 80 percent. In their 2016 party platforms, both the Republican and Democratic Parties condemned civil forfeiture and called for reforms to the practice. Since 2014, according to the Institute for Justice, 24 states have reformed their forfeiture laws while over 260 editorials have criticized the practice.Airstrikes in Syria killed up to 22 people, mostly children, on Wednesday when warplanes struck a residential area housing a school complex in the northern rebel-held province of Idlib, activists and rescue workers said.
A team of first responders, the Syrian Civil Defense in Idlib, said 22 people were killed and at least 50 wounded in the raids on the village of Hass. Most of those killed were children, the group said in a posting on its Facebook page.
Another activist group, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, gave the same death toll and said 14 children and a woman were among those killed.
The activist-operated Idlib News network, which gave a lower toll of 17 people killed, said the strikes hit as the children were gathered outside the school complex. It said the death toll could rise as some of the wounded were reported to be in critical condition, the network added.
Idlib is the main Syrian opposition stronghold, though radical groups also have a large presence there. It has regularly been hit by Syrian and Russian warplanes as well as the U.S.-led coalition targeting Islamic State militants.
Footage posted by activists online shows a huge plume of smoke rising from the area of the strikes and rescuers rushing casualties away along a dusty road lined with destroyed buildings.
A woman's body is seen being carried on a stretcher while other bodies, covered in cloth and one with only a hat, lie under shrubs and other casualties are ferried away in pick-up trucks.
An activist at the scene, Muaz al-Shami, said as many as 10 airstrikes were believed to have hit the residential area.
The video content couldn't be independently confirmed. However, it conforms with AP reporting on the events depicted.
Earlier in the day, the northern Aleppo province saw a new escalation as a helicopter believed to belong to Syrian government forces dropped barrel bombs in a deadly attack on Turkey-backed opposition forces in the border area, Turkish officials said.
A statement attributed to the field commander of Syria's pro-government troops said any Turkish advances in northern Syria under the pretext of fighting IS militants would be dealt with "forcefully and appropriately."
The barrel bombing was said to have occurred in the village of Tal Madiq, in a part of northern Aleppo where rival groups have been operating, mostly to rout Islamic State militants.
If confirmed, it would be the first attack by Syrian government forces on the Turkish-backed fighters. Turkey's state-run news agency didn't say when the attack occurred and said at least two Syrian opposition fighters were killed and five others wounded. A Syrian opposition spokesman said it took place Tuesday.
The Observatory's chief, Rami Abdurrahman, said helicopters struck as intense clashes were underway between Kurdish-led fighters and Turkey-backed forces in Tal Madiq and that 11 Syrian opposition fighters and five Kurdish fighters were killed.
The Kurdish-led forces are now in control of the village, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the highly prized IS-controlled town of al-Bab. A senior Kurdish commander, however, denied Syrian government bombings of the Turkey-backed fighters, saying it was an attempted explanation for battlefield losses.
"They are trying to find a pretext for the loss. No aircraft were involved," Mahmoud Barkhadan of the main Syria Kurdish militia, the People's Protection Units, told The Associated Press by telephone from the region.
A spokesman for the Syrian fighting group Nour el-Din el-Zinki, Yasser al-Youssef, said the Kurdish-led forces attacked them while they were fighting IS militants in the area. Then Syrian government helicopters followed, he said in a message.
The complex terrain is a powder keg where confrontation among rival groups can break out anytime: U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish fighters, Turkey-backed Syrian rebels and Turkey. Ankara sent tanks, troops and aircraft into northern Syria in August in an unprecedented incursion that it said was part of efforts to help Syrian opposition clear the border area of Islamic State fighters.
But Ankara is also seeking to contain the U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces fighting the Islamic State group, putting it at odds with its key ally, the United States. Ankara sees Kurdish fighters in Syria as an extension of its outlawed Kurdish militants and designated as a terrorist organization.
Syria's military threatened last week to shoot down any Turkish warplane that enters Syrian air space, after Turkish jets raided villages in northern Syria in an escalation of Ankara's offensive against Kurdish fighters.
On Wednesday, a statement attributed to the field commander of pro-government troops said Turkish advance under the pretext of fighting IS in northern and eastern Aleppo is an encroachment on the Syrian government's area of operations and would not be tolerated.
The fall of al-Bab to Turkey-backed rebels would threaten the government's siege on the rebels in the city of Aleppo, to the west.
Meanwhile, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters that Turkey is determined to push ahead with the offensive in northern Syria — dubbed Operation Eurphrates Shield — and capture al-Bab from IS militants. It would not be deterred by the bombing of Tal Madiq, he said.
"Such attacks will not stop us from combatting Daesh," Cavusoglu said, using an Arabic language acronym for the Islamic State group. "The Euphrates Shield operation will continue. The only goal of the Euphrates Shield operation is to clear Daesh from this area."
Associatd PressIt should be obvious to anyone who has paid attention to academia that conservatives are not welcome on our nation’s university campuses, either as students or as faculty. America’s higher education system is controlled by partisan Democrats, and Republicans are not eligible for employment. Nearly 100% of campaign contributions from liberal arts faculty go to Democrats. At Cornell University, for example, 97% of contributions from faculty went to Democrats. At Georgetown University, 96% of faculty donations went to Democrats. To maintain this ideological conformity, applicants for employment at many universities are now required to submit a “diversity statement,” George Leef explains:
The diversity statement has a purpose. That purpose, writes the paper’s author, Professor Bruce Gilley of Portland State University, is to weed out non-leftist scholars.
At many universities, he explains, there is an unspoken ideology that “emphasizes group identity, an assumption of group victimization, and a claim for group based entitlements.” On the other hand, “Classical liberal approaches that emphasize the pluralism of a free society, the universalism of human experience, and the importance of equality before the law have been regarded as invalid.”
Scholars who don’t demonstrate enough zeal for the former or any sympathy for the latter are put under a great disadvantage. The ideological purists who often dominate in hiring and promotion decisions don’t want dissidents in their schools if they can be kept out.
You can read the whole thing. It is worth recalling that the modern conservative movement in America more or less began in 1951 when a recent Yale University graduate named William F. Buckley Jr. published God and Man at Yale, an exposé of the liberal biases that were evident at what was then considered to be a conservative institution. Buckley’s book is still worth reading today, because the problem he identified — America’s intellectual elite had ceased to believe in the American value system — has proven to be so insoluble. There are now more Marxists on the Yale faculty than there are Christians. Indeed, there are probably more Marxists at Yale than in Pyongyang. And when was the last time Yale hired a Republican professor? The question therefore arises, why should Republican parents pay exorbitant tuition to send their children to universities that function as Democrat Party indoctrination centers?
“The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.” — Thomas Sowell (@ThomasSowell) January 25, 2017
(Hat-tip: George Piper at The College Fix.)
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CommentsThe buzz surrounding Nokia's keynote at this year's Mobile World Conference was unprecedented. The company's comeback has been the talk of the tech community for weeks and Nokia finally laid the tons of rumours to rest by announcing the global variant of the Nokia 6, Nokia 5, Nokia 3 and a re-incarnation of the legendary Nokia 3310.
While the Nokia 3, Nokia 5 and Nokia 6 might not come with internals that will blow you away or even some radical bezel-less design, they come with one feature that sets them apart from nearly all Android competitors out there - 100% stock Android.
Nokia's pure Android experience
In a market crowded with smartphones running such warped versions of Android that they fail to look like Android smartphones altogether, Nokia's decision to stick with stock Android is a stroke of genius.
Also Read: New Nokia 3310 vs old Nokia 3310: How much difference do 17 years make?
Every manufacturer, from big weights like Samsung and LG, to upcoming OEM's like Xiaomi, Huawei and LeEco heavily customise Android according to their own tastes in a bid to differentiate themselves from the competition. These skins are generally not optimised well and have a lot of redundant applications.
After Nokia's MWC event, Juho Sarvikas, Chief Product Officer, HMD Global told Gadgets 360 how design, build quality, timely updates and attention to detail would be the real differentiators for Nokia's new Android smartphones and not blind specifications alone.
Additionally, he elaborated on how the company's decision to stick with stock Android was a result of customer feedback which showed a demand for clean, easy to use, and snappy user interfaces. He said "The best way to do that is to do the purest form of Android out there. It makes it easier to roll out updates and commit to monthly security updates across the portfolio, so we can keep the consumer safe, and also deliver the latest features."
Apparently, Nokia did consider building their own launcher and dialler but ultimately scraped that plan as they ''did not want to do something different for the sake of doing something different''.
Specifications are not everything
OEM's these days also have a tendency to cram their smartphones with as powerful internals as they can in a bid to emerge victorious in the ludicrous specification war. What most companies fail to take into account is the importance of optimising the software and hardware to work seamlessly with each other.
This is where Nokia's strategy to concentrate on design and software rather than just blind specifications looks set to be a masterstroke. The best selling smartphone in the world - the iPhone has never had the best processor, the most high resolution display or an absurd amount of RAM. Where Apple does concentrate on is in terms of making sure the hardware and software work in tandem in order to make sure everything 'just works'.
In the Android World, Google has followed the same ideology with their Nexus and now Pixel line of devices. Regular and smooth Android updates, a seamless marriage of hardware and software and a UI without any clutter - those are the attributes which made the Nexus devices such a hit amongst Android purists and Nokia is set to imbibe the same qualities in their smartphones.
In a market crowded with smartphones running such warped versions of Android that they fail to look like Android smartphones altogether, Nokia's decision to stick with stock Android is a stroke of genius.
Google assistant at an all new price point
On top of having stock Android, the Nokia smartphones also come with Google's new AI based voice assistant on board. Google Assistant can be used to open apps, text someone, play/pause music, call your friends, post a tweet, make movie reservations and much more. Where it pulls ahead of both Siri and Cortana is the fact that Assistant is extremely smart. The more you use it, the more useful it will become.
While the Google Assistant will also ultimately appear on the LG G6 and the Samsung Galaxy S8, the Nokia smartphones, particularly the Nokia 3 and 5, will bring the voice assistant to a budget price point, making it accessible to far more users.
Timely Android updates
Nokia's 'pure Android approach' is a brilliant and refreshing move at a time when Android is getting more fragmented than ever and OEM's are lagging miserably behind when it comes to updating their devices to the latest version of Android and delivering monthly security updates.
According to data sourced directly from Google (as of February 2017), the latest version of Android - 7.0 Nougat has reached just 1.2% of Android users a whopping six months after release. Even Lollipop, which is now almost 2 years old has just reached 32.9% of Android users.
Such an appalling adoption rate clearly shows the extent of Android's fragmentation problem and Nokia's decision to stick with stock Android will help the company distinguish itself from the rest of the competition by offering timely updates.
This is the same strategy Motorola adopted upon its return to the smartphone game a few years ago before Lenovo bought the company and eventually brought it in line with other OEM's in terms of delayed updates.
Nokia's new smartphone line-up
Nokia 6
The Nokia 6, which has already been launched in China comes with 3GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, a 5.5' fullHD display and Qualcomm's Snapdragon 435 processor. When it comes to optics, it features a 16MP rear camera with PDAF and an 8MP front camera for selfies.
It will be available in four color variants namely Matte Black, Silver, Copper and Tempered Blue and will be launched at a price of 249 Euros. There is also an ARTE Black version of the smartphone with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage for 299 Euros.
Nokia's 'pure Android approach' is a brilliant and refreshing move at a time when Android is getting more fragmented than ever
Nokia 5
The Nokia 5 is the mid-range device and comes with a 5.2' 720p HD display, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage expandable via a microSD card and the same Snapdragon 430 processor. On the imaging front, it comes with a 13MP primary camera with PDAF and an 8MP front shooter.
It will be priced at 189 Euros and come in four color options, namely Matte Black, Silver, Copper and Tempered Blue.
Nokia 3
Lastly, there is the low-end Nokia 3 with a MTK 6737 quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of expandable storage, 8MP front and rear cameras and a 5.0' 720p LCD display for 139 Euros.
It will also be available in four color options, namely Tempered Blue, Silver, Matte Black and Copper.
Also Read: Nokia 5, Nokia 3 and Nokia 6 to be made in India, launch in June: ReportThe corporate headquarters at Target has been in turmoil and a pro-family organization knows one reason why.
As reported by Fox News and other outlets, many of the people on Target's ten-member executive team have changed over the last two years, some of them over the past few months.
"Recently we've seen reports that Target's CEO, their chief financial officer, and chief operating officer have all had their salaries slashed by up to 40 percent," says Walker Wildmon of the American Family Association.
U.S. News and World Report reported, in fact, that CEO Brian Cornell's already-generous salary was cut after a "bleak year" at the retail giant.
AFA has been on a year-long effort to urge Target to drop its controversial store policy that's meant to please homosexual activists and transgender customers. But it has backfired amid a public uproar over customer safety concerns and documented cases of sexual predators preying on women and girls in Target's restrooms and changing rooms.
Wildmon and AFA suggest the bad publicity and an online boycott have put a dent in Target's foot traffic, revenue and overall bottom line.
While he acknowledges that online giant Amazon has hurt other retailers, the AFA spokesman points out that Target is the only one that has seen its stock price plummet since AFA announced the boycott 13 months ago.
AFA's online boycott petition has now reached more than 1.5 million signatures and AFA representatives plan to visit Target headquarters this month to deliver the newest batch of signatures.
AFA President Tim Wildmon delivered one million signatures to Target executives last year, reporting later that the executives were polite but refused to back down.
Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal reported that Cornell did not approve of the blog post that publicized the transgender-friendly policy.
Not only was Cornell out of the office, says Wildmon, "he also disagreed with the way they went about it."Apple CEO Tim Cook said that his company will start a $1 billion fund to promote advanced manufacturing jobs in the United States.
"We're announcing it today. So you're the first person I'm telling," Cook told "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer on Wednesday. "Well, not the first person because we've talked to a company that we're going to invest in already," he said, adding that Apple will announce the first investment later in May.
The fund comes as President Donald Trump has made bringing back manufacturing jobs a big part of his agenda, and it fits into Apple's larger effort to create jobs across its spectrum, from its own employees to app developers to its suppliers.
As advanced manufacturing jobs are in high demand in the U.S., the sector was already high on Apple's list of priorities, and Cook hopes the investment will spur even more job creation.
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Ahmed Musa is close to agreeing a one-year loan move to Hull.
Hull have held talks with Leicester City this week and are confident of finalising a move before the deadline on Thursday.
This would see Musa reunite with Tigers boss Leonid Slutsky, who the City forward played under for four years at CSKA Moscow.
(Image: Dmitry Korotayev/Epsilon/Getty Images)
The 24-year-old has struggled to impress since his £16million move to Leicester last summer, and has scored just five goals in 33 appearances.
Musa did find the net in the Carabao Cup victory at Sheffield United, but had endured a torrid first-half performance at Bramall Lane.
Slutsky had hinted earlier in the window that a loan move was “possible” for Musa.
“He is not our player but, of course, every coach is better working with players he knows and I worked with Musa for four years,” said Slutsky. “I know him and he knows me.”
Musa’s finest performance for Leicester still remains the International Champions Cup game against Barcelona, where he scored twice.
Musa also scored twice in the FA Cup victory over Everton last season.In Germany there are severe penalties for committing an anti-Jewish crime. In fact, numerous people have been sent to prison just for saying the number of Jews who died in Nazi custody is fewer than six million.
However, most violent crimes against Jews are committed by Muslim Immigrants. Across Europe the left-wing panders to Muslims immigrants. The left-wing parties want open borders to import left-wing voters.
Consider this logic. Three Arab immigrants were convicted of firebombing a synagogue in Wuppertal, Germany. A German court has ruled that the perps can’t be given an enhance penalty for committed a hate crime. The court says the immigrants were motivated by a hatred of Israeli Jews, and not all Jews, and therefore did not commit a hate crime.
All three perps were given a wrist slap. The Judge suspended all jail time and gave them 200 hours of community service. Ethnic Germans are sent to prison just for speech that is deemed offensive to Jews. Muslim immigrants get no jail time for firebombing a synagogue!
From Israel Channel 7 News…
According to the court, the two defendants’ motives stem from anti-Zionism, not anti-Semitism – as a result they were released pending trial. The attack took place last summer during Operation Protective Edge. The pair, both of Palestinian Arab origin, threw firebombs at a synagogue in Wuppertal. Fortunately, none of the worshippers were injured. “The damage was mainly to the property, but this story reflects the readiness of Muslim extremists to act out against Jews,” Rabbi Avichai Appel, the Chairman of the Orthodox Rabbinical Conference of Germany, told Walla! News. Indeed, the paper reports that anti-Semitic attacks on Jewish institutions have multiplied steadily in the past month. Among other instances, a pig’s ear was placed at the entrance to a synagogue in Eisleben, swastikas were sprayed at the entrance to a Jewish cemetery in Oldenburg, and anti-Semitic graffiti was found adjacent to an apartment building in Bad Betrich. According to Appel, Wuppertal’s Jewish community will appeal the court’s decision regarding the motives of the two perpetrators.Prince was well known in the entertainment industry for having a vast body of works that have never seen the light of day. It has been said that his vault contains multiple unreleased albums and over 50 fully produced music videos that have never been released, along with albums and other media. The following is a list, in rough chronological order, of the most prominent of these unreleased works. Many were later released and circulated among collectors as bootlegs.
The Rebels [ edit ]
Before Prince formed The Time, he considered using his backing band as a side-project called The Rebels. The 1979 project was a group effort, with songs being written and sung by the various members (only Bobby Z and Dr. Fink did not sing). André Cymone and Dez Dickerson each contributed material and a few numbers were sung by Gayle Chapman. Instead of making something that sounded similar to his R&B solo output, Prince wanted go into more rock elements of songs such like "I'm Yours" and "Bambi". The project was eventually shelved feeling that the whole thing sounded too generic,[1] but two of the songs composed by Prince were re-recorded and released much later: "If I Love U 2 Night" by Mica Paris (and later by Prince's wife-to-be Mayte Garcia) and "You" (renamed "U") by Paula Abdul. The original Prince guide vocal for "If I Love U 2 Nite" appeared by mistake on the rare Mica Paris Stand for Love EP, of which only a handful exist. From 10–21 July 1979, the band recorded nine tracks together at Mountain Ears Sound Studio, Boulder, CO, USA:
"Too Long"
"Disco Away"
"Thrill You or Kill You"
"You"
"If I Love You Tonight"
"The Loser"
"Hard to Get"
Untitled instrumental by Dez Dickerson
Untitled instrumental by André Cymone
No further sessions under the name "The Rebels" are known to have taken place.
The Second Coming [ edit ]
The Second Coming was planned to be a documentary film and live album from Prince's Controversy Tour directed by Chuck Statler, that was shot on the 7 March 1982 concert at Bloomington, Minnesota. The tour was professionally filmed, with a storyline in-between songs, but the project was abandoned, likely due to Prince's schedule producing The Time and Vanity 6. The title comes from a prerecorded a cappella intro to the tour, immediately preceding the song "Uptown".
Setlist of the 7 March 1982 show at the Met Center, Bloomington, MN, USA
Apollonia 6 film [ edit ]
A mini film project as four-track video was filmed, loosely based on the Apollonia 6 album. It was directed by Brian Thomson, an Australian production designer of the original stage versions of The Rocky Horror Show and Jesus Christ Superstar, and scripted by Keith Williams (concept writer for music videos by Phil Collins, Ray Parker, Jr., and Donna Summer), with a cast comprising Ricky Nelson (as "Mr. Christian"), Edy Williams and Buck Henry. Shot in a Los Angeles film studio in 1985, and produced by British video firm Limelight, the video never went beyond the rough-cut stage. The songs featured on the film are "Happy Birthday, Mr. Christian", "Sex Shooter", "Blue Limousine" and "Ooo She She Wa Wa". The plot introduced three lingerie clad widows gathered to listen the reading of Mr. Christian's will and testament which leaves them nothing and encourages them to work. The imagery and set is very 1960's revamped into 1980's colorful graphic trends. The scenes show prominent neon words such as 'FILL' at a gas station for "Blue Limousine", where Brenda Bennett has the main vocal role, 'EAT' at a diner for "Ooo She Wa Wa", where Susan Moonsie leads while the two other find themselves struggling in front of piles of dirty dishes to wash. The part featuring Apollonia in fhe leading role features the word 'BUY' in a supermarket set.
The Flesh [ edit ]
The Flesh was a project of live jam sessions recorded in late 1985 to early 1986. The project was abandoned when Prince began work on Parade although a small instrumental portion of a track called "Junk Music" made it into the film Under the Cherry Moon. A circulating outtake from these sessions is titled "U Got 2 Shake Something".
The Flesh was a kind of precursor to Madhouse. All the tracks were jazz-funk instrumentals. The songs were recorded in 3 sessions soon after Christmas 1985 at Sunset Sound.
The first session was on December 28 '85:
Prince, Eric Leeds, Sheila E. and Levi Seacer, Jr. recorded 8 tracks:
"Slaughterhouse"
"U Just Can't Stop"
"Run Amok"
"Mobile"
"Madrid"
"Breathless"
"High Calonic"
"12 Keys"
Prince was so pleased with the results that they all returned to the studio 2 days later to record another 3 tracks:
"U Gotta Shake Something"
"Voodoo Who"
"Finest Whiskey"
On January 5 '86, Prince, Eric, Sheila and Levi returned to the studio once more, this time with Wendy & Lisa, and Wendy's brother, Jonathan Melvoin. They recorded another 6 tracks:
"Groove In C Minor"
"Slow Groove In G Major"
"Groove In G Flat Minor"
"Junk Music"
"Up From Below"
"Y'all Want Some More"
On January 22 '86 Prince assembled an album by "The Flesh" entitled Junk Music which consisted of the following tracks:
Side one
"Junk Music"
Side two
"Up From Below"
"Y'all Want Some More"
"A Couple Of Miles"
"Junk Music" was originally about 45 minutes long, but was edited down to 20 minutes for the album. "A Couple Of Miles" was an instrumental that Prince recorded on December 26 '85 (he also recorded "Can I Play With U" in the same session), Eric Leeds added some saxophone to it on December 30. The album was shelved due to the fact that Prince's time was taken up with other projects (Under The Cherry Moon, Parade and The Family). Prince liked the idea of releasing an instrumental jazz-funk album under a pseudonym. He finally got round to it in '87, but renamed the project Madhouse and ditched the old Flesh tracks in favor of fresh new recordings.
Prince and the Revolution: Dream Factory [ edit ]
Dream Factory was a single, then double LP project recorded with The Revolution from 1986. Revolution albums, the entire band (although essentially Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman) was invited into the studio and contributed to most of the original tracks. Many of the tracks would later be incorporated into Crystal Ball (see below) or be released through other outlets over the years.
Late April 1986 configuration
Side 1
"Visions" "Dream Factory" "It's A Wonderful Day" "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker" "Big Tall Wall" "And That Says What?"
Side 2
"Strange Relationship" (different version than released) "Teacher, Teacher" "Starfish and Coffee" (omits the alarm clock intro) "A Place In Heaven" "Sexual Suicide" (different version than released)
3 June 1986 configuration
Side 1
"Visions" "Dream Factory" "It's A Wonderful Day" "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker" "It"
Side 2
"Strange Relationship" (different version than released) "Teacher, Teacher" "Starfish and Coffee" (omits the alarm clock intro) "Interlude - Wendy" "In A Large Room With No Light" "Nevaeh Ni Ecalp A" "Sexual Suicide"
Side 3
"Crystal Ball" "Power Fantastic"
Side 4
"Last Heart" "Witness 4 The Prosecution" "Movie Star" "A Place In Heaven" "All My Dreams"
20 July 1986 configuration
Side 1
"Visions" "Dream Factory"/"Nevaeh Ni Ecalp A" "Train" (different version than released) "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker" "It"
Side 2
"Strange Relationship" (different version than released) "Slow Love" "Starfish and Coffee" (omits the alarm clock intro) "Interlude - Wendy" "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man" (different version than released)
Side 3
"Sign o' the Times" (version released as edit on the "Sign o' the Times" single) "Crystal Ball" "A Place In Heaven" (Lisa Coleman on lead vocals)
Side 4
"Last Heart" "Witness 4 The Prosecution" "Movie Star" "The Cross" "All My Dreams"
There is a bootleg CD available of the July 1986 track configuration, which comes with a color pencil sketch made by Susannah Melvoin as cover, which was a concept for the prospective album sleeve. This album cover is attributed to The Flesh rather than Prince and The Revolution.
Camille [ edit ]
Camille is an unreleased album by Prince, recorded in 1986. The album was planned to consist of 8 tracks recorded by the singer in a feminine, sped up vocal. The album was to be released under the name Camille (who would not be pictured on the cover) and not as a Prince album. The album was canceled weeks prior to its release and most of the tracks were incorporated into the unreleased album Crystal Ball, which evolved into Sign "☮" the Times. Most of the music has been released officially in some form or another, however, one song, "Rebirth of the Flesh" remains unreleased in its original form. In 2001, a live rehearsal of "Rebirth of the Flesh" recorded with the Sign "☮" the Times band was released on Prince's website. This version, however, had profanity edited from the lyrics.
Side one
" Rebirth of the Flesh ": Prince recorded this song at Sunset Sound on October 28, 1986, on the same day as "Rockhard in a Funky Place". When the Camille album was shelved, the song was slated for inclusion on Prince's next album project, Crystal Ball. It was going to be the opening track segueing into "Play in the Sunshine". The NPG Music Club made a 1988 Lovesexy Tour rehearsal recording available in September 2001, marking the point at which all the Camille tracks have now been officially released in some form, although the original studio version only circulates on bootlegs.
": Prince recorded this song |
demonstrate that he speaks Spanish, knows Mexican history and has assimilated to Mexican life.[VDARE.COM note: A previous Mexican Government had a very bad experience with some Texans who failed to assimilate. Remember the Alamo?] And he must have lived in Mexico for 5 years.
Certain classes of people, however, can get citizenship in less than 5 years. For example, an immigrant married to a Mexican, or parent of a Mexican child, can get it in 2 years. An adoptee can get it in 1 year.
And note this: Other preferences are based upon ancestry or country of origin. An immigrant of Mexican ancestry gets a preference and only has to wait two years. Immigrants from Latin America or the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) only have to wait 2 years for citizenship.
All other things being equal, this would give an immigrant from Spain a preference over an immigrant from Germany, an immigrant from Argentina preference over an American, and a Mexican-American would have preference over an Anglo-American.
Hmmm! What would happen if the U.S. gave preference to immigrants from the British Isles, Canada, and Australia? I imagine they'd call us racists. But it's a fact: Mexico gives preference to persons of Mexican ancestry, other Latin Americans and Spaniards.
In the U.S.A., a naturalized citizen can do almost anything that a natural-born citizen can do, except be president (and some people even want to change that).
But in Mexico, naturalized citizens are limited from many positions government positions, which are spelled out in the Mexican Constitution. A naturalized Mexican citizen can never serve in the military during peacetime, can never be a policeman, and can never be a pilot, captain or crew member on any vessel or aircraft bearing a Mexican insignia. (Article 32) And a naturalized Mexican can never be in charge of a port or airport.
A naturalized Mexican can never be president (Article 82), just as in the U.S. But he can also never be in the Mexican Congress (unlike ours) (Articles 55 and 58), can never be on the Supreme Court (article 95), and never be a governor of a Mexican state (Article 116) nor serve in the legislature or as mayor of Mexico City (Article 122).
The truth of the matter is, no matter how well-assimilated a naturalized Mexican is, he will always be a sort of second-class citizen.
And, while a natural-born Mexican can never be stripped of his citizenship, a naturalized Mexican can be (Constitution Article 37). A naturalized Mexican citizen could lose his citizenship by acquiring another nationality, working for a foreign government without permission, accepting titles or decorations from a foreign government or helping a foreigner or foreign nation in a diplomatic dispute or before an international tribunal.
Hmmm again. In other words, the kind of thing a lot of our Latino officials do all the time. But Mexican law flatly prohibits that sort of thing.
If it's good for the goose, isn't it good for the gander.
Bottom line: although the Mexican elite constantly attacks U.S. immigration policy, Mexico's own system is stricter, and explicitly focused on the interests of Mexico.
There's nothing wrong with that, it's their country. But our officials should not be intimidated one whit when scolded by Mexicans about immigration.
In fact, we ought to turn the tables and ask Mexico about its own immigration policy. And, frankly, we would be wise to import many aspects of Mexican immigration policy ourselves!
American citizen Allan Wall (email him) resides in Mexico, with a legal permit issued him by the Mexican government. Allan recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq with the Texas Army National Guard. His VDARE.COM articles are archived here; his FRONTPAGEMAG.COM articles are archived here his "Dispatches from Iraq" are archived here his website is here.AFTER a dismal result in the local elections in March, President François Hollande’s Socialists are steeling themselves for more bad news in the European elections. Their goal had been to beat the 16% they got in 2009, barely ahead of the Greens. Now some have lowered the bar, hoping merely to do better than in 1994 when, under Michel Rocard, the Socialists secured just 14.5%.
The latest polls suggest that Mr Hollande’s party will come third, with no more than 16-18%. Few incumbent European governments have a worse rating. Even the British Conservatives, whom the polls suggest will also come third, are on 22%. Other governments, notably in Germany and Italy, are in the lead. Why is Mr Hollande doing so badly?
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The answer is a mix of economic disappointment and political error. Growth stalled in the first quarter, dragged down by a 0.5% drop in consumer spending. This is worse than the euro average, and contrasts with a strong quarter in Germany and Britain. Unemployment remains high, at 10%. Another 23,600 private-sector jobs were lost in the first quarter. Such economic fragility has sapped confidence, the more so since Mr Hollande keeps telling voters that recovery is just around the corner. In 2012 he promised to bring down unemployment by the end of 2013; it kept inching up. Last month he said he had spotted an economic turnaround; growth turned out to be zero.
He has not done much better on taxes. In 2012 his government vowed that the richest 10% would pay for almost all its tax increases; yet last year, 840,000 extra households started to pay tax. The government now promises that it will exempt 1.8m of low earners this year. At a cost of €1 billion ($1.4 billion), this attempt to defuse a potential tax revolt is at once a relief for those concerned, and baffling: in effect, Mr Hollande is seeking to reduce the burden of measures that he was responsible for introducing in the first place.
Mr Hollande has tried to give himself a fresh start by appointing a new, dynamic prime minister, Manuel Valls. Mr Valls has given the government a sharper, more decisive tone. Yet the president’s popularity remains at 18%, a record low in the Fifth Republic, according to Ifop, a pollster—and fully 38 points below Mr Valls. The prime minister’s unusually high rating is partly down to support from the centre and even the right. His problem is his party’s left wing, which considers him too moderate. They see his recently announced €50 billion of spending cuts in 2015-17 as a betrayal of Socialist values. When Mr Valls put the plan to parliament, 41 of his own party’s deputies abstained.
Yet the biggest fallout from the European elections will come not from Mr Hollande’s poor showing but from the success of Marine Le Pen’s National Front. Eight out of nine polls taken this month put her on top, with about 23% against 21% for the centre-right UMP—and up from just 6% in 2009. She is capitalising on rising Euroscepticism, with promises to take France out of the euro and Schengen, explode the pro-European consensus and end diktats from Brussels. (Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president, has also called for powers to be returned from Brussels to national governments.) Ms Le Pen’s efforts to recast the Front as a party of power not protest have been carefully plotted. In the local elections the party won 12 town halls.
If Ms Le Pen comes first, however much that has been forecast, it will be a huge shock. It will knock the UMP sideways, exposing its difficulty in hanging on as the main opposition. And it will be a deep embarrassment to Mr Hollande. The National Front emerged in the early 1980s, thanks to the introduction of proportional voting and a Socialist promise—unfulfilled—to give foreigners the right to vote. The mastermind behind the idea? Mr Hollande’s mentor, President François Mitterrand.In the six-day war, I became personally involved. There was a major attempt to destroy Israel, and I found myself as a midshipman in the Royal Navy based on board a minesweeper in Aden, sent by Harold Wilson to sweep the straits of Tiran of mines after the Suez Canal had been blocked. In the aftermath of that war, which, clearly, the Israelis won, the Arab states refused peace, recognition or negotiation.
Six years later, in the Yom Kippur war in 1973, the same situation happened again. It was an emphatic defeat after a surprise attack. Since then, based on the boundaries that were framed after the Yom Kippur war, we have had three thwarted peace agreements, each one better than the last, and we have had two tragedies: the assassination of Rabin and the stroke suffered by Ariel Sharon.
Throughout all this, I have stood by Israel through thick and thin, through the good years and the bad. I have sat down with Ministers and senior Israeli politicians and urged peaceful negotiations and a proportionate response to prevarication, and I thought that they were listening. But I realise now, in truth, looking back over the past 20 years, that Israel has been slowly drifting away from world public opinion. The annexation of the 950 acres of the West Bank just a few months ago has outraged me more than anything else in my political life, mainly because it makes me look a fool, and that is something that I resent.
Turning to the substantive motion, to be a friend of Israel is not to be an enemy of Palestine. I want them to find a way through, and I am delighted by yesterday’s reconstruction package for Gaza, but with a country that is fractured with internal rivalries, that shows such naked hostility to its neighbour, that attacks Israel by firing thousands of rockets indiscriminately, that risks the lives of its citizens through its strategic placing of weapons and that uses the little building material that it is allowed to bring in to build tunnels, rather than homes, I am not yet convinced that it is fit to be a state and should be recognised only when there is a peace agreement. Under normal circumstances, I would oppose the motion tonight; but such is my anger over Israel’s behaviour in recent months that I will not oppose the motion. I have to say to the Government of Israel that if they are losing people like me, they will be losing a lot of people.CLOSE USA TODAY Sports' Tom Pelissero, Lindsay Jones and Lorenzo Reyes break down the showdown between Carolina and Arizona. USA TODAY Sports
Carolina Panthers head coach Ron Rivera reacts on the sideline during the fourth quarter against the Seattle Seahawks in a NFC Divisional round playoff game at Bank of America Stadium. (Photo11: John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports)
CHARLOTTE — As this city braces for a what is expected to be a severe mix of ice and snow beginning Friday morning, the Carolina Panthers are planning to adjust their practice schedule accordingly, while the Arizona Cardinals remain scheduled to leave Phoenix late Saturday morning.
“Our travel plans have not been affected by the weather,” Mark Dalton, the Cardinals’ vice president of media relations, told USA TODAY Sports in an e-mail Thursday.
Gov. Pat McCrory declared a state of emergency in North Carolina on Thursday. The city of Charlotte could see up to a half-inch of ice and more than 2½ inches of snow with the storm that it is expected to last through at least Saturday.
The Panthers will host the Cardinals in Sunday’s NFC championship game at Bank of America Stadium, with kickoff scheduled for 6:40 p.m. ET.
“We could play in this type of weather on Sunday,” Panthers coach Ron Rivera said Thursday. “If the front, from my understanding, slows down and lingers, there’s a chance it could end up being around for game time. We have got to prepare for it. If we have to go out and practice in it, we will practice in it.”
Rivera said the team got the bulk of its preparation in the Wednesday and Thursday practices. He added that Friday serves as a “refinement day with a couple little adjustments that will be tweaked.”
The coach and his team are staying flexible.
“We will adjust to it,” Rivera said of Friday’s practice schedule.
“As we get in and we see what’s happening, we can move things up or move things back.”
Scott Paul, the Panthers’ executive director of stadium operations, said he is confident the field at Bank of America Stadium will hold up despite the weather.
“I think we are comfortable where it is right now,” he said. “You’ve got to have the right cleats on and go play football.”
The condition of the field was an issue during last week’s divisional-round game against Seattle. Paul said that on Sunday night “we rolled it, we hand filled the larger divots and top dressed it this week and painted the field.”
As this storm approaches and hits the Charlotte area, tarps will remain on the field until precipitation stops.
***
Follow Eric Prisbell on Twitter @EricPrisbell
PHOTOS: Memorable conference championship gamesBerlin could soon be enjoying its very own legal marijuana, as the parliament of the trendy and hip Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district voted overwhelmingly in favor of a measure that could see the first legal coffee shop in the country.
After barely a month in office, the then-newly elected Mayor of the area, the Green Party’s Monika Hermann, came up with the idea in September to turn her district into a zone free of cannabis laws, akin to Amsterdam’s coffee shops or Copenhagen’s famed Christiania district.
The idea was born out of a realization that dealing with drug crime in the area’s famous Görlitzer Park was simply too much hassle for authorities, when their time could be better spent tackling hard drugs and organized crime.
According to Hermann, since the beginning of the year police have raided the park 113 times, detaining 984 people and launching criminal proceedings against 310 people.
The result of the district parliament’s vote has been turned into an application to be submitted to the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices. This should turn the infamous Görlitzer Park into a pilot project for marijuana legalization, the Berliner Zeitung reported on Friday, following the Green Party’s Thursday announcement.
The resulting petition was drawn up in cooperation with various experts, counseling centers and area residents.
“It's not that I want to create a happy drug country,” Hermann stressed. “But I believe that we can mitigate the problem of drugs in the park by it.”
She believes that the “ban policy has failed” and that “we must now think of unusual solutions.”
Although the possession and sale of soft drugs in Germany is still against the law, police leniency towards pot has been on the rise, while steps toward its decriminalization have been taking place since the mid-nineties.
One example of this is that possession of small amounts is no longer considered a criminal offense, while under the new proposed law, possession of as much as 15 grams could result in as little as a slap on the wrist.
There are grey areas everywhere in the application of the law as well, with the northern part of the country being more relaxed about the drug than the south, although leniency is evident all over. And this is a concern for some of Germany’s more leftist and democratic parties as well, with some of them asserting there are much harder and more dangerous drugs than pot.
Krezuberg will now seek to iron out the remaining legal issues with marijuana, including questions relating to who will be the distributors and sellers.
Noteworthy is the fact that according to Article 3 of the Narcotics Act, sufficient public interest has the potential to lead to legalization, provided that reasonable public and scientific evidence is given.
However, the German authorities don’t seem too thrilled by the idea of a coffee shop operating at Görlitzer Park.
“Cannabis is not a harmless substance, but holds for many, especially young people significant health risks,” Christina Köhler-Azara, Germany’s Drug Commissioner, stressed.
The Health Ministry spokeswoman said that a “drug is a drug”, and despite the fact that possession of small amounts of pot is allowed, selling it is still illegal.The TUV has confirmed that it is to contest one of the few DUP-held constituencies which could fall to the Ulster Unionists in May’s general election.
The party has chosen leader Jim Allister’s personal assistant, Richard Cairns, to stand in the heartland unionist constituency which borders Mr Allister’s North Antrim seat.
South Antrim MP William McCrea has the smallest majority of the DUP’s eight MPs.
The Rev McCrea beat Sir Reg Empey by a margin of just 1,183 votes in 2010, after the then UUP leader had been parachuted into the seat at short notice against a backdrop of internal in-fighting. In 2010 the TUV candidate, Mel Lucas, took 1,829 votes.
This time the UUP has chosen South Antrim MLA Danny Kinahan as its candidate.
Mr Allister said that Mr Cairns, who is vice chairman of the TUV, is “one of the new generation of TUV representatives” who is “young, able and committed to the principles of traditional unionism, as well as highly skilled in constituency work”.
The TUV leader described South Antrim as a “growth area” for his party and said that “thousands in South Antrim kindly voted for me in the European election last year”.
Mr Cairns missed out on a council seat in Antrim last year, polling just over nine per cent of the vote.
The 29-year-old Antrim man, who is a governor of Ballycraigy Primary School and a member of the loyal orders, said that he was “humbled” to have been selected.
He said that he would offer a “real alternative” to voters: “Westminster is subservient to Brussels, while Stormont is an unmitigated disaster. TUV seek the support to better our position – both the UK’s in terms of exiting the EU, and Northern Ireland’s by bringing the basics of democracy back to Stormont.”You're working on an important change to a GitHub project. It's a sizable change and adds a few good features. You've also been running the unit tests, integration tests, and linters frequently just like any good contributor would. Wouldn't want to break the build.
Everything comes up green!
Things are starting to shape up and you're ready to open your Pull Request. You push your changes up to your forked repository, open up a Pull Request and spend a good amount of time outlining the changes. You click Submit and watch as Travis spins up builders to run all the Continuous Integration tests when suddenly...
A red X appears in your commit status. Travis failed?
You look at the failing test and you don't understand why it's failing. It's going to be tough to see why it's failing too because everything passes on your machine. You have a few ideas though. You try each one in succession, waiting for your build to process all the way through each time. Builds sure are slow when you're watching waiting for that one issue to be reproduced. 😴
About five attempted fixes and an hour later you finally figure it out and commit the solution to the problem, everything goes green and you're left with a Pull Request that looks something like this:
What Just Happened?
Unfortunately your Continuous Integration environment is not the same as your developer environment. This happens to be the case for a lot of Open Source projects that rely on Travis CI for Continuous Integration. Debugging becomes a nightmare the instant that something fails on Travis that you can't reproduce on your local machine.
There aren't many options, and the only ones that seem to work involve wasting a lot of resources and time by continually pushing small debugging changes until something works.
A Solution to the Problem
Because of how much I have had to deal with this myself in my own personal work on Open Source I've developed a tool called trytravis which transparently sends your git repository (along with your local changes!) to Travis and tracks the builds as they progress in the command line all without needing to commit to the actual feature branch you're working on. (Can I get a 🙌?)
Here's an asciinema recording of trytravis in action building some changes that I have made locally:
View the source for trytravis on GitHub. Licensed under Apache-2.0.
Additional Awesome Features
The URL to your build will be displayed in the command line to allow easy access to builds without waiting for Travis CI to update which build is running.
No breaking your workflow: all the action occurs in the command line and you only need to go to the Travis website if something goes wrong.
Builders used by trytravis are independent of the builders for the project you're trying to commit to if you create a separate user. This means you don't have to wait forever for your jobs to build on large projects with lots of builds.
are independent of the builders for the project you're trying to commit to if you create a separate user. This means you don't have to wait forever for your jobs to build on large projects with lots of builds. You can configure which jobs will be built by modifying the.travis.yml file locally to pinpoint specific builds you want to focus on.
Installation and Setup
The installation and setup is a one-time undertaking. Once you've set it up once it will work with all of your projects. You can find the full details for setup and installation as well as usage documentation outlined in the README.md on GitHub. If you run into issues please don't hesitate to open up an issue on the issue tracker.
Don't forget to leave a star if you really like this project! I really appreciate it. ✨
Find Me on Twitter
I have a Twitter where I post about stuff that's important to me like Python, virtualization, and distributed computing. You can follow me if this tool or those topics interest you.
Thanks for reading! ✨🍰✨A man convicted of killing Holly Bobo avoided the death penalty Saturday after accepting a sentence that will keep him behind bars for the rest of his life-- plus 50 years.
Zachary Adams, 33, was found guilty Friday in the kidnapping, rape and murder of the 20-year-old Tennessee nursing student in 2011. Her skeletal remains were found three years later.
Judge C. Creed McGinley told a jury Saturday that Adams made a deal with prosecutors just minutes ahead of his sentencing hearing.
Under the agreement, Adams received a term of life without parole for Bobo's killing. He was sentenced to consecutive terms of 25 years on the kidnapping and rape counts.
McGinley told the jury that the deal with Adams was reached with "some reluctance."
The judge asked Adams if he voluntarily agreed to the deal that may have saved his life.
"Yes sir," Adams responded in a soft voice.
Bobo's mother Karen addressed the jury, telling the panel that her daughter was a loving person who "appreciated the small things in life."
"She was the sweetest soul I ever knew," Karen Bobo said.
Bobo disappeared from her home in rural Parsons on April 13, 2011.
On Sept. 7, 2014, two men in the woods came across the skeletal remains of what would be later identified as the nursing student. Her body was discovered about 400 yards into the woods in northern Decatur County, approximately 20 miles away from her parents’ home.
Bobo's disappearance led to a massive search of the farms, fields and barns of western Tennessee. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has said that the Bobo investigation was the most exhaustive and expensive in the agency's history.
But investigators found no DNA evidence connecting Bobo to Adams. Instead, they relied on testimony from friends and jail inmates who said Adams spoke of harming Bobo.
The trial in Savannah, Tenn., lasted 11 days.
Two other men, Jason Autry and Adams' brother, John Dylan Adams, also face charges of kidnapping, raping and killing Bobo.
Autry testified against Adams, telling jurors that Adams told him that he, his brother and their friend Shayne Austin had raped Bobo. Autry also said that he served as a lookout as Adams shot Bobo near a river on the day she was reported missing.
Autry was on a list of witnesses who were offered immunity in the case. He said he testified because he wanted leniency.
Autry's lawyer has told the judge that a trial does not need to be set for Autry, indicating he has reached a deal with prosecutors. A trial date has not been set for John Dylan Adams.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.Photo by Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports
As recently as 24 months ago, it was still both novel and somewhat cute to see the Pittsburgh Pirates winning baseball games. This was a team that, in the final weeks of the 2013 season, actually breathed a visible sigh of relief after winning their 82nd game, which ensured their first winning season since spindly Barry Bonds wore the black n' gold in 1992. This, even though the team was cruising at 81-61 entering said game. Those Pirates were a very good team that would go on to win 94 games, but there was still a fear, deep-seated and affirmed annually, that a season-closing 20-game losing streak somehow lurked under the bed.
There's nothing cute about the Pirates winning games anymore. It's what this team was built to do—this seems like a cliche, but try and figure out what this Pirates team, for instance, was built to do—and they do it. This season is young and things happen, but the Pirates have been one of baseball's best teams since recording that 82nd win. By making the playoffs in the fall of both 2013 and 2014, the Pirates join the Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Dodgers, Oakland A's, and St. Louis Cardinals—serious ballclubs, all—as the only teams in baseball with active streaks of playoff-making.
Read More: Chin Music And The Antidote To A Long Season
The main difference between the Pirates and a team like the monolithic Dodgers or the aggressively wholesome Cardinals is that, if you don't already have your allegiances established, you can feel pretty wonderful about following the Pirates as an unabashed, enthused bandwagoner. Actually: even if your major league allegiances are already established, odds are that what's going on in Pittsburgh is a hell of a lot cooler than what your local squad is futzing around with, and the Pirates hereby represent only temptation for your monogamous fan-heart. At the very least, the Pirates have a great case to be every baseball fan's second-favorite team.
What makes the Pirates wonderful is that, while they've been assembled by the most progressive of analytic minds, the players they've assembled play baseball like it's a party. To be sure, the Athletics have definitely been a party more years than not, but the A's flaunt their relative poverty, pre-gaming with Red Bull and letting the toilet flood the place. The Pirates' payroll is only $4M larger than Oakland's this year—call it a rounding error, or Antonio Bastardo And Change—but they have avoided a thrifty reputation despite pinching pennies as hard as any team in the sport.
More than that, the Pirates don't feel cheap. The Pirates' main attraction, stylistically speaking, is their outfield, which is a trio of superstars and superstars-in-development of such tantalizingly great skill that no fanbase could be greedy enough to realistically expect. The wild card, for now, is prospect of great import Gregory Polanco. Polanco has stoically hit his way to something like replacement level in his first hundred career games as a big leaguer, but he is just 23 years old and expected to be the present day weak link. (In the future, he is expected to be a regular 20/20 threat.) Most days, the other corner is manned by Starling Marte, who launched a home run on the first major league pitch he saw and has not quit since with the manic slugging and the uncanny, acrobatic fielding.
Yeah, it's cool that he's playing so well, but this Demonstrably Having Fun thing is a bit much. — Photo by Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports
For just about any other franchise, the fanbase would call it a blessing to receive a gift as blissfully entertaining as Marte, and cheerfully tab him the face of the franchise. But the Pirates already have a face of the franchise, and he is in fact as many degrees better than Marte is as Marte is better than your average left fielder. Andrew McCutchen is flying, rapidly, towards having his bronzed bust in the Hall of Fame, and he has only made it look like the easiest, most graceful, obvious thing in the world to do. I have myself sat in the bleachers, transfixed, just watching the man warm up, and enjoyed it more than many actual games. McCutchen is clearly a man who moves not just through the baseball field but through the entire world with uncommon smoothness. Like Hakeem Olajuwon and Karl Malone toiling in Michael Jordan's shadow, it feels true that McCutchen would be recognized as a generation's best player if only his generation did not include one Mike Trout.
An outfield, even one as gobsmackingly credentialed as this one, doesn't make a team go by itself. Most everybody else on the PIrates roster was once cast aside, traded for spare parts, and then lovingly coached into previously unfathomable potential. This includes the soft, quiet Radhames Liz, who is getting his first outs now as a member of the Pirates' bullpen after not appearing in the majors since 2009. This includes the saintly Francisco Cervelli, who dons the catcher's blue collar with the utmost enthusiasm. It includes A.J. Burnett, who would retire rather than pitch anywhere else.
More than anybody, it includes Josh Harrison, who came to the Pirates in a 2009 trade that sent, among others, Tom Gorzelanny to the Chicago Cubs. Last year, Harrison made the quantum leap from serviceable utility player—return enough for Gorzelanny—to dark horse MVP candidate, making a habit of wriggling out of pickles along the way.
We're coolly acclimated to projection systems now, expecting if not betting on today's quick bloomer to wither tomorrow. Harrison, gloriously, is having none of it. As he said to Bill West of the Pittsburgh Tribune: "Regression, succession, whatever—let them speak, that's what they talk about, because that's all they can talk about. I feel like this is only the beginning."
This might sound like a refutation of the Pirates' data-driven ways of doing business, but really it's not. Let them speak, Harrison says—those voices from outside the Pirates organization, the only organization savvy enough to guide Harrison into being all he could be. It's a confident way to think and a fairly bold thing to say, and it suits the Pirates fine.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Kofi Annan: "The level of violence and abuse is unacceptable"
UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan has told the Security Council that his peace plan could be the "last chance to avoid civil war" in Syria.
He told a closed session that the plan was "not an open-ended commitment" and highlighted continuing violations.
The Syrian army is now using fewer heavy arms, he said, but human rights violations appear to be intensifying.
His comments come after the Red Cross appealed for an extra $27m (£17m) to fund its Syria operation this year.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the only international aid agency working inside Syria, says hundreds of thousands of people remain in need of humanitarian assistance.
Rapid deployment urged
Mr Annan told the Security Council he was particularly concerned that torture, mass arrests and other human rights violations were "intensifying".
He also told the council that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad bore "primary responsibility" for ending the military campaign.
After the briefing, he told a news conference that the ceasefire-monitoring mission was "the only remaining chance" to stabilise Syria.
Image caption Some Syrians voted in parliamentary elections on Sunday, but opposition groups boycotted the polls
"There is a profound concern that the country could otherwise descend into civil war, and the implications of that are quite frightening. We cannot allow that to happen," he said.
The peace plan brokered by Mr Annan was agreed a month ago and includes the deployment of 300 UN monitors, but it has failed to end the violence in Syria.
America's UN envoy Susan Rice said Washington was committed to increasing the pressure on Mr Assad to step down.
"So far, it's plain that the Syria regime has not fully implemented any of the six points of JSE Kofi Annan's plan," she wrote on her Twitter feed.
In the latest incident activists said two civilians died in Idlib province.
While some parts of Syria have seen intermittent periods of calm, in many other areas there has been no let-up in the violence, the ICRC says.
ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger said he had doubts as to whether Mr Annan's ceasefire plan could succeed.
"For [it to succeed], the deployment of the UN observers really [has to be] a rapid deployment. So far, very few are there," he told the BBC.
Access plea
The ICRC said it has had one positive development, after gaining permission from the Syrian authorities to visit detainees in Aleppo prison later this month.
There are no clear figures about how many people have been detained since the conflict began, but the ICRC believes there are likely to be many thousands, most of whom have had no access to lawyers or to their families.
It also said gaining unrestricted access to conflict areas is a top priority. The organisation hopes to
provide food for 100,000 people
supply basic household items for 25,000
and to restore public services such as water and electricity to 1.5 million
To do that, it needs the co-operation of both the government and the opposition. Several Red Crescent workers have already been killed in the violence.
On Sunday, parliamentary elections promised last year by Mr Assad were held.
They were the first in 40 years not to guarantee a majority for the ruling Baath Party, but opposition groups dismissed them as a sham and called for a boycott.The situation regarding DC Entertainment and a statue of a little boy who tragically lost his life is a difficult one. Much more difficult than I see anyone giving credit to on fansites or in the comics “media.”
A little context: At the time, I was working in Toronto at a news radio station, so I was front and center for the coverage of this horrible story and the subsequent trial of those who perpetrated it.
Jeffrey Baldwin was a 5-year old boy who was abused and starved to death by the people who should have cared for him the most, his Grandparents. At the time of his death, Jeffrey weighed a little more than a baby and had spent most of his life locked in a room strewn with filth and human waste. Social Services failed Jeffrey (and his sister who went through similar conditions) in one of the worst events I had to cover.
That is the story here.
But what I see happening all over the internet is exactly why DC was right to decline to let Superman’s logo be used in a statue in tribute to Jeffrey. The story has become about DC and not about a little boy who’s life was cut short.
If there was a small statue erected of a little boy with a Superman outfit on, most people who saw it would think “look at that statue of Superboy.” That doesn’t pay tribute to Jeffrey. That makes the story about something it’s not and for that reason alone, I can understand the decision that was made by DC Entertainment.
Even the artist and the gentleman who commissioned the statue, Ottawa resident Todd Boyce, seem to understand this, commenting “To be fair to DC, I don’t think they wanted to say no. I think they gave it serious thought.”
But what I see all over the internet, especially in the comics “media,” are stories and click-bait headlines that vilify DC with only a paragraph’s mention of Jeffrey.
I get it. I understand that it seems like an easy thing, to pay tribute to a little boy. And yes, DC could have handled this better at the PR level. But is that what should really be happening here? Taking the story about the tragic death of a 5-year old and turning it into a commentary on a corporation’s PR?
I’m sure there are people shaking their fists at screens and saying that I don’t get it and that’s fine, no one has to agree with me. But, I saw what happened to this kid and the thing that should be remember, the ONLY thing that should be remembered is that he was innocent and those meant to love and care for him failed him miserably.
In my opinion, the Superman-stylized “J” that will adorn the statue is a far better tribute to Jeffery because it’s about Jeffery and not a fictional character, or a corporate handling of said character. I’ll still feel that way when I visit the memorial once it is erected and I’ll still feel that way every time I think about what Jeffery went through.
Because that’s the story.
-Mossschlangster for the original inspiration behind the mod and the widgets. ousnius for his help in correcting meshes for the conversion to SSE. psychosteve for the icons used for the widgets. volvaga0 for the waterskins. perseid9 for the salt water coordinates. Hunger, thirst, fatigue sound effects are from FWE. More specifically from Primary Needs by K.Schenk and FritZ_FretZ. Water Pouring by Iwan Gabovitch under CC-BY 3.0 License.
Addons
This mod gains additional features depending on other mods you have installed.
Snow melting rates are reduced in the cold. Travelling NPCs may be equipped with waterskins, which will allow purchasing of refills from them.
Overview
Hunger: Prepared food tends to be more filling. Soup will lower thirst in addition to hunger. Eating raw meat will still lower hunger but may make you sick.
Thirst: Water and alcohol will quench thirst. Water can be carried in waterskins, which can be crafted at leather racks, purchased from innkeepers or general goods merchants and can sometimes be found on NPCs. You will begin a game with one empty waterskin in your inventory. They can be refilled through the following methods when empty:
Collected by standing in bodies of fresh water and clicking on an empty waterskin or in the form of snow (see Extended section below).
Collected from any open wells, water barrels or water kegs. Water barrels and kegs can be crafted at a forge or bought from general goods merchants. They will never disappear unless disassembled so feel free to construct them in/outside your home or for your favorite NPCs.
Collected from any upright bucket or kettle out in the open when it's raining.
|
gained is not just weight: when the Jiangning microblog celebrated its third birthday in March, Wang put aside his signature jokes and instead posted an emotional letter thanking the public for their support.
It was forwarded over 10,000 times, outnumbering some of his funniest jokes. Many netizens expressed their sincere thanks, while others fancied the handsome portrait of Wang attached to the post.
"There were remarks saying the microblog has given them a fresh impression of the Chinese police. I was very touched when I read them," Wang said.Update: Since this story broke, a number of readers have directed us to this Arstechnica story, which details the fact that Microsoft has changed its licensing terms around its OEM version of Windows for Windows 8, to make it quite legal for people to buy and use that version as a stand-alone full copy of Windows 8, including for purposes such as in virtual machines and for new custom-built machines without a bundled operating system. It appears as if this OEM version of Windows 8 is available from some online retailers in Australia such as Scorptec, but that it may not be available as a boxed version in all stores.
blog Microsoft’s latest operating system opus, Windows 8, launched in Sydney this morning in a glitzy, star-studded marketing launch packed full of information. Well, actually it was more packed with product demos where Redmond’s local managing director Pip Marlow raved about the new platforms’ Live Tiles functionality and how they could be personalised. Your writer couldn’t take it any more and left early. But I digress.
Because of this launch and the midnight festivities hosted by Harvey Norman, you’d think that you’d be able to waltz into a local retailer and pick up a full boxed copy of Windows 8 this morning. A statement in Microsoft’s Australian launch media release this morning appeared to confirm this. It stated: “At launch, Windows 8 Pro will be available for purchase as a Full Packed Product (off the shelf product).”
But, strange as this may sound, this isn’t the case yet — Microsoft is only selling upgrades so far. Gizmodo reports the following nugget, dug out of Marlow this morning (we recommend you click through for the full article):
“Want to buy a full version of Windows 8 to install on a new machine? You’re out of luck. Microsoft just confirmed at its Australian Windows 8 launch that the only offers on sale today are an upgrade for existing Windows machines to Windows 8 Pro.”
Now, of course Microsoft has been heading down this path for a long time. Those of us who build their own PCs will recall the struggle to buy full boxed copies of Windows XP when Microsoft stopped selling them. Virtually the only way you could buy a full legal copy of Windows XP, at various points, was through slightly dodgy ‘OEM’ copies that were supposed to be provided through Microsoft’s reseller network only with a new PC. But with the rules not being strictly enforced, you could usually get away with buying a new video card, for example, and getting a full OEM copy of Windows XP on the side. The situation got better with Windows 7, but it looks like Microsoft has reverted to form with Windows 8.
Of course, this isn’t an issue for large enterprises, which will have standardised agreements with Microsoft that allow them to download any version of Windows they want, and source licences online for the software. And it won’t be an issue for many, perhaps most, consumers and small businesses, who don’t always do in-place upgrades of the software running on their devices; many people simply buy new devices when they want to upgrade. It appears as though this is Microsoft’s preferred way for people to buy Windows 8 — through buying a new, touch-sensitive, Windows 8-capable device, with the new operating system already in place.
In addition, we’re hearing that Microsoft has relaxed the rules on OEM purchases of Windows 8 a little — so that if you’re building a new PC, you’ll pretty easily be able to buy a copy of the operating system to go with it. It’s not quite as dodgy a practice as it used to be.
But all of this does remind me a little of the difference between Microsoft and Apple. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he famously emphasised continually to the company’s staff that it was a products company — it designed, manufactured and sold products, and it needed to control every aspect of that ecosystem. Apple, it seems, learnt that lesson very well. But on launch morning, with no way for consumers to actually buy full copies of Microsoft’s new product from it, one does have to wonder whether Apple’s biggest and longest-term rival has yet to understand that concept.
Image credit: MicrosoftHow many handheld gaming consoles-stroke-platforms can you name? Chances are a good few. But is there room for another?
The ‘Nd’ project hopes so.
nD = Indie
The nD is a new handheld ‘indie’ gaming console currently under development that will run a custom Linux OS, making it ideal for current open-source developers to port their games over to.
The device will be sold for just $20 – the price it costs to make.
Games developers will be free to develop on the nD with the option to sell their wares through the nD “App Store”, receiving a healthy 90% cut for each purchase. The remaining 10% will go to Nd.
Promotional video ahoy: –
The man behind the project
The project is steered by self-taught game developer Robert “Bob” Pelloni. Bob is infamous in the gaming community for staging a 100 day protest at Nintendo for delaying, and eventually denying him, official developer status.
If you can’t join ’em, beat ’em?
How far along is it?
The Nd console is in ‘development’ and no units are available for purchase.
Bob says: –
“We have a couple working prototypes. development boards are being prepared and will be made available.”
Further information
The nD site can be found @ the-nd.com.
Thoughts
I should note that I am not a Business Major. Hell, I even slept through compulsory business modules during University.
But it’s hard to see how this project will come to fruition.
Bob is currently seeking investment to bring the nD to market.
For me, the idea of selling hardware at cost is unattractive. Even a dollar profit from each console would be more a more enticing prospect sat alongside a slice of 10% from software sales in an untested software store to an untested market.
To go on a tangent, it seems that ‘App Stores’ are the new Gold Rush.
Whilst Apple’s iOS App Store has made a handful of developers millionaires Google’s Android and Chrome WebStores, as well as Apple’s desktop App Store, are all posting very small sales.
Couple this with the launch of a platform that, on the surface at least, could prove attractive to open-source developers creating free games, and the chance of the nD making any kind of substantial profit starts to look small.
I wouldn’t put the nD on your Christmas lists just yet, folks.In March 2017, Bitfinex introduced an innovative new token class called a Chain Split Token (CST). CSTs allow market participants to speculate on the future outcome of a potential cryptocurrency protocol change. In March, that potential forking event concerned Bitcoin Unlimited.
Now, we are launching a new pair of CSTs for another proposed consensus change: Segwit2x
Bitfinex is introducing new CSTs that will allow traders to speculate on the potential activation and mining of the Segwit2x consensus protocol. We are designating these CSTs as BT1 (Incumbent Bitcoin Blockchain) and BT2 (Bitcoin Segwit2x).
These CSTs will trade against BTC and USD pairs, initially, without financing capabilities. We will reevaluate that decision at a later date if and as there is sufficient liquidity.
Users will be able to create or destroy these new CSTs in any amount using the Token Manager located in the Order Type drop down menu of the sidebar order ticket. Upon creation, the BTC will be debited from your account and an equivalent amount of BT1 and BT2 will be credited. Users will also be able to reverse this process at any time, trading in equal numbers of BT1 and BT2 to extract BTC. Please refer to the Segwit2x CST Terms & Conditions for more information.
Motivation
One of the interesting characteristics of open-source projects is that developers are free to split the code into new projects if they want to take a project in a new direction. In open-source terms, this is called forking the project.
Bitcoin is an open-source project, and there is a scheduled change in the consensus protocol called Segwit2x, the specifications for which can be found in the Github repository https://github.com/btc1/bitcoin.
Because the value of a network grows exponentially as the size of the network grows, it is advantageous to have only one version of Bitcoin. For this reason, in the future, the dominant Bitcoin implementation will likely converge on either Segwit2x or remain on the incumbent version that uses the consensus protocol defined on the Github repository https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.
At this time, the Bitcoin ecosystem, through node and miner signalling, is trying to decide which protocol consensus rules it wants to support. This has introduced uncertainty and speculation about the value of each respective blockchain and the future of the Bitcoin network. This uncertainty affects many of our users who trading using financing. CSTs will provide a pricing continuity through the Chain Split Event and, in particular, the order books for the BT2 trading pairs will become the order books for the B2X pairs.
We have reached out to consult, share ideas, and elicit feedback on this process. We welcome more and continued discussion and debate so that we can improve on these kinds of product offerings in the future.
We hope that this innovation brings some much-needed price discovery for the future of the Bitcoin ecosystem.Image copyright ScotRail
The first journey on the new electric ScotRail route took place early on Wednesday morning.
The Class 385 train travelled between Edinburgh and Linlithgow, the first trip on the electrified line.
It is one of 70 trains being introduced to Scotland's busiest route, from Edinburgh to Glasgow via Falkirk.
The project has been hit by delays and risings costs. Further testing is needed before a launch date will be decided "at the turn of the year".
The train completed the journey at 02:00 on Wednesday, testing the infrastructure and overhead equipment. Built by Japanese company Hitachi, it is still waiting for its interior to be fitted.
As part of the Edinburgh Glasgow Improvement Programme (EGIP), the electric trains will, at first, only run between the two cities. Once these have been introduced, the 385 trains will also operate on suburban routes south of Glasgow and to Dunblane, Stirling and Alloa.
Image copyright ScotRail
The trains do not have a heavy engine, meaning that they are able to travel faster than the diesel trains currently in use. They will also be able to offer passengers more seats, say ScotRail.
Ian McConnell, director of programmes and transformation for ScotRail Alliance said the trial "was a hugely important step towards completing the electrification of the line."
"That it has gone so well tells us that we are almost ready to begin the next stage - which is to start fully testing the new trains themselves," he said.
According to ScotRail, once final safety checks have been carried out along the remaining areas of the route, full testing of the new trains will begin.
Andy Radford, Hitachi Rail Europe programme manager said: "We've now got trains at our factory in Newton Aycliffe ready to travel to Scotland as soon as they can run on the new electric power line."GOP Pushes First Amendment Defense Act After Same-Sex Marriage Ruling
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
Just as some states passed what they called Religious Freedom Restoration Acts in anticipation of the Supreme Court legalizing same-sex marriage, there's now a proposed federal law to protect people who find same-sex unions contrary to their faith. Republican sen. Mike Lee of Utah has introduced a bill called the First Amendment Defense Act. Sen. Lee, welcome to the program once again.
MIKE LEE: Thank you very much. It's good to be with you.
SIEGEL: Your bill says that if a person or institution acts on a religious belief that marriage is a union between one man and one woman, it shouldn't be denied a federal tax exemption or a contract, a grant, a license. Does that mean that, say, a university with religious affiliation and federal grants can deny employment to anyone married to a person of the same sex?
LEE: A religious institution, whether an educational institution or otherwise, just like an individual ought not have to choose between adhering to religious belief and, on the other hand, doing whatever it is that that person or that entity does, there ought not be a penalty attached to a religious belief. Our country, as I explained in my book "Our Lost Constitution," was founded on a proud tradition of religious freedom and tolerance. This is especially important when it comes to government discrimination - government retaliation based on religious belief. And that's what this bill is aimed at prohibiting.
SIEGEL: But I take that - I think the short answer there is yes, a university with religious affiliations and federal grants should be allowed to deny employment to somebody married to a person of the same sex.
LEE: Part of their academic freedom and part of their religious freedom not to include deciding how to operate, which faculty to hire, which students to admit, including decisions on the basis of religious belief. The university - the college in question ought to be able to decide what kinds of people that it wants teaching because that, in turn, influences what will be taught by the university. It becomes the university's speech. Part of our rich tradition of academic freedom in this country includes the rich diversity that comes about as a result of religious education.
SIEGEL: I want to see how far your understanding of this freedom should go. If I and my neighbors believe that as a matter of faith, homosexual relations are wrong, can my neighborhood have codicils attached to property that ban the sale to same-sex couples?
LEE: No. I believe that under the Supreme Court's ruling, that would probably not pass muster. I'd have to consider your hypothetical a little bit further. I don't see that as analogous to what we're facing here where we've got a religious college or university as part of that college or university's core belief system. The type of discrimination we're trying to deal with here and we're trying to prohibit with the First Amendment Defense Act is a particularly nasty form of discrimination which involves discrimination by the government against an individual or a group thereof on the basis of religious belief.
SIEGEL: Yeah. But what do you say to, let's say, the fired faculty member or the not-hired faculty member I hypothetically put to you who says, hey, it's the law of the land. The Supreme Court says that what I've done is legal. It used to be - there used to be laws against people of different races being married and people had religious convictions about that. That's the law of the land too now that you can marry outside of your race. You're discriminating against me, or legalizing discrimination.
LEE: But it's not the law of the land that the government can or should retaliate or discriminate against an individual or group of individuals based on their religious belief about what marriage is. And we're not, moreover, in a society in which people who are either gay or lesbian who are married to a member of the same sex, for example, are subject to widespread discrimination. There is no shortage in the United States of colleges and universities and other employers of all types, of all sorts, who are willing to hire. In fact, I think it is the norm that colleges, universities and employers overwhelmingly have absolutely no problem with it. I think it's a relatively small minority of schools, probably consisting entirely of religious colleges and universities who might have a different view.
SIEGEL: Your bill does not just protect people who believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. It also says it protects the belief that sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage. So same question about the university - I mean, can a college or an institution fire a woman on the payroll because she's had sex with a man when both are unmarried?
LEE: There are colleges and universities that have a religious belief that sexual relations are to be reserved for marriage and that, for religious reasons, recognize a marriage as an institution between a man and between a woman. Those colleges and universities have the right to make that decision on their own. Now, most colleges and universities don't have that. It is, again, a slim a minority of those that do. But those that do have this ought to be protected in their religious freedom.
SIEGEL: Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, thanks for talking with us today.
LEE: Thank you.
SIEGEL: Sen. Lee, Republican, is the sponsor of the bill called the First Amendment Defense Act. He spoke to us from Capitol Hill.
Copyright © 2015 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.Milly Dowler family solicitor claims private detectives compiled file on lawyers dealing with claims against News of the World
A solicitor acting for victims of phone hacking has given police an alleged dossier compiled by private detectives about him and other lawyers dealing with damages claims against the News of the World.
Mark Lewis, who represents the family of the murder victim and phone-hacking target Milly Dowler, said the dossier – believed to contain information about the lawyers' lives – was aimed at securing an "unfair advantage" in legal cases.
News International would not confirm the accuracy of the alleged document, but said none of its current executives had sanctioned activity of this type.
Lewis, who has acted for phone-hacking victims including the chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association, Gordon Taylor, said: "Someone thought it was a good idea to see if they could get information. It is entirely reprehensible and completely wrong.
"It doesn't scare me, it doesn't bother me, but it is an apparent attempt to try to gain an improper advantage."
He said the file appeared to have been put together between December 2010 and January this year, "long after" he represented Taylor but before he represented the Dowler family.
Lewis said he had passed the dossier, and other claims that his phone might have been hacked, to police: "As soon as I was notified about it, I reported it to the police, who are investigating it," he said.
A News International spokesman said: "Current News International executives did not sanction any activity of this type."
The issue is likely to be raised with the former News of the World legal manager Tom Crone when he gives evidence before the Culture select committee on Tuesday.by David Ward
As you might imagine of an Uncut writer, my involvement with Momentum so far hasn’t been extensive. So when I heard they were planning to have their own conference alongside Labour’s in Liverpool I thought this would be a great chance to see what it was all about.
My first try wasn’t a success. Turning the corner onto Great George St, I walked towards what looked like a mass of people milling around outside the venue, ticket in hand.
Then I realised – this wasn’t a crowd, it was a queue. There was a line right round the building and what seemed to be a one in one out system.
Feeling the draw of free reception wine back at party conference, I began to get that uncomfortable middle aged feeling when all the young people at work start talking about bands you’ve never heard of.
Still, undaunted I returned next day for an event titled, “What is Momentum For?” Being a paid up member of the Blairite establishment I suppose I expected a panel discussion with some leading lights of the organisation.
Instead I walked into a room where a cross section of ages seemed to drinking cups of tea around tables, and t-shirts on sale at the sides.
Clearly I’d come to the wrong place, this was the Momentum café or something. No. The whole thing was being run as a seminar. We were around tables arguing about the central questions facing the organisation.
‘What is a social movement?’ ‘How can Momentum help Labour be a social movement?’ ‘What structure should it have?’ ‘How should we engage with the media?’ ‘What campaigns should we run?’
In a touchingly unvarnished way we wrote our contributions down with marker pens on blank A3 sheets to be collected up at the end. Still, having come from the subdued atmosphere of the official conference you couldn’t deny the room was buzzing with excitement.
I’m not sure everyone quite knew what the excitement was about, but you could feel it nonetheless.
It quickly became clear to me it’s wrong to think of there being one Momentum. There’s at least two, maybe four. And some of them could end up being quite useful for the party.
Some people just wanted acceptance and an outlet for radical views they feel haven’t been represented properly before. Or a forum to discuss ideas outside some formal GC meeting, “moving beyond being election monkeys”.
Then there are the single issue obsessives. One earnest young man next to me answered almost every question with a call for introducing a Cardinal Voting system. “What’s that?” someone asked. He did explain but everyone looked a little confused.
Others wanted to become a movement rooted in communities which could organise and take action to solve local issues, like housing problems.
There was little agreement on how Momentum should even be organised. Some people wanted elections and party posts. Others didn’t want to create separate power bases to the Labour party. As one lady said at my table “It seems like there’s two Momentums at the moment. Labour Momentum and this People’s Momentum.” If they took the latter route she want didn’t any part of that.
“We should remove the party whip from MPs!” thundered one man to a round of applause. “Whoever is standing as Labour candidate in any election, whatever their views, we have to get behind them to win elections and win people’s trust” cried another to (more limited) approval.
Many on the moderate wing of the party view Momentum supporters with a great deal of suspicion. But I’m not sure that’s not a useful way forward. Lots of people there felt slandered and patronised by members of their own party. If we carry on like that there’s a danger the route they take could be angry and oppositional.
And let’s face it, who hasn’t become tired of party meetings with abstract motions at some point. Who hasn’t thought we need an injection of enthusiasm and the confidence to think anew about how Britain solves its problems, from Brexit to housing.
As I got up to leave I thought if Labour can help shape this energy into something that helps us develop new ideas, and make a difference to communities around the country, this could be really powerful.
Then I got a tap on the shoulder, “About Cardinal Voting – I’ve drawn you a diagram”. “It looks complicated” said the lady next to me. “Yes, you might struggle with that” I replied. In a way, that summed up the afternoon.
David Ward is a Labour campaigner in south London
Tags: david ward, hard left, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour conference 2016, MomentumManchester United captain Wayne Rooney was surprisingly the fastest player on the home side during the win over Queens Park Rangers.
Argentina speed merchant Angel di Maria was bought for £60million to add an injection of pace but it was the skipper who clocked the quickest sprint on Sunday.
Rooney reached a top speed of 20.3 miles per hour when attempting to out-sprint former United centre back Rio Ferdinand, who was making his first return to Old Trafford since leaving the club in the summer.
Wayne Rooney (pictured) clocked the fastest sprint speed for Manchester United against QPR on Sunday
Angel di Maria, Manchester United's £60million summer signing, clocked the second-quickest sprint vs QPR
Angel di Maria celebrates after scoring for Manchester United and he clocked the second fastest sprint
Wayne Rooney fires home emphatically to put Manchester United 3-0 up before half-time against QPR
Daley Blind (right) reached a fastest sprint-speed of 18.9mph against QPR on his Manchester United debut
TOP SPRINT SPEED COVERED BY MANCHESTER UNITED PLAYERS VS QPR (Stats courtesy of Opta)
The 28-year-old netted one of United's goals as they comfortably saw off Harry Redknapp's men 4-0 at Old Trafford.
British record signing Di Maria, who cost £60m from Real Madrid, was a close second (20.1mph), followed by Antonio Valencia (20.0mph) and Jonny Evans, who finds himself joint third-fastest.
Falcao's quickest sprint was just 17.9mph during his 23 minutes on the pitch, while Daley Blind (18.9mph) and Herrera (18.3mph) were ninth and tenth fastest respectively.
The final summer signing on display, Marcos Rojo, slotted in nicely at the back for United - reaching a top speed of 19.1mph.
Radamel Falcao's fastest sprint during his debut for Manchester United against QPR was just 17.9mph
Ander Herrera scored his first Manchester United goal against QPR and also covered the most distance
Daley Blind enjoyed a fantastic debut for Manchester United, controlling player and covering 7.4 miles
Marcos Rojo takes control of the ball for Manchester United as he covered an impressive 7.1 miles vs QPR
Jonny Evans recorded the joint-third fastest sprint for Manchester United in their 4-0 victory over QPR
Interestingly, however, Herrera and Blind covered the most ground for United on Sunday - highlighting how important they can be to Van Gaal's side.
Blind enjoyed a stellar performance, running a total of 7.4 miles (11,854.8 metres), yet Herrera covered even more ground.
The Spaniard, signed for £29m from Athletic Bilbao, ran an astonishing 7.6 miles (12,163.1m) - more than 10 per cent of the whole team's distance covered of 72.3 miles.
Rojo (7.1 miles) and Rooney (6.9 miles) also worked extremely hard for Van Gaal, with Tyler Blackett and Evans (6.5 miles each) covering the least distance of the men who played 90 minutes, highlighting just how little they were forced to do defensively by the visiting side.
You can like our Manchester United Facebook page here
DISTANCE COVERED BY MANCHESTER UNITED PLAYERS VS QPR (Stats courtesy of Opta)31 August 2013. More on this topic: http://cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/ 30 August 2013 Jon Callas: NSA Exploit Isn't Crypto, It's SMTP Subject: Re: Who bought off Zimmermann?
From: Jon Callas <jon[at]callas.org>
Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2013 16:12:41 -0700
To: John Young <jya[at]pipeline.com>
Cc: cpunks <cypherpunks[at]cpunks.org> On Aug 25, 2013, at 5:36 PM, John Young <jya[at]pipeline.com> wrote: > Phil probably means the infrastructure of email is the vul not the
> crypto. Crypto alone is sterile, a boy in a bubble which requires
> life support which can be assaulted. That's precisely what we mean. The crypto is the easy part. The hard part is the traffic analysis, of which the worst part is the Received headers. Everyone should look at their own headers -- especially people on this list and at least comprehend that your email geotracks you forever, as it's all in the Mailman archive. There are plenty of other leaks like Message-ID, Mime-Version, X-Mailer, the actual separators in MIME part breaks, and so on. It's absolutely correct that some combination of VPNs, Tor, remailers of whatever stripe, and so on can help with this, but we're all lazy and we don't do it all the time. What we're learning from Snowden is that they're doing traffic analysis -- analyzing movements, social graphs, and so on and so forth. The irony here is that this tells us that the crypto works. That's where I've been thinking for quite some time. Imagine that you're a SIGINT group trying to deal with the inevitability of crypto that works being deployed everywhere. What do you do? You just be patient and start filling in scatter plots of traffic analysis. The problem isn't the crypto, it's SMTP. Jon Cryptome: For example, the email headers of Jon Callas's message to Cypherpunks subscriber <jya[at]cryptome.net>: Status: U Return-Path: <cypherpunks-bounces[at]cpunks.org> Received: from samuel.mail.atl.earthlink.net ([207.69.200.65]) by mdl-absent.atl.sa.earthlink.net (EarthLink SMTP Server) with
SMTP id 1vfxTG78i3Nl36W0; Fri, 30 Aug 2013 19:14:32 -0400 (EDT) Received: from fbr04.mfg.siteprotect.com ([64.26.60.139]) by samuel.mail.atl.earthlink.net (EarthLink SMTP Server) with
ESMTP id 1vfxTG24C3Nl3pv0 for <jya[at]pipeline.com>; Fri, 30 Aug 2013 19:14:32 -0400 (EDT) Received: from mf23.mfg.siteprotect.com (mf23-mf.mfg.chicago.hostway [192.168.33.170]) by fbr04.mfg.siteprotect.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id DB00A9C452 for <jya[at]pipeline.com>; Fri, 30 Aug 2013 18:14:31 -0500 (CDT) Received: from mx.siteprotect.com (unknown [192.168.33.225]) by mf23.mfg.siteprotect.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5878E980009 for <jya[at]cryptome.net>; Fri, 30 Aug 2013 18:14:31 -0500 (CDT) Received: from antiproton.jfet.org (antiproton.jfet.org [209.141.47.85]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by mx.siteprotect.com (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 3859A20B4054 for <jya[at]cryptome.net>; Fri, 30 Aug 2013 18:14:31 -0500 (CDT) Received: from antiproton.jfet.org (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by antiproton.jfet.org (8.14.4/8.14.4/Debian-4) with ESMTP id r7UND0xV010572; Fri, 30 Aug 2013 19:13:07 -0400 Received: from mail.merrymeet.com (merrymeet.com [173.164.244.100]) by antiproton.jfet.org (8.14.4/8.14.4/Debian-4) with ESMTP id r7UNCvLm010568 for <cypherpunks[at]cpunks.org>; Fri, 30 Aug 2013 19:12:58 -0400 Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mail.merrymeet.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 520BF3FD8A75; Fri, 30 Aug 2013 16:12:55 -0700 (PDT) X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at merrymeet.com Received: from mail.merrymeet.com ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (merrymeet.com [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id FH-djjRD4cSn; Fri, 30 Aug 2013 16:12:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: from keys.merrymeet.com (keys.merrymeet.com [173.164.244.97]) by mail.merrymeet.com (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 0C9213FD8A54; Fri, 30 Aug 2013 16:12:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [10.119.8.3] ([69.46.78.148]) by keys.merrymeet.com (PGP Universal service); Fri, 30 Aug 2013 16:12:46 -0700 X-PGP-Universal: processed; by keys.merrymeet.com on Fri, 30 Aug 2013 16:12:46 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 (Mac OS X Mail 6.5 \(1508\)) Subject: Re: Who bought off Zimmermann? From: Jon Callas <jon[at]callas.org> In-Reply-To: <E1VDkki-00033w-Hj@elasmtp-curtail.atl.sa.earthlink.net> Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2013 16:12:41 -0700 Message-Id: <B17A972C-221C-46D6-826E-2C1EC92F8160[at]callas.org> References: <20130825235403.BDDC4EAABC@snorky.mixmin.net> <E1VDkki-00033w-Hj@elasmtp-curtail.atl.sa.earthlink.net> To: John Young <jya[at]pipeline.com> X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.1508) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by antiproton.jfet.org id r7UNCvLm010568 Cc: cpunks <cypherpunks[at]cpunks.org> X-BeenThere: cypherpunks[at]cpunks.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.15 Precedence: list List-Id: The Cypherpunks Mailing List <cypherpunks.cpunks.org> List-Unsubscribe: <https://cpunks.org/mailman/options/cypherpunks>, <mailto:cypherpunks-request[at]cpunks.org?subject=unsubscribe> List-Archive: <http://cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/> List-Post: <mailto:cypherpunks[at]cpunks.org> List-Help: <mailto:cypherpunks-request[at]cpunks.org?subject=help> List-Subscribe: <https://cpunks.org/mailman/listinfo/cypherpunks>, <mailto:cypherpunks-request[at]cpunks.org?subject=subscribe> Errors-To: cypherpunks-bounces[at]cpunks.org Sender: "cypherpunks" <cypherpunks-bounces[at]cpunks.org> X-CTCH-RefID: str=0001.0A020202.52212757.0090,ss=1,re=0.000,fgs=0 X-Mail-Filter-Gateway-ID: 5878E980009.A8CB1 Mail-Filter-Gateway: Scanned OK X-Mail-Filter-Gateway-SpamDetectionEngine: NOT SPAM, MailFilterGateway Engine (score=-1, required 3, autolearn=disabled, CTASD_SPAM_UNKNOWN -1.00) X-Mail-Filter-Gateway-From: cypherpunks-bounces[at]cpunks.org X-Mail-Filter-Gateway-To: jya[at]cryptome.net X-Spam-Status: No X-ELNK-Received-Info: spv=0; X-ELNK-AV: 0 X-ELNK-Info: sbv=0; sbrc=.0; sbf=bb; sbw=000; X-Brightmail-Tracker: AAAAAA== X-Brightmail-Tracker: AAAAAA== Cryptome: And the headers of the same message encrypted with PGP to <jya[at]pipeline.com>: Status: U Return-Path: <jon[at]callas.org> Received: from pickering.mail.mindspring.net ([207.69.200.36]) by mdl-absent.atl.sa.earthlink.net (EarthLink SMTP Server) with
SMTP id 1vfxS96VO3Nl36W0; Fri, 30 Aug 2013 19:12:57 -0400 (EDT) Received: from mail.merrymeet.com ([173.164.244.100]) by pickering.mail.mindspring.net (EarthLink SMTP Server) with
ESMTP id 1vfxS83B3Nl3p20 for <jya[at]pipeline.com>; Fri, 30 Aug 2013 19:12:56 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mail.merrymeet.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 305C73FD8A72 for <jya[at]pipeline.com>; Fri, 30 Aug 2013 16:12:55 -0700 (PDT) X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at merrymeet.com Received: from mail.merrymeet.com ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (merrymeet.com [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id ezghF13obMY4 for <jya[at]pipeline.com>; Fri, 30 Aug 2013 16:12:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: from keys.merrymeet.com (keys.merrymeet.com [173.164.244.97]) by mail.merrymeet.com (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 0 |
the walls and above a type of dentist’s chair used for restraining victims.
The Basketball Diaries(1995)
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The Basketball Diaries features Leonardo DiCaprio as a talented basketball player who spirals into heroin addiction. Like Inception, the major controversy stems from a dream consequence: in The Basketball Diaries DiCaprio has a daydream where, clad in a black trenchcoat, he enters his class with a shotgun and proceeds to massacre his classmates like Xaero with quad-damage. And, just like Inception, when someone follows Leo’s example, people die. Case in point: Barry Loukaitis’ 1996 classroom shooting that left 3 people dead. Loukaitis wore a black trenchcoat in which he concealed pistols, ammunition and a rifle; he entered the classroom and began shooting. After he had finished, he allegedly smiled and said, “That sure beats algebra, doesn’t it?” The expressions of his classmates were unknown, although we can assume they were equivalent to a negative.
The Matrix (1999)
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All this talk of trenchcoats and algebra and Inception gives rise to a segue smoother than the one that Gob Bluth rides. Yes, The Matrix, the film that has inspired 9 in every 10 people to attempt ad-lib “reenactments” (which in actuality more closely resemble a flailing, bat-raping tortoise), has also played a pivotal role in several murder cases. Aside from the coats worn by Loukaitis, Harris, Klebold (which resemble the stylized coats worn by the protagonists in The Matrix), its philosophical premise that our reality is not real but rather a virtual program was internalized by several killers as a truth. By their logic, any people who were killed were not real people. After dismembering his landlady, Swedish exchange student Vadim Mieseges told police that “he’d been sucked into the Matrix”. Tonda Lynn Ansley also killed her landlady, but believing herself to be in the Matrix, likened the killing to a dream. Both of these killers were found to be insane. Perhaps the most notorious murderer to attempt to mount a plea based on The Matrix’s influence was Lee Boyd Malvo, the teenager who assisted John Allen Muhammad in the 2002 Washington sniper attacks. Malvo told psychiatrist Dewey Cornell that he had watched The Matrix “more than 100 times” and this in conjunction with Muhammad’s indoctrination was raised by the defense as grounds for insanity. The defense was unsuccessful: Malvo was sentenced to life without parole.
Taxi Driver (1976)
An older but similarly bizarre insanity case is that of John Hinkley Jr. who also blurred the boundaries between reality and fantasy. In this instance, Hinkley assumed that Robert DeNiro was talking to him when he played the role of a taxi driver who tries to assassinate a presidential candidate to impress a young woman. Hinkley was already living in a fantasy world where he had an imagined girlfriend, and so struck was he by DeNiro’s character that he began to live out the fantasy that he was indeed Travis Bickle. Growing ever more obsessed with the movie, he decided that he would also assassinate a president in order to impress Jodie Foster (who, coincidentally, plays the part of a prostitute in Taxi Driver. On the 30th of March 1981, Hinkley attacked President Ronald Reagan as he was leaving the Washington D.C. Hotel, managing to wound him with a ricochet bullet but failing to kill him. He was charged with a variety of offenses, but was found insane.
Scream (1996)
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The Scream face is one the most instantly recognizable devices of modern horror cinema. A simple black robe and white mask, it has inspired hordes of Halloween costumes. And, although the film deliberately undercuts much of the horror genre, it has unfortunately inspired several bloody murders. Perhaps the most notable of these is the Belgian case of Thierry Jaradin, a truck driver who murdered his neighbor Alisson Cambier. When she stopped by to drop off some videos, he tried to pull a Young MC and bust a move. When he got rejected for being overzealous, he decided to dance to a different groove. He strode into the next room, donned his Scream costume and returned with two kitchen knives, stabbing Alisson 30 times. Meanwhile, in England, two teens stabbed their friend after watching the movie, thinking that the occult was talking through the film and telling them to kill him. Daniel Gill and Robert Fuller enticed their friend Ashley Murray to a secluded spot before attacking him and leaving him to die. He was found the next day and managed to survive, but the attempted murder was so abhorrent that the judge decided to release the perpetrators’ names despite their young age.
Wedding Crashers (2005)
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Apart from disappointed audiences stabbing themselves in the eye with shivs made from popcorn containers, it is hard to imagine how Wedding Crashers, an irreverent comedy, could possibly influence criminal behavior. Olga Louniakova, a student at the Oxford School of Hair Design in Connecticut, found out the hard way that spiking a drink with Visine (as demonstrated by Owen Wilson in Wedding Crashers) not only causes diarrhea but can cause severe poisoning. In a mistake capable of being in a movie, Olga poisoned the wrong bottle, which turned out to be her supervisor’s. She was found guilty of second degree reckless endangerment and sentenced to 2 years probation. Similar incidents have occurred at several high schools by student pranksters. Such pranks really give us the shits.
The Saw Franchise
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The Saw franchise, which will conclude with a seventh film set to hit theaters later this month, involves films where the sadomasochistic killer Jigsaw sets victims torturous tests that require them to self-harm in order to escape death. Jigsaw introduces the nature of the test via a broadcasted distorted voice, normally including the phrase, “I want to play a game.” In another case involving shitty tweenage brats pranking people, two 13-year-old girls decided to leave the following prank voicemail message on one Beverly Dickson’s phone: “Hello, Beverly. I want to play a game. You need to decide if life is worth living for. We have one of your friends hidden in your house. You must find them within 10 minutes and get the key out of their heart. Get out of your house because there are vents and there is toxic gas that will be fogged out in 10 minutes. It will kill you in half a minute, so you decide, it’s your game. Do you want to live or die?”
When checking the message, Beverly happened to be at a funeral procession, and the shock of it caused her to suffer a minor stroke. The police managed to trace the call and the girls were charged with phone harassment (Beverly survived, but has recurring sleeping problems) and penalized with a $2000 bond. Ah, girls, you know what they say: such calls are all fun and games til somebody suffers a minor acute cerebrovascular accident.
RoboCop 2 (1990)
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RoboCop 2 is, completely unexpectedly, the sequel to the 1987 movie RoboCop. Based on the eponymous comic book series by Frank Miller, RoboCop 2 is a typically violent narrative involving a cyborg police officer in the future dystopian Detroit. Nathaniel White is a serial killer who went on a spree of assaults and killings whilst on parole in the early 1990’s. Although already a violent personality, White particularly savored the violence portrayed in the movie. He butchered his first victim, the pregnant Juliana Frank, in a manner identical to RoboCop: “The first girl I killed was from a ‘RoboCop’ movie… I seen him cut somebody’s throat then take the knife and slit down the chest to the stomach and left the body in a certain position. With the first person I killed I did exactly what I saw in the movie.” With such a casual description of murder, White is apparently more cyb than org.
Magnum Force (1973)
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In the wrong hands, a good idea can lead to disastrous consequences. Drano – a drain cleaning agent – is good when poured down a drain, saving many hard hours of back-breaking scrubbing and fishing around with pipe cleaners. However, when following Clint Eastwood’s lead in Magnum Force by pouring it down a victim’s throat, the consequences are disastrous. William Andrews forced victims to drink Drano, which has the active ingredient of extremely caustic lye, at a high-fi store in 1974. When that was not sufficient to kill them, Andrews then executed them in a grisly massacre that became known as “The Ogden Hi-Fi Shop Massacre”. He was put to death by lethal injection in 1992, after spending the longest period of any convict on Death Row.
The Deer Hunter(1978)
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The Deer Hunter is a film that is also accused of influencing copycat deaths, but instead of murder it is said to inspire suicide. The plot is non-complex: American soldiers captured by the Viet Cong army are forced to play a game of Russian roulette. One of the soldiers, Nick, becomes so affected by his time in captivity that he elects to remain in Vietnam where he repeatedly plays the game for money. Eventually, probability catches up with him and he ends up dying. There seems to be something almost hypnotizing about Russian roulette – who knows whether this stems from a morbid curiosity, sadomasochistic gratification, fatalism brought about by the bleakness of nihilism, the adrenalin rush from flirting with death, or from a simply brutish machismo – for there are many examples of people willingly playing the game like Nick. Mickey Culpupper shot himself in the head after a round of “playing Deer Hunter” in 1980; similar reports have come from the Philippines, Finland and Lebanon. Also in 1980, a man was captured and tortured in a similar way to the Viet Cong torture scene. Despite being critically acclaimed, The Deer Hunter has inspired many to becoming critically maimed.
The Program (1993)
Another movie that lead to emulation suicides in an attempt to be macho was the 1993 football movie The Program. In this movie, the protagonist lies down in the middle of a busy highway to demonstrate his manliness and supreme badassery. Michael A. Shingledecker Jr. decided he’d go one better and demonstrate his madness and supreme jackassery when he convinced a friend to lie with him in dark clothes, at night, on a Philadelphia highway. They were struck by a truck which did not see them; Michael died instantly and his friend was critically injured. Several other similar events occurred in Long Island and New Jersey, with fatalities resulting from each, which lead police chief George Moyer to make this rather graphic cautionary statement: “In the movies you jump out a window and walk away, but in real life we pick up the pieces, as we did with Birkhimer [the New Jersey victim].”“Technology is ever-changing and ReBoot: The Guardian Code will utilize the very technology inherent in the concept of the show—and prevalent in kids’ everyday lives…empowering kids with the tools and confidence to chart their own course in a world that is increasingly dependent on and powered by technological knowledge,” added Hefferon.
Originally airing in the 1990s on ABC in the United States and YTV in Canada, ReBoot was created by Gavin Blair, John Grace, Phil Mitchell, and Ian Pearson. Set inside of a computer world called the Mainframe, where heroic gamers Bob, Dot, Enzo, and more battled villainous viruses Megabyte, Hexadecimal, and their clueless minions Hack and Slash, its geeky lexicon and boxy animation bore the hallmarks of ’90s computing culture.
ReBoot’s 2001 series finale cliffhanger — which referenced Ang Lee’s wuxia classic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the Saturday Night Live spinoff, The Blue Brothers — was summarily followed by a fan-fueled webcomic, as well as a film trilogy that failed to materialize. Over 20 years after ReBoot first booted up, ReBoot: the Guardian Code transforms four teens (Austin, Parker, Grey and Tamra) into new Guardians whose mission is to save the world “with the help of VERA, the last surviving cyberbeing from the original Guardian Program.”. They take on a nefarious hacker known as the Sourcerer, as well as an upgraded Megabyte, who try to unleash viruses that remotely open a dam to flood cities or destroy nuclear power plants.
Of course, CG animation has come a very long way since 1994, when ReBoot stood comparatively alone in its style and construction. Indeed, Adobe’s purchase of Mixamo has put CG creation within reach of even those who don’t specialize in it. ReBoot: The Guardian Code has its work cut out for it as it competes in a competitive marketplace in which TV series like Beware the Batman and Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness romp at will through the CG wonderland that ReBoot helped pioneer decades ago.Michelle-Lael Norsworthy was granted an injunction April 2, 2015, from a federal judge ordering California’s corrections department to provide the transsexual inmate with sex change surgery, the first time such an operation has been ordered in the state. (AP Photo/California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.)
In a rare move, a Northern California district court judge has directed the state to grant a transgender inmate’s sex reassignment surgery — marking a first in the state’s history. The judge said the procedure is the “only adequate” treatment for her condition.
Michelle-Lael Norsworthy, 51, was born as Jeffrey Bryan Norsworthy. In the 1990s, she started living as a woman in state prison and was later diagnosed with severe gender dysphoria, a condition in which people identify with a different gender from the one they were born with, according to court documents. California corrections officials have said she has been given proper medical care over the years, including counseling and hormone therapy, the Associated Press reported.
However, U.S. District Court Judge Jon S. Tigar in San Francisco said on Thursday that the department denied her request for sex reassignment surgery, or SRS, likely because it has a policy against approving it as a treatment for transgender inmates. He granted a preliminary injunction, telling the prison system to let her have the operation “as promptly as possible.”
“The weight of the evidence demonstrates that for Norsworthy, the only adequate medical treatment for her gender dysphoria is SRS, that the decision not to address her persistent symptoms was medically unacceptable under the circumstances, and that [California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation] denied her the necessary treatment for reasons unrelated to her medical need,” Tigar wrote in his ruling. Denying her the surgery, he said, would violate her constitutional rights.
The injunction ordering the state prison system to grant the surgery is a novel ruling. It’s reportedly the first time such a decision has been made in California, and it has been seen only one other time in the country, Ilona Turner, legal director at the Transgender Law Center, told the AP.
In 2012, a federal judge ordered the Massachusetts Department of Corrections to provide the procedure for a transgender inmate. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the ruling late last year and, last month, the inmate’s attorneys took it to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 1987, Norsworthy was convicted of murder and sentenced to life behind bars. She is now being held at an all-male prison called Mule Creek State Prison, some 40 miles from Sacramento. Officials have argued that if she has the surgery, keeping her in that facility — or any men’s prison — could put her at risk for sexual assault. Moving her to a women’s prison, they said, could put her or other inmates at risk because she has a history of domestic violence, the AP reported.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said it is considering whether to appeal Tigar’s order. If the department complies, Norsworthy reportedly will be the first transgender inmate in California to undergo the operation. The procedure could cost the state as much as $100,000, Joyce Hayhoe, a spokeswoman for California Corrections Health Care Services told the Los Angeles Times.
The Transgender Law Center said that price is a “gross exaggeration.”
“This decision confirms that it is unlawful to deny essential treatment to transgender people” in or out of prison, Kris Hayashi, executive director of the Transgender Law Center, told the AP. “The bottom line is no one should be denied the medical care they need.”In June, Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared on the cover of People magazine for the first time in more than a decade. Real people, not the magazine, talked about what the article might mean for 2016. They talked about whether Clinton was using a walker (she wasn't). They talked about people talking about whether Clinton was using a walker (She still wasn't).
What they didn't do was buy the magazine. According to a report from AdWeek on Monday, the June 16 issue of People featuring the former first lady and senator was the magazine's worst selling of 2014 with 503,890 copies sold. The magazine's best-selling issue --1,169,800 copies -- was the one featuring Robin Williams after his death in late August. AdWeek said that celebrity weeklies saw poor performances with issues that featured the Kardashians and Beyonce on the cover.
It has not been a good year for Hillary Clinton and print media. Her book, "Hard Choices," also failed to sell as many copies as initial estimates assumed it would.
Thanks for tuning into another episode of, "Why are you reading this, Americans would rather do anything than think about politics.MOUNTAIN VIEW (CBS News) — It’s 5:30 p.m. on a Wednesday evening and The Sports Page, a bar just a block from the Google Mountain View campus, is filling up. On a perfect 60-degree evening, young tech professionals are milling around pitchers of beer on picnic tables to talk sports, speak in “technobabble,” and listen to Silicon Valley visitors pitch startup ideas.
Volleyball is played, darts are thrown. The bar owner half-jokingly declares one rule: no political talk allowed. But a handful of Google employees are willing to break it.
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“He is not only the most qualified candidate but I feel like what he stands for directly aligns with what I believe in,” says Sienna Cazares as she details the reasoning behind her support for Bernie Sanders. She is walking into the bar with two friends, coming from Google where she works. One of them is also a Sanders supporter, while the other is for Clinton.
“Bernie has a lot of good ideals but I think Hillary has actually power to actually win,” explains Nora Danning after she gives Cazares a look out of the corner of her eye. Danning, 25, also works on the Google campus. “[Clinton] actually has a chance and [Donald] Trump — it is starting to look like Trump may actually have a chance too and I really don’t want Trump.”
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The anti-Trump sentiment is in Silicon Valley is real — “well, you won’t hear any Trump supporters at Google” one employee quips — but so too is the pro-Bernie Sanders energy, particularly with younger voters.
• READ MORE on CBSNews.comPublished online 10 August 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.1031
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Ready access to complex compounds will allow pharmacological studies of potential painkillers.
Poppies aren't the only source of morphine.
Yeast cells have been turned into biological factories that manufacture a range of alkaloids — naturally occurring chemical compounds such as morphine that contain nitrogen atoms and that often have useful pharmaceutical properties. The work opens the way to commercially producing previously unobtainable and potentially valuable alkaloids.
Thousands of different alkaloids are known to exist, but only a handful of them can be obtained in useful quantities, usually by extracting them from plants such as the opium poppy. Alkaloids are synthesised by sequences of biochemical reactions involving many enzymes and sophisticated regulatory mechanisms.
Intermediate molecules that could have interesting properties are produced in these pathways, but the complexity of these chemicals and the fact that they they occur in tiny amounts means that extracting or synthesizing them is difficult and expensive.
Painkiller pathway
“The obvious approach to getting more of these compounds would be to genetically engineer plants to stop production along the pathway, so that a particular intermediate would accumulate,” says Christina Smolke, a chemist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “People have tried this but with limited success — if you knock out one enzyme you end up knocking out a large part of the pathway.”
Other scientists have already used yeast to produce useful compounds such as hydrocortisone1 and the antimalarial drug precursor artemisinic acid2. Now, Smolke and her co-worker Kristy Hawkins have successfully reconstructed — within a yeast cell — many of the key elements of the elaborate pathways for synthesising alkaloids. Their research is published in Nature Chemical Biology3.
Hawkins and Smolke focused on the benzylisoquinoline alkaloids (BIAs), which include the painkillers morphine and codeine. They inserted into yeast cells genes from three plants: the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, the common meadow rue, Thalictrum flavum and thale cress, Arabidopsis thaliana. These genes make enzymes that help to produce the BIAs from simpler chemical building blocks. They also added the gene for a human enzyme, P450, which is known to act on a range of alkaloid molecules.
High yields
By mixing and matching different enzyme combinations, the researchers were able to create substantial amounts of seven different BIAs. “Now that we have access to intermediates that were not previously available, people will want to do careful studies on their pharmacological activity,” Smolke says. “And we were getting yields of 100 to 200 milligrams per litre, which is respectable for potentially valuable molecules. With relatively simple optimization of the fermentation you could obtain 10 or 100 times more than this.”
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Hawkins and Smolke also devised a way to tune the system so that the yeast produced the optimum amount of each enzyme to synthesise whichever alkaloid they wanted, and did not waste energy making an excess of any given enzyme.
Sarah O’Connor, an expert on the biosynthesis of natural products at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, is impressed by the work. “It’s very exciting that plant alkaloid pathways are starting to be reconstituted in microbes. Very importantly, Smolke has also shown how this strain can be used to discover new enzymes that catalyse biosynthetic transformations.”
Smolke says, “We are now hoping to extend the pathway both ways — to get a broader range of intermediates downstream, including the end products, and to be able to start with simpler substrates upstream.”
“The system will also allow us to start producing non-natural alkaloids by using enzymes from different sources and in combinations that do not occur in nature.”WASHINGTON -- The FDA is trying to increase representation of women and minorities in clinical trials, but observers said the agency's latest effort in this area is not sufficient.
The FDA announced last week that it had developed an action plan to improve data collection and subgroup data analysis for women and minorities in clinical trials. The action plan addresses three issues: getting better-quality subgroup data, identifying barriers to encourage women and minorities from participating in trials and figuring out strategies for recruiting more of them, and making subgroup data more available and transparent.
The agency also issued a final guidance explaining how data on gender differences should be analyzed in medical device studies to account for the fact that the sexes each respond differently to devices.
"I hope you'll find that the action plan is responsive and pragmatic and, most importantly, when fully implemented, it will improve medical care and public health," FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, MD, wrote in a blog posted on the agency's website.
"Many of the steps it outlines will have a broad impact on the work of FDA's medical product centers... The action items range from relatively short-term goals that can be achieved in a year, to others that will take 1-3 years, to a small number that will require a longer period, 3-5 years, to achieve."
To improve the quality of subgroup data, the action plan directed the agency to:
Review and develop a work plan for updating, and/or finalizing, relevant guidance on demographic subgroup data, including FDA staff training and outreach to stakeholders
Work with sponsors to revise medical product applications to enhance information on demographic subgroups in medical product applications
Add training for FDA reviewers around demographic inclusion, analysis, and communication of clinical data
Enhance FDA's systems for collecting, analyzing, and communicating diverse clinical information to optimize safe and effective use of medical products in diverse populations
Conduct research on specific areas of public health concern related to demographic subgroups
To help identify barriers to recruiting women and minorities, the plan called for:
Seeking further clarity about barriers to subgroup participation rates
Implementing efforts to enhance appropriate use of enrollment criteria in clinical trial protocols
Collaborating with the National Institutes of Health, industry, and other stakeholders to broaden diverse participation in clinical research
Using FDA's communication channels to encourage clinical trial participation by demographic subgroups
On the third goal of making the data more transparent, the plan called for FDA to post relevant subgroup information from pivotal trials, identify ways to include demographic information on product labeling, and communicating the subgroup information with an eye toward language access and health literacy for the involved populations. The plan also called for a steering committee to oversee implementation of the recommendations.
The reaction to the action plan was generally positive. The action plan "will not only help boost representation of these population groups in clinical trials, but also will lead to more analyses on how medical drugs and devices affect women and men differently," according to a press release jointly issued by the the American Heart Association, the National Women's Health Network, the Society for Women's Health Research, and WomenHeart: The National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease.
"The groups particularly applaud the FDA for finalizing its guidance on the evaluation of sex-specific data in medical device studies and for establishing a steering committee and website to oversee and track progress on implementing the action plan."
But they also said the agency needed to do more. "While the FDA Action Plan is a step in the right direction, the agency must do more than remind and encourage industry to include women and minorities in trials and analyze the data," Cynthia Pearson, executive director of the National Women's Health Network, said in the release. "The FDA must require that companies do this to ensure that that the products women use are safe and effective for them."
Diana Zuckerman, PhD, president of the National Center for Health Research, agreed that the plan sounded nice but did not have enough teeth in it. "As long as the FDA is going to approve these products for everyone, when they haven't been studied on everyone, then the [pharmaceutical] companies really have no incentive to improve," she said in a phone interview.
Instead, the agency should tell the drug companies that, for example, if their clinical trial for a particular drug doesn't have enough women in it for a subgroup analysis, then the FDA won't approve the drug for women; the same would go for not including enough African Americans or Hispanics in a trial.
"Pretty soon drugs will be approved for 30% of the population, and no company is going to want that. The FDA has the authority and responsibility to not approve drugs or devices that are not tested on the largest demographic groups."
Rosamond Rhodes, PhD, director of bioethics education at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, said she was disappointed that the report didn't mention including children in clinical trials. "That's one glaring omission, and children are another group that particularly is relevant... because they're developing and their metabolism is different than in adults, and very few drugs on market are adequately tested for children," she told MedPage Today.
Another group not mentioned is pregnant women, she continued. "They talk about women being excluded from research, but they don't talk about why women are often excluded," which is the possibility that the study might harm a developing fetus. "Pregnant women could get any disease other women get, and we want to know how many of these drugs and devices affect pregnancy."
2014-08-26T18:16:47-0400Detroit residents face eviction as officials gentrify downtown region
By Lawrence Porter
27 April 2013
Detroit officials, including newly appointed Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, are driving homeless and low-income people out of the city’s downtown areas.
The moves are part of a conscious policy of the corporate and financial elite, aimed at building up the downtown center as a haven for the wealthy, while shutting down large sections of the city. Billionaires, including Quicken Loans owner Dan Gilbert and Little Caesars owner Mike illitch, have purchased large tracks of downtown land and buildings, seeking to cash in on this “revitalization.”
On April 19, residents in the multiple apartment complex on Henry Street in the Cass Corridor section of Detroit, just north of downtown, were notified that they had to move out of the building by May 20. A large percentage of the residents are disabled and many have lived in the building for over 30 years.
The former owner of the buildings, Peter Mercier of Grosse Pointe Farms, sold it to an unknown buyer which has taken efforts to hide its identity. The purchaser has a confidentiality agreement like those in more than a dozen similar sales since 2008. Many residents believe illitch is behind the decision and is planning to build a new stadium for the Red Wings hockey team in the area.
Residents in front of Henry Street apartments. Catherine Stephens on left
“It’s not right,” said Catherine Stevens, an elderly resident who is disabled. “They give us from now until May 20. We don’t have any place to go. How are we going to find a place in such a short period of time?”
“We are hearing that Mike illitch bought this joint. But nobody knows for sure who bought it. We heard he wants to tear it down to build a new stadium for the Red Wings. He has bought everything around Woodward, and he wants this too.”
A maintenance man told the WSWS, “There are a lot of people who stay in these buildings that are disabled and only get so much a month. We have to save up in order to move. He is not giving us enough time to do that.”
“There are a lot of people who are elderly who have been here for 25-30 years. And you have someone who comes up and serves you papers, and you have to leave in a month? How can they do that?”
State document to vacate
Residents received a letter from the former owner and an official document to vacate, one step before eviction. Mercier reportedly asked the new owner to extend the time the residents would be required to leave, but he was rebuffed.
The redevelopment plans for the area north of downtown received a boost last week when the Federal Transit Authority gave its final approval for the M-1 street rail car on nearby Woodward Avenue. Dan Gilbert is the co-chairman of the 3.3 mile project that will straddle the tenant buildings. Work is expected to begin this summer. The streetcar would also straddle the new Red Wings stadium, bringing together projects by both illitch and Gilbert, who has a casino and 22 other buildings in the downtown area.
James Cohill, 82, has lived in the apartments for 13 years said, “It’s a bad deal, I know that. Nobody here has any money. We are all on fixed income. We want some help and for them to compensate us so that we can leave and give us ample time to move.”
“We can’t be rushed out. Hell, I’m 82 years old.”
Like many of the residents, Cohill is on disability and cannot afford higher rents. Presently, tenants pay $225 for a basement apartment and $350 for those on the main floor and above.
Dasharn Stevens and Devon Crenshaw
DeVon Crehshaw, a tenant for three years, complained that the old owners were also indifferent to the needs of the tenants, including complaints of health hazards. Crenshaw, who has a music recording business and an apartment in the complex, said that he payed $600 for rent last week, only a few days before he received the notice to vacate.
“I don’t understand how a corporation can do something like that and not give your money back,” he said.
Crenshaw said he had filed a complaint with the housing department because he found bed bugs in the building that affected him and his neighbor, who had a newborn child.“We caught 20-30 and placed them in a cup. I went to the hospital because I heard they can give you a virus. So, I wanted to get my blood tested and everything. They charged me $900 for that, and I haven’t received anything for it.”
“A young lady stayed next to us with a newborn baby, and the baby kept being bitten by the bed bugs, and the EMS came and took the baby.”
Another tenant, Greg Hawkins, who has been living in the apartment building for two years, was incensed by the eviction. “It is my belief that we do not fit the image of the new midtown or downtown,” he said. “With Detroit being a multi-cultural entertainment destination, we are part of the culture they don’t want down here.”
In a related development, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) recently filed a lawsuit with the US Department of Justice charging the Detroit Police Department with picking up homeless people and dropping them outside the city boundaries.
The ACLU said they began an investigation in January 2012, after receiving numerous complaints. “DPD’s practice of essentially kidnapping homeless people and abandoning them miles away from the neighborhoods they know—with no means for a safe return—is inhumane, callous and illegal,” said Sarah Mehta, ACLU of Michigan staff attorney.
The ACLU release gives the example of a homeless man, Marvin, 37, who was handcuffed, placed in the back of a squad car and driven 14 miles away to Allen Park and told to “get out.” Another homeless man, Elvin D, 46, was sleeping in Hart Plaza around midnight when the police offered him a ride to a homeless shelter. Instead of taking him to a shelter, however, he was driven nearly 10 miles away to Dearborn. After the police dropped him off, Elvin spent most of the night walking back.
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Multi-billionaire Dan Gilbert seeks to cash in on Detroit’s financial dictatorship
[6 April 2013]Midwest winters are no joke. Since it’s too cold or snowy for the park, it’s easy to become stir-crazy. These nine play spaces are saviors for kids who need to release some energy — and parents whom have exhausted all options at home. Here are our favorite places to let loose!
Since 2011, Growth Spurts has become a destination for busy parents to enjoy a cup of coffee while their tots play in the bright, clean and relaxed setting. A train table, block center, indoor play set and crooked house are just a few of the highlights for your little one. Reviewers have noted that Growth Spurts is best for kids 5 and under. Since the space isn’t too big, you’ll be able to keep an eye on multiple kids. 404 Linden Ave., Wilmette, $12 per child with reduced rates for siblings
While there is a Little Beans in Chicago, the Evanston location is newer and more spacious. Children ages 0 to 6 can play at the Little Beans play area, a little village built just for little ones to climb and discover. Kids ages 4 to 12 will stay busy at the Big Beans Ninja Obstacle Course next door, an “American Gladiator”-like obstacle course with foam pit and zip line. A karaoke room (with a selection of pop and Disney tunes) is also a hit with kids ages 5 and up, while the half-court gym entertains those little athletes. 430 Asbury Ave., Evanston, $12 per child with discounted rates for siblings; pricing is discounted to $8 after 5:30 p.m. Monday-Friday
Bubbles is THE destination in Chicago for first-rate baby and children’s classes, but they’re also worth visiting for their daily Open Play. Children ages 0 to 5 will find something that speaks to their interests, like tunnels, climbers, dress-up, play kitchens and puppets. The facilities are kept spotless and the staff is inviting and accommodating. 1504 N. Fremont St., Chicago, $12 per child with discounts for siblings
If you live on the North Shore or in Chicago, you’ve likely visited Kohl. Things never get stale, though, as the museum is constantly adding new attractions. This winter, look for the new exhibit “Run! Jump! Fly!” which runs through Jan. 10. This traveling exhibit lets you test your balance and strength as you try out physical activities like peddling a “flycycle” or balancing on an interactive snowboard. Don’t miss “Build It!,” an exhibit debuting Jan. 27, featuring life-size building blocks in lots of unique shapes. 2100 Patriot Blvd., Glenview, adults and children $11, grandparents and seniors $10, children under 12 months are free
Love being on the water? Check out the Boats Exhibit. Does science pique your interests? Check out the Tinkering Lab. From a Dinosaur Expedition to the Kraft Art Studio, there is something for everyone in your group. Make a day of your visit and grab lunch at Navy Pier after you’ve worked up an appetite. 700 E. Grand Ave., Chicago, $14 per child and adult, $13 per senior; Thursday evenings from 5-8 p.m. are free for everyone; the first Sunday of every month is free for those 15 and under
Located in the South Loop, this eco-friendly play space was created with recycled cork flooring, low-VOC paint, eco-friendly carpeting and reclaimed wood play structures. While it’s on the smaller side, your kids will keep themselves entertained for hours. The nature-themed, light-filled space has many creative and interactive nooks like a Cork Wall, Tree House Loft and Grassy Knoll. Although it’s located on Michigan Avenue, metered street parking is ample. 1454 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago, $12 per child with reduced rates for siblings
Children will have a blast exploring the many areas of Exploritorium. A giant Lite-Brite, climbing wall, dress-up area with stage and life |
finger in the kitchen, which was connected to the basement lab. A pull on the cable curled the finger in a summons."
During their tests, Thorp and Shannon found that the computer gave the wearer a 44 percent edge in roulette - more than enough to make it worth their while.
After months of experiments, the two settled on a computer they thought would work. Roughly the size of a pack of cigarettes, the computer itself had 12 transistors that allowed its wearer to time the revolutions of the ball on a roulette wheel and determine where it would end up. Wires led down from the computer to switches in the toes of each shoe, which let the wearer covertly start timing the ball as it passed a reference mark. Another set of wires led up to an earpiece that provided audible output in the form of musical cues -- eight different tones represented octants on the roulette wheel. When everything was in sync, the last tone heard indicated where the person at the table should place their bet. Some of the parts, Thorp says, were cobbled together from the types of transmitters and receivers used for model airplanes.
During their tests, Thorp and Shannon found that the computer gave the wearer a 44 percent edge in roulette -- more than enough to make it worth their while. By then, it was the summer of 1961, and the two decided it was time to test the computer in a casino. In August, they went to Vegas for a week -- Shannon's wife, Betty, and Thorp's wife, Vivian, joined them.
While only one person wore the computer, the operation in the casino was a two-man job. The person wearing the computer would stand by the roulette wheel and time -- also writing down the numbers on a pad to appear like a system player, what Thorp describes as a "decoy mode," since "whoever was doing that was considered harmless because fools do that all the time to no avail."
After years of using his skills to "Beat the Dealer," Thorp moved on to bigger fish: Wall Street (Sam Comen).
The other person, usually Thorp, would sit at the betting table with the earpiece and a receiver, hearing the same cues that the person wearing the computer heard. "When the computer was operating without any trouble," Thorp says, "it worked really well." Indeed, it worked just as well as it did in the lab. "We'd start out with dime chips," he says, "and single dimes would turn into piles of dimes, quite often causing a fair amount of excitement, but nobody caught on to what was going on."
"Our problem was output."
Wearing a computer in 1961 wasn't easy. While the small computer worn around the waist was inconspicuous enough, the earpieces proved more difficult. For those, Thorp and Shannon used thin stainless steel wires that were soldered onto the speaker and painted a flesh color. The wires ran down the neck and through the wearer's clothing to the receiver. They proved to be discreet, but the wires were delicate and tended to break, which Thorp says "was the Achilles' heel of the system."
"Once a lady next to me looked over in horror. I left the table quickly and discovered the speaker peering from my ear canal like an alien insect."
"So," he says, "we'd bet for a while and then a wire would break, and we had to go back to the room and take the person who was doing the betting, namely me, apart and solder things together and hook me back up." In his paper, he recounted one incident in particular: "Once a lady next to me looked over in horror. I left the table quickly and discovered the speaker peering from my ear canal like an alien insect."
While those problems prevented them from any "serious betting," they deemed the computer a success. It now resides at the MIT Museum in Cambridge, Mass.
Although most would consider Thorp and Shannon's invention to technically be the first wearable computer, it's not quite a wearable computer as we know them today. For the origins of more general-purpose wearables, we need to look a few decades later to the work of Mann, who also, as it happens, found his way to MIT. He'd be joined there by Thad Starner and others, with their pioneering efforts in the 1990s laying much of the groundwork for Google Glass and today's other wearable devices.
That's not to say Thorp and Shannon's work didn't inform those later devices in some respects, though. In an article published in IEEE Micro in 2001, Starner cited Thorp's computer as an example of a device where "unobtrusiveness and privacy were primary concerns," explaining that "not only was it necessary to keep private the information generated by the wearable," but also that "Thorpe and Shannon needed to hide the computer's existence from onlookers." Those concerns brought with them the type of trade-offs that continue to be an issue today -- in this case, an awkward interface and other physical limitations in the pursuit of portability and discretion.
In a broader sense, the computer was also an "augmentation" of sorts, giving its wearer the ability to keep track of more information than they would be able to otherwise -- something that's now becoming more prevalent than ever thanks to the likes of wrist-worn activity trackers -- and access to information that others don't have.
While Thorp wouldn't go on to develop the sort of general-purpose wearable computers that Mann and Starner eventually would, he did build a second wearable device soon after the roulette computer. Described as a "knock-off," it was designed to beat the money wheel, or wheel of fortune. It had just a single transistor and could be operated by one person on their own, but Thorp says that the wheel itself didn't get much action and that anyone winning a lot of money would attract a lot of attention. "So it was something that would work in principle," he says, "but you couldn't actually make any money at it."
"The descendants of the first wearable computer were formidable enough to be outlawed," Thorp wrote.
Thorp and Shannon also considered building a computer for blackjack, but Thorp says he could already count so well that it didn't seem worth the effort. He also speculated about a different type of system in Beat the Dealer, suggesting that it would be "technically feasible to link a casino blackjack player by radio to a remotely located giant machine, which does the actual playing."
Another well-known blackjack player, Keith Taft, would actually go into the business of building and marketing blackjack computers much later. In the late 1970s, a group of students at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who called themselves "The Eudaemons," also built a computer to win at roulette, this time with the computer itself contained in a shoe. By 1985, though, Nevada would ban the use of devices designed to aid in card counting or predicting the outcome of other games. "The descendants of the first wearable computer were formidable enough to be outlawed," Thorp wrote.
By then, however, Thorp had already moved on to a much bigger arena: Wall Street. He was one of the original "quants," applying mathematics and computers to the stock market, and making a fortune at it. His book on the subject, Beat the Market, has become a guide for countless investors as Beat the Dealer has been for blackjack players. That also explains his diminished interest in gambling over the years. "When you're betting millions," he says, "betting hundreds of thousands doesn't seem meaningful."
A Restless Retirement
Thorp's hugely successful book that, according to To Tell The Truth, was once the most requested book at the Las Vegas library (Donald Melanson).
At 81, Thorp is still looking for new projects to take on. One of his current interests is biotech, and new research in low-temperature medicine that promises to let corneas be vitrified and stored for long periods of time ahead of a transplant, instead of being discarded after a few days. Another development he has his eye on could allow for brains to be cooled much more rapidly for surgical purposes. As with the rest of our conversation, it's a topic he discusses in exacting detail.
It comes as no surprise, then, to hear that he's not the retiring type. "There's so many interesting things all the time," he says. "That's the problem.
"I think of the classical retirement as kind of crazy, where you're 65, you throw a switch, and stop doing anything," Thorp says. "To me, retirement is a transition from whatever you were doing to whatever you want to do, at whatever rate you want to make the transition."
As with gambling, computers have also been far from Thorp's main focus in more recent years. He never really considered a career in the field, he says, since for him "they were more tools than things unto themselves." And, while he's remained interested in computers, he hasn't followed the evolution of wearable computing particularly closely.
He is somewhat familiar with Google Glass, however, and he does see his invention as a precursor of sorts to it and other wearable computers. "It's sort of an interesting contrast," he says, "when you think back to this little box... and then you jump 50-plus years ahead and now you have Google Glass, with all its manifold capabilities. It's startling to see how much has happened in a little over 50 years."
As for his place in that evolution, while he by no means needed another legacy, Thorp is now often called the "father of wearable computing." That's hardly a title he set out to claim, though. "I didn't realize at the time that that was going to happen," he says, "I was just interested in solving a problem and seeing if I could do it. The fact that it was a wearable computer was just part of solving the problem."
Photos of Thorp by Sam Comen.Why so serious? Jared Leto’s stern Joker graces the new cover of Empire magazine, giving fans the first head-to-toe look at his “Suicide Squad” character in full costume.
Leto’s Joker is suited up in a purple snakeskin trench coat; matching violet cane; blue baggy, drawstring “Arkham Asylum” pants; plenty of black ink; and slicked back, green hair. He has no shoes, no shirt, but likely problems galore.
This is a far cry from Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger’s takes on Batman’s arch nemesis.
Jared Leto in full costume as his “Suicide Squad” character Joker.
Courtesy of Empire
Leto also opened up for the very first time about the physical and mental toll of playing the Clown Prince of Crime.
“There was definitely a period of … detachment,” Leto said, according to ComicBookMovie.com, about his method acting, which involved staying in character around his costars. “I took a pretty deep dive. But this was a unique opportunity and I couldn’t imagine doing it another way. It was fun, playing those psychological games. But at the same time, it was very painful, like giving birth out of my prick hole.”
Leto even pranked his castmates, including Jim Parrack, who plays his henchman, Jonny Frost.
“I was just thinking that the Joker would probably just say, ‘F— you,’ and hang up,” said Leto, who called Parrack with orders to spray paint roses and fill a backpack with nails.
He also sent Margot Robbie, who plays Harley Quinn, a dead rat and had bullets delivered to Will Smith (Deadshot). “Not a single word exchanged off-camera. He was all in on the Joker,” Smith said about Leto’s commitment to the role in a recent interview.
Leto also revealed how he breathed new life into the classic villain.
“I always get the sense that the Joker may be much older than people think,” he said. “It’s something different. If you don’t break rules, you’re not going to strike new ground. I think I’ll be cooling down for the rest of my life.”
Directed by David Ayer, “Suicide Squad” also stars Jai Courtney as Captain Boomerang, Cara Delevingne as Enchantress, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Killer Croc, Karen Fukuhara as Katana, Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flag, Adam Beach as Slipknot and Jay Hernandez as El Diablo.
The movie hits theaters on Aug. 5.Americans rescued from the facility in Benghazi were saved by Gaddafi loyalists — not the Libyan government or the militia group contractually obligated to provide security, the final report from the House Select Committee on Benghazi reveals.
After lethal mortar attacks, a special operator in Benghazi testified that: “We decided that the situation we had was untenable to stay at the compound. We didn’t have enough shooters and there were too many wounded, and we were definitely going to lose our State Department wounded if we had stayed there much longer.”
The Americans in the annex, though, did not have the security vehicles and “gun trucks” necessary to evacuate to the airport in Benghazi. Help would eventually arrive.
“The forces that arrived at the Annex shortly after the mortar attacks were able to transport all State Department and CIA personnel safely to the airport. The forces, known as Libyan Military Intelligence, arrived with 50 heavily-armed security vehicles,” the select committee’s report says.
The Libyan Military Intelligence was not part of the Libyan Government that the Obama administration supported. Neither was it a component of the “February 17 Martyrs Brigade, recommended by the Libyan Government and contractually obligated to provide security to the Mission Compound.”
The report also states that “the February 17 Martyrs Brigade militia, which provided interior armed security at the Benghazi Mission compound, informed the Diplomatic Security Agents two days before the Ambassador was scheduled to arrive it would no longer provide off-compound security.”
“Instead, Libya Military Intelligence—whom the CIA did not even know existed until the night of the attacks—were comprised of former military officers under the Qadhafi regime who had gone into hiding in fear of being assassinated, and wanted to keep their presence in Benghazi as quiet as possible so as to not attract attention from the militias in control of Benghazi,” the report later notes.
It continues to say, “In other words, some of the very individuals the United States had helped remove from power during the Libyan revolution were the only Libyans that came to the assistance of the United States on the night of the Benghazi attacks. ”
American operatives on the ground only found out about the Libyan Military Intelligence group after a National Police officer described his capabilities as “next to helpless.”
“It was also this group, not groups previously given credit by previous investigations, that came to the rescue of the Americans in those early morning hours —likely saving dozens of lives as a result,” the select committee concluded.SALEM -- Gov. Kate Brown on Wednesday was as sharp as she's ever been about her predecessor -- zinging Gov. John Kitzhaber over accusations that his office was slow to share public records in the months before influence-peddling allegations drove him from office.
"It was clear transparency was not a priority in the prior administration," she told lawmakers. "I changed that my first day on the job and every day since."
Brown's barb kicked off a meeting of the Legislature's audits committee, which heard testimony on a report sought by Brown on state agencies' handling of public records requests.
The report, released Tuesday, said agencies struggle with complex requests, lack consistent fees and deadlines, and sometimes don't track record requests at all. It said those challenges can foster the perception that officials purposely find ways to avoid disclosing public documents.
The governor announced that she would use her executive powers to change how state agencies operate. Those changes would not affect local governments or lawmakers. She also promised to draft legislation for 2016 asking lawmakers to fund a "neutral third-party entity" that could mediate disputes over requests.
Her office said it wasn't yet clear Wednesday how that position would be structured -- some governments have an ombudsman, others have a commission -- or how it would be filled.
"It's important to have someone independent and objective of all the state agencies filling that role," Brown said, "and working hard to make sure public records requests can be fulfilled in a timely manner."
The report also highlighted the 400-plus exemptions Oregon officials can cite when deciding not to release records. Brown said she would defer to a working group led by Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, which is expected to suggest changes in time for the 2017 legislative session.
Brown called for the audit as part of ethics legislation drafted in the wake of Kitzhaber's Feb. 18 resignation.
A Republican-sponsored bill on public records would have gone further by setting firm timelines and fee limits across all levels of Oregon government. But Brown's ethics bills were the only three to emerge from both the House and Senate in the 2015 session.
Brown ticked off several statistics to highlight her office's record: She said they've closed 100 public records requests over the past 38 weeks, reviewing 350,000 pages over 3,000 hours of staff time.
She also said her office has worked with investigators looking into claims that Kitzhaber and first lady Cylvia Hayes used their positions for personal financial gain. That review, Brown said, encompassed 1 million documents.
But Brown has also faced questions about her handling of records.
Oracle -- locked in a legal battle with Kitzhaber and the state over its failed health insurance portal, Cover Oregon -- has sued Brown for access to some of Kitzhaber's old emails.
Kitzhaber routinely conducted state business using a personal email account. Starting in 2011, thousands of emails from Kitzhaber's personal accounts wound up archived on state servers.
Oracle has accused Brown and Rosenblum of failing to promptly turn over public emails from that cache. The state, which says it's concerned about a lawsuit from Kitzhaber, had previously asked a judge to tell it whether it can review the rest of the emails. A hearing on the matter is set for Friday.
Brown noted Wednesday that her administration has banned officials from conducting substantial government business over text messages and private emails, unless those messages are immediately copied to public email accounts.
"Our challenge now is to implement the recommendations and continue this very important work," she said.
-- Denis C. Theriault
503-221-8430; @TheriaultPDX(CNN) If Congressional Republicans are waiting for a clear signal of discontent from the party base before asserting more independence from President Trump, they may be waiting for a long time.
That's not because Trump has some distinctly powerful hold on his party rank and file. It's because through the history of modern polling it has been rare for a president to face widespread defections from voters in his own party.
That's been especially true for Republicans. In Gallup presidential job approval polling dating back to the 1940s, only one Republican president has ever drawn support from less than half of his party's partisans: Richard Nixon -- twice in the final months before the Watergate scandal forced his resignation in August 1974. And even Nixon remained safely above 50 percent with Republicans through most of his long ordeal.
This history challenges the assumption among many Republican operatives that President Trump's high approval ratings among GOP voters creates a unique barrier that prevents party leaders from questioning him more forcefully, whatever their private misgivings about his handling of the presidency and the steady drip of revelations about his campaign's interaction with Russia.
In fact, it's never been easy for Members of Congress to challenge a president of their own party. When Senators and House Members have done it, they have almost always been leading, rather than following, public opinion, especially among their own voters. And yet in earlier generations party leaders have taken precisely that risk when they concluded the national interest demanded it.
At this point in his tenure, Trump's standing is strong in his own party, but not uniquely so, and weaker with the public overall than almost any recent president. In the most recent Gallup weekly average, Trump draws positive job approval ratings from 85 percent of Republicans, but under 40 percent of all Americans. (This week's ABC News/Washington Post national poll produced similar results.)
Except for Bill Clinton, who stumbled through a tumultuous first year, every other recent president since Ronald Reagan had comparable approval numbers at this point among those in their own party, and much stronger numbers with the public overall. In early July 2009, Gallup recorded Barack Obama's approval rating among Democrats at 92%; at roughly this point, George W. Bush stood at 88% with Republicans, George H.W. Bush at 86% and Reagan at 85%. In sharp contrast to Trump, each of them drew positive job ratings from a majority of the broader public. Clinton's numbers six months in were slightly below Trump's in his own party, and above them with the overall public.
Perhaps even more important, Trump's political position now is no stronger, and in some ways clearly weaker, than that of other presidents when they were confronted by Senators and House Members from their own party at key moments in the past half century.
LBJ and Vietnam
pivotal in sparking broader skepticism about the war. One such example came in 1966 when Democratic Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, defied President Lyndon B. Johnson to begin a landmark series of televised hearings questioning the progress of the Vietnam War. When Fulbright convened the first hearing in February, Johnson's approval rating in Gallup polling stood at 74% among Democrats and 61% with the general public. The hearings, as historian Robert Mann wrote in A Grand Delusion, his epic history of Vietnam and Congress, "incensed" LBJ, who "resolved to do whatever he could to undermine the committee's proceedings." Yet Fulbright pressed forward and historians now consider the hearingspivotal in sparking broader skepticism about the war.
Nixon and Watergate
A demonstration outside the Whitehouse in support of the impeachment of Richard Nixon in 1974.
Although Watergate eventually swept away Nixon's support, Republican Senators stood against an even stronger current when they supported the initial steps to fully investigate the scandal. The Senate voted unanimously in February 1973 to create the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities -- better known as the Watergate Committee -- led by Democratic chairman Sam Ervin and Republican vice-chairman Howard Baker.
At that point, Nixon's approval rating stood at 91% among Republicans and 65% with the public overall, each better than Trump's standing today. Even when the committee held its first public hearing in May 1973, Nixon in Gallup still drew support from 73% of Republicans, not much less than Trump today, and 44% percent of the public overall, better than Trump now.
As the scandal metastasized, Nixon's approval rating eroded, both with Republicans and the general public. Yet even in Nixon's "final days" during the summer of 1974, the GOP leaders who pressed him to resign were surmounting significant resistance from their own voters. Nixon's approval rating among Republicans in Gallup never fell below 48% and stood at 50% in the final survey before his resignation. Through most of 1974, about 70 percent of rank-and-file Republicans consistently told Gallup that Nixon should not be impeached and compelled to leave office. Even in August 1974, when 57% of all Americans said Nixon should be forced from office, 59% of Republicans still disagreed.
And yet all three Senate Republicans on the Watergate Committee signed its damning June 1974 final report, and senior party officials, including former presidential nominee Barry Goldwater and the Republican leaders in the House (John J. Rhodes) and Senate (Hugh Scott), joined in creating the irresistible pressure for Nixon to resign soon thereafter.
Reagan and the Iran-Contra scandal
Reagan speaking to the press during Iran-Contra hearings.
Few presidents have been more iconic for voters in their own party than Ronald Reagan. But just as during Vietnam and Watergate, many of his own party's legislators demanded a full accounting after the Iran-Contra scandal erupted in late 1986.
In January 1987, virtually every Republican in both the House and Senate voted with Democrats to create bipartisan select committees to investigate the complex arms for hostages scheme. At that point, Reagan's approval rating in Gallup polling stood at about 80% among Republicans and nearly 50% with the general public -- again a stronger overall position than Trump now.
JUST WATCHED 1986: Oliver North and the Iran-Contra scandal Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH 1986: Oliver North and the Iran-Contra scandal 01:43
The two chambers quickly merged their dual investigations into a bipartisan joint committee on Iran-Contra, which released a highly critical report in November 1987. That process split along party lines more than the Watergate investigation, with the committee's six House Republicans all refusing to sign the tough majority report. But three Senate Republicans did sign that report -- even though Reagan's approval rating around that time in Gallup remained at about 80% among Republicans and 51% overall.
Congressional Republicans may genuinely believe Trump's actions, particularly on Russia, do not deserve more systematic scrutiny and questioning than Congress has provided so far. But this history suggests it's a dodge for them to argue that his hold on their party's voters essentially ties their hands. The bookended defections from centrist and conservative Senate Republicans that on Monday night again at least temporarily derailed the White House-backed push to repeal the Affordable Care Act suggests the Congressional GOP deference to Trump has its limits. Yet it remains unclear whether the health care revolt will stand as an exception-or the beginning of a more independent posture toward a president whose volatility has exasperated, if not alarmed, many Republicans in Congress. One thing is already clear: When the times demanded it, earlier generations of Congressional leaders have stood up to demand answers and accountability from presidents whose grip was at least as strong on their own party -- and much stronger on the public overall.The federal government is being accused of dragging its heels on a key component of an international climate agreement.
The United Nations has asked countries around the world to submit plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions beyond 2020 in advance of an international climate summit scheduled for December in Paris. The Council of Parties Conference is aimed at reaching a new global agreement on climate change.
The UN set the end of March as an unofficial deadline for developed nations to submit their reduction targets. The European Union, Switzerland and Norway have all produced their plans. Mexico submitted targets on Friday while the United States is expected to submit its targets soon. Canada, however, says it won’t announce any targets until later this year.
[Ottawa] can’t simply publish an inventory of what the provinces are doing.… We need leadership. — Glen Murray, Ontario environment minister
That delay incurred the wrath of the opposition in question period Monday, with New Democrats demanding to know when the government would deliver a plan.
"The only thing the Conservatives are on target to meet is complete failure," said NDP environment critic Megan Leslie.
"Mexico has announced its plan. The U.S. is moving forward. When will we stop being international laggards on climate change?"
Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq responded that Canada would submit its emission targets "well in advance" of the Paris summit, while offering no firm date.
Waiting on the provinces
Aglukkaq said the government wants to hear from the provinces before finalizing its plan. Provincial and territorial governments are tackling greenhouse gas emissions in different ways. The federal government says it needs to get a complete picture of how all those plans are working before it can settle on a national strategy.
But some provinces say the federal government has shown little interest in working with them to come up with any plan to fight climate change.
Quebec Environment Minister David Heurtel said he met with Aglukkaq at last year’s UN climate summit in Lima, Peru, the precursor to this year's meeting in Paris. Heurtel said he wrote to the minister seeking a dialogue on developing a national strategy on cutting greenhouse gases, but has heard nothing back.
"We just want to work with Ottawa, and we haven’t had any real response to our demands of just working together," Heurtel said.
Ontario Environment Minister Glen Murray said his province is equally frustrated.
"We need the federal government to play a leadership role in the federation. They’ve got to work with particularly Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia, and we need to see what they can put on the table to enable [greenhouse gas] reductions," Murray said.
"They’ve got to be part of it. They can’t simply publish an inventory of what the provinces are doing and then making that Canada’s contribution. We need leadership here."
Canada is not the only developed country that has yet to produce a plan. But environmentalists say the delay won't do anything to improve Canada's international reputation on environmental issues.
"It's disappointing, as usual," said Dale Marshall, national program manager at Environmental Defence.
"This is a really important issue that other people are being affected by. And Canada needs to show both respect for the science and responsibility in terms of taking action."
Marshall doesn't buy the government's argument that it needs more time to study the provinces' plans to reduce greenhouse gases before coming up with national targets.
"Most of the province's plans are out there. Their targets are there. They have been since the Conservatives formed a majority. So, there's really no reason why this consultation could not have happened already," he said.
Marshall said the only conclusion he can draw from the government's delay is that it does not take its responsibility on climate change seriously.Despite the fact that a great deal of digital ink has been spilled on Tiffany Trump’s law school journey — from her LSAT preparation to the elite law schools she visited (like Harvard, Columbia, and NYU) to the law school she chose to call home for the next three years (Georgetown) — little seems to be known about why the president’s daughter aspired to go to law school in the first place.
Why is Tiffany Trump going to law school?
One of her future colleagues in the incoming class of 2020 wants to know the answer (as we’re sure all members of the class of 2020 do), so she took to the pages of Teen Vogue to address the Second Daughter.
Maria Kari, a 28-year-old Pakistani-Canadian lawyer, will be completing an LL.M. program at the Georgetown University Law Center, and she’ll be required to take many first-year classes (where she’ll potentially be seated next to Trump). Kari is frightened to her core by the “hatred and intolerance that marks our times,” and lists some of the reasons why in a letter to her future classmate:
I am terrified by the new president’s disdain for legal standards and factual analysis. I am terrified by the current administration’s decision to defund and discredit laws and institutions that were put into place by this country’s founding fathers to promote dignity, tolerance, and equality for all. I am terrified by the constant dialogue of hate, fear-mongering, and psychological gaslighting that is infecting the body of the people.
Perhaps Tiffany Trump cares more about the rule of law than her father. Perhaps Tiffany Trump is more respectful of the opinions of “so-called” judges than her father. Perhaps Tiffany Trump wants to learn the ins and outs of social media law so she can educate her father. No one can say for sure, because we simply don’t know. That’s why Kari chose to demand an answer from her classmate:
[W]hat brings you to Georgetown this fall? Are you also made anxious by the ripple effect created by the current administration’s actions that is causing tremors of chaos around the world? Are you also starting to realize that local attitudes and conflicts are increasingly becoming more complex and interlinked around the world? Are you also fed up of and ready to challenge the vicious cycle of dispossession and disenfranchisement that this country’s 99.5% are stuck in? Are you also perplexed by the disregard shown to non-criminal undocumented persons who contribute so greatly to this great nation? Are you also confused why old white men get to legislate our reproductive rights? Most importantly, are you also alarmed by the growing disconnect and lack of compassionate advocates in the White House?
The world wants to know, Tiffany. Why are you going to law school?
Staci Zaretsky has been an editor at Above the Law since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.48 SHARES Facebook Twitter
Halloween marks the prime time to revisit slasher classics and psychological thrill rides. However, creating the perfect horror movie is no easy feat. More than just jump scares and gore, horror brings together all the best facets of film. Camera movement, score, acting, and editing all have to work in harmonious tandem to garner a terrifying reaction.
In a video essay by Plot Point Productions, they break down their picks of the best horror films of the 21st century, and provide thoughtful explanations as to why these films have earned their place in the canon (note, this video was made before the release of “Get Out” and “It“). As always there are snubs and expected choices, and of the films we weren’t surprised to see include “It Follows,” “The Babadook,” and “The Host.”
A strong mixture of independent, foreign language, and blockbuster films, the video essay provides a great list of films to choose from for when you’re ready to turn off the lights, get cozy with your trick-or-treat spoils, and invite the horror into the last hours of Halloween.
What are some of your favorite horror films of this century? What films would you add to the list? Let us know in the comments.• Who's on the move? Check out the status of 2015's free agents
ALL Australian ruckman Todd Goldstein has turned his back on unrestricted free agency to re-sign with North Melbourne.
Goldstein would have been one of the most sought-after names in next year's free agency crop after a career-best 2015 season when he won his first North best and fairest award and finished runner-up to Nat Fyfe in the AFLPA player of the year award.
North announced on Thursday that Goldstein had signed a new three-year deal that binds him to Arden Street until the end of 2019.
Goldstein said he never entertained exploring free agency and was confident North's playing group could build on its preliminary final appearances in 2014 and 2015.
"I am genuinely excited about the opportunity to be a one-club player and it's something that I have always wanted to be. My decision to stay was easy, to be honest," Goldstein wrote in a letter to the club's members.
"There is a great belief in this playing group and what we are capable of achieving. This belief comes from the improvement we've seen over the last couple of seasons and the fact that we now have a more mature and mentally stronger playing and coaching group.
"Our core group has been together for quite a long time, especially in football years, which allows us to have a greater understanding of how we want to play and more confidence in each other.
"In 2016, we want to make the top four and win a Grand Final. There is no point sugar coating it, we all crave that ultimate glory and won't accept aiming for anything less."
Goldstein was a restricted free agent in 2014 and re-signed at the time for a further two years.
If he had come out of contract at the end of next season, North could not have matched any rival free agency offers given players can only be a restricted free agent once.
Re-signing the 27-year-old ahead of the 2016 season is a massive coup for the Roos as he has emerged as their most important player in recent seasons.
Blessed with remarkable endurance for a ruckman, Goldstein has almost singlehandedly carried North's ruck division for the past five seasons, needing only occasional support from players including Ben Brown and Drew Petrie.
Even though the abolition of the substitute rule is likely to see more clubs play two ruckmen in 2016, Goldstein has been so successful as the Roos' sole big man that they are unlikely to change a winning formula.
The former Oakleigh Charger finished third in North's 2013 best and fairest award and runner-up last year, but he took his game to a new level in 2015.
His tap work has long been the strength of his game and, this year, he broke Gary Dempsey's 1982 record for the most hit-outs in a season (952) with 1058 at an average of 44.1 a game.
Goldstein also consistently influenced games around the ground in 2015 like never before, averaging a career-high 14.7 possessions and 1.3 contested marks a game, while finishing fourth at North for contested possessions (199), clearances (82) and tackles (102).
His outstanding season was recognised with his maiden All-Australian selection.
Goldstein's re-signing comes little more than a month after North took another prospective 2016 free agent off the market, extending vice-captain Jack Ziebell's tenure at Arden Street until the end of 2021.
North now has five remaining 2016 free agents on its books: Michael Firrito, Brent Harvey, Drew Petrie, Lindsay Thomas and Daniel Wells.
The big names set to enter free agency next year include Essendon defender Cale Hooker, Collingwood midfielder Steele Sidebottom, Brisbane Lions on-baller Daniel Rich and Sydney Swans co-captain Kieren Jack.An unsatisfied customer in Melbourne, Fla., was arrested last week for assaulting a 7-Eleven employee with hot nacho cheese.
According to the Palm Bay Daily, Stephanie L. Hicks entered the 7-Eleven at around 1:50 a.m. on Thursday morning, looking to buy a sandwich and a cup of the aforementioned liquid cheese.
VID SHOWS CRACKER BARREL EMPLOYEE GETTING RUN OVER BY ANGRY DRIVER
The clerk, however, had reportedly asked Hicks to refrain from opening the hot cheese dispenser — a request Hicks didn’t appreciate, as she later told cops she wasn’t a fan of the clerk’s attitude.
Hicks then tried to pay for her food, but the clerk refused to ring her up. In retaliation, Hicks threw both the sandwich and the hot cheese across the counter, covering the clerk’s hands and feet in the gooey orange condiment.
Hicks, 31, then waited outside the front door of the 7-Eleven for police to arrive, but not before angrily reminding the clerk that “the customer is always right!”
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Hicks was later arrested for battery when police arrived and pulled footage of the incident from the store’s security cameras.It was announced today that Per Mertesacker will become Arsenal’s new academy manager, succeeding Andries Jonker, when he retires from playing in 2018.
The appointment of Mertesacker is certainly an intriguing move and it is clear |
he would prefer to keep his advice private until Trump announces his decision.
Dunford also said it would “make sense to him” that withdrawing from the deal would have ripple effects on the North Korea crisis.
“It makes sense to me that our holding up agreements that we have signed, unless there’s a material breach, would have an impact on others’ willingness to sign agreements,” Dunford said in response to Reed.
Further asked by Reed whether Iran would step up its malign activities even more if the United States scraps the nuclear deal and stretch an already stressed U.S. military thinner, Dunford said those activities always concern the military.
“We watch every day, and this is even in addition to the [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] issue, just our relationship with Iran, we watch every day for indicators that either Iranian-backed militia forces or Iranian maritime forces would pose a threat to the force,” he said. “We have postured the force to deal with those threats. We watch the intelligence carefully to make sure our posture every day is in the context of the current threat.”Apparently there's a little football game on this Sunday, but the dog lovers of the world will likely miss it all in favor of the television event that is Puppy Bowl XI.
Between the kitty halftime show, the Nigerian goat cheerleaders and, of course, the precious pooches themselves, it's bound to be a case study in cuteness. To prepare for it all, HuffPost Live's Nancy Redd chatted on Friday with Animal Planet's official Puppy Bowl referee Dan Schachner, who brought along three of the pups who will hit the field this weekend. And the best news of all is that the puppies are currently available for adoption through New York's Animal Haven.
Check out the video above for the scoop on this year's Puppy Bowl, and if you don't care about human distractions, watch the clip below for an all-dogs supercut.
Sign up here for Live Today, HuffPost Live’s morning email that will let you know the newsmakers, celebrities and politicians joining us that day and give you the best clips from the day before!Media playback is unsupported on your device
La oposición de Venezuela obtuvo una amplia e histórica victoria en las elecciones parlamentarias celebradas este domingo.
Se trata de la primera vez que obtiene la mayoría en la Asamblea Nacional en 16 años de gobierno chavista.
El Consejo Nacional Electoral confirmó que la Mesa de Unidad Democrática (MUD) tiene asegurados al menos 99 escaños en la Asamblea Nacional, mientras que el oficialismo por el momento apenas consigue 46.
El presidente de la Asamblea Nacional, Diosdado Cabello, retuvo su escaño pero está en duda si con la mayoría opositora en el parlamento podría perder su cargo.
Todavía quedan 19 plazas en disputa más las tres diputaciones indígenas.
Si la oposición logra 12 escaños más se asegurará los dos tercios de la Asamblea Nacional, con lo que podría reformar la Constitución venezolana.
El parlamento entra en receso el 15 de diciembre y reanuda sus actividades, con los asientos renovados, el 5 de enero.
Cambios
Si la Mesa de Unidad Democrática alcanza las 111 diputaciones podrá sancionar leyes orgánicas o fundamentales, convocar una Asamblea Constituyente y remover a los miembros del Tribunal Supremo de Justicia (TSJ).
Cifras de las elecciones parlamentarias en Venezuela 109 escaños alcanzó la MUD en voto lista y nominal.
55 plazas logró el oficialista PSUV.
3 curules fueron adjudicados a opositores en las circunscripciones indígenas. AP
Con 100 escaños, MUD tendrá las facultades de emitir votos de censura contra el vicepresidente y ministros, aprobar enmiendas constitucionales, sancionar leyes habilitantes que dan poderes legislativos al presidente y designar y remover a los integrantes del Consejo Nacional Electoral.
El resultado fue dado a conocer por la presidenta del Consejo Nacional Electoral, Tibisay Lucena, poco después de la medianoche y luego de una larga y tensa espera.
"Felicitamos al pueblo de Venezuela. A los ganadores les pedimos que administren sus triunfos y a los perdedores los felicitamos también", dijo Lucena, quien informó que la participación fue del 74,25% de los potenciales votantes.
Maduro: "Una bofetada"
Inmediatamente después de la conferencia de prensa de Lucena, el presidente Nicolás Maduro se dirigió a la nación para aceptar la derrota.
Derechos de autor de la imagen AP Image caption La desilusión fue evidente entre los partidarios del gobierno.
"Los aceptamos, los resultados exactamente como han sido emanados por el poder electoral", dijo Maduro, quien insistió en que su partido había perdido una batalla, pero no la guerra.
"Esto lo agarramos como una bofetada para despertar hacia lo que nos toca en el futuro", declaró el mandatario.
La Mesa de Unidad Democrática celebró en su centro de campaña con un breve mensaje de su secretario general Jesús Torrealba.
"¡Comenzó el cambio, Venezuela! Hoy tenemos razones para celebrar. El país pedía un cambio y ese cambio comienza hoy", dijo eufórico el líder opositor rodeado de otros referentes de la MUD.
Crisis económica
Aunque la campaña fue dominada por las denuncias de "ventajismo" oficial, expertos coinciden en que la crisis económica llevó a muchos a ejercer el voto castigo en contra del gobierno.
Y como explicó el corresponsal de BBC Mundo en Venezuela, Daniel Pardo, ahora todos seguirán con suma atención la decisión sobre los 19 escaños todavía no declarados.
Derechos de autor de la imagen Reuters Image caption Los comandos de campaña oficialista quedaron vacíos antes del anuncio oficial.
"Si la oposición sólo consigue la mayoría simple se verá obligada a negociar con el gobierno", recordó Pardo.
Y en el campo opositor son muchos lo que están convencidos de haber conseguido al menos 113 diputados.
Aunque, según Pardo, pase lo que pase "se trata ya de un resultado histórico que dará mucho de qué hablar y abre la puerta para una etapa inédita en la historia reciente de Venezuela".Clomipramine, sold under the brand name Anafranil among others, is a tricyclic antidepressant (TCA).[4] It is used for the treatment of obsessive–compulsive disorder, panic disorder, major depressive disorder, and chronic pain.[4] It may decrease the risk of suicide in those over the age of 65.[4] It is taken by mouth.[4]
Common side effects include dry mouth, constipation, loss of appetite, sleepiness, weight gain, sexual dysfunction, and trouble urinating.[4] Serious side effects include an increased risk of suicidal behavior in those under the age of 25, seizures, mania, and liver problems.[4] If stopped suddenly a withdrawal syndrome may occur with headaches, sweating, and dizziness.[4] It is unclear if it is safe for use in pregnancy.[4] Its mechanism of action is not entirely clear but is believed to involve increased levels of serotonin.[4]
Clomipramine was discovered in 1964 by the Swiss drug manufacturer Ciba-Geigy.[5] It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines, the most effective and safe medicines needed in a health system.[6] It is available as a generic medication.[4] The wholesale price in the developing world is between 0.11 and 0.21 per day as of 2014.[7] In the United States the wholesale costs as of 2018 is about US$9 per day.[8] It was made from imipramine.[5]
Medical uses [ edit ]
Clomipramine has a number of uses in medicine including in the treatment of:
In a meta-analysis of various trials involving fluoxetine (Prozac), fluvoxamine (Luvox), and sertraline (Zoloft) to test their relative efficacies in treating OCD, clomipramine was found to be the most effective.[27]
Contraindications [ edit ]
Contraindications include:[12]
Known hypersensitivity to clomipramine, or any of the excipients or cross-sensitivity to tricyclic antidepressants of the dibenzazepine group
Recent myocardial infarction
Any degree of heart block or other cardiac arrhythmias
Mania
Severe liver disease
Narrow angle glaucoma
Urinary retention
It must not be given in combination or within 3 weeks before or after treatment with a monoamine oxidase inhibitor. (Moclobemide included, however clomipramine can be initiated sooner at 48 hours following discontinuation of moclobemide.)
Pregnancy and lactation [ edit ]
Clomipramine use during pregnancy is associated with congenital heart defects in the newborn.[14][28] It is also associated with reversible withdrawal effects in the newborn.[29] Clomipramine is also distributed in breast milk and hence nursing while taking clomipramine is advised against.[10]
Side effects [ edit ]
Clomipramine has been associated with the following side effects:[9][10][11][12]
Very common (>10% frequency):
Accommodation (eye)
Blurred vision
Nausea
Dry mouth
Constipation
Fatigue
Weight gain
Increased appetite
Dizziness
Tremor
Headache
Myoclonus
Drowsiness
Somnolence
Restlessness
Micturition disorder
Sexual dysfunction (erectile dysfunction and loss of libido)
Hyperhidrosis (profuse sweating)
Common (1–10% frequency):
Weight loss
Orthostatic hypotension
Sinus tachycardia
Clinically irrelevant ECG changes (e.g. T- and ST-wave changes) in patients of normal cardiac status
Palpitations
Tinnitus (hearing ringing in one's ears)
Mydriasis (dilated pupils)
Vomiting
Abdominal disorders
Diarrhoea
Decreased appetite
Transaminases increased
Alkaline phosphatase increased
Speech disorders
Paraesthesia
Muscle hypertonia
Dysgeusia
Memory impairment
Muscular weakness
Disturbance in attention
Confusional state
Disorientation
Hallucinations (particularly in elderly patients and patients with Parkinson's disease)
Anxiety
Agitation
Sleep disorders
Mania
Hypomania
Aggression
Depersonalisation
Insomnia
Nightmares
Aggravation of depression
Delirium
Galactorrhoea (lactation that is not associated with pregnancy or breastfeeding)
Breast enlargement
Yawning
Hot flush
Dermatitis allergic (skin rash, urticaria)
Photosensitivity reaction
Pruritus (itching)
Uncommon (0.1–1% frequency):
Convulsions
Ataxia
Arrhythmias
Elevated blood pressure
Activation of psychotic symptoms
Very rare (<0.01% frequency):
Pancytopaenia — an abnormally low amount of all the different types of blood cells in the blood (including platelets, white blood cells and red blood cells).
Leucopenia — a low white blood cell count.
Agranulocytosis — basically a worse form of leucopaenia; a dangerously low white blood cell count which leaves one open to life-threatening infections due to the role of the white blood cells in defending the body from invaders.
Thrombocytopenia — an abnormally low amount of platelets in the blood which are essential to clotting and hence this leads to an increased tendency to bruise and bleed, including, potentially, internally.
Eosinophilia — an abnormally high number of eosinophils — the cells that fight off parasitic infections — in the blood.
Syndrome of inappropriate secretion of antidiuretic hormone (SIADH) — a potentially fatal reaction to certain medications that is due to an excessive release of antidiuretic hormone — a hormone that prevents the production of urine by increasing the reabsorption of fluids in the kidney — this results in the development of various electrolyte abnormalities (e.g. hyponatraemia [low blood sodium], hypokalaemia [low blood potassium], hypocalcaemia [low blood calcium]).
Glaucoma
Oedema (local or generalised)
Alopecia (hair loss)
Hyperpyrexia (a high fever that is above 41.5 °C)
Hepatitis (liver swelling) with or without jaundice — the yellowing of the eyes, the skin, and mucous membranes due to impaired liver function.
Abnormal ECG
Anaphylactic and anaphylactoid reactions including hypotension
Neuroleptic malignant syndrome (NMS) — a potentially fatal side effect of antidopaminergic agents such as antipsychotics, tricyclic antidepressants and antiemetics (drugs that relieve nausea and vomiting). NMS develops over a period of days or weeks and is characterised by the following symptoms: Tremor Muscle rigidity Mental status change (such as confusion, delirium, mania, hypomania, agitation, coma, etc.) Hyperthermia (high body temperature) Tachycardia (high heart rate) Blood pressure changes Diaphoresis (sweating profusely) Diarrhoea
Alveolitis allergic (pneumonitis) with or without eosinophilia
Purpura
Conduction disorder (e.g. widening of QRS complex, prolonged QT interval, PQ changes, bundle-branch block, torsade de pointes, particularly in patients with hypokalaemia)
Withdrawal [ edit ]
Withdrawal symptoms may occur during gradual or particularly abrupt withdrawal of tricyclic antidepressant drugs. Possible symptoms include: nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhoea, insomnia, headache, nervousness, anxiety, dizziness and worsening of psychiatric status.[11] Differentiating between the return of the original psychiatric disorder and clomipramine withdrawal symptoms is important.[30] Clomipramine withdrawal can be severe.[31] Withdrawal symptoms can also occur in neonates when clomipramine is used during pregnancy.[29] A major mechanism of withdrawal from tricyclic antidepressants is believed to be due to a rebound effect of excessive cholinergic activity due to neuroadaptations as a result of chronic inhibition of cholinergic receptors by tricyclic antidepressants. Restarting the antidepressant and slow tapering is the treatment of choice for tricyclic antidepressant withdrawal. Some withdrawal symptoms may respond to anticholinergics, such as atropine or benztropine mesylate.[32]
Overdose [ edit ]
Clomipramine overdose usually presents with the following symptoms:[9][11][12]
Signs of central nervous system depression such as: stupor coma drowsiness restlessness ataxia
Mydriasis
Convulsions
Enhanced reflexes
Muscle rigidity
Athetoid and choreoathetoid movements
Serotonin syndrome - a condition with many of the same symptoms as neuroleptic malignant syndrome but has a significantly more rapid onset
Cardiovascular effects including: arrhythmias (including Torsades de pointes) tachycardia QTc interval prolongation conduction disorders hypotension shock heart failure cardiac arrest
Apnoea
Cyanosis
Respiratory depression
Vomiting
Fever
Sweating
Oliguria
Anuria
There is no specific antidote for overdose and all treatment is purely supportive and symptomatic.[11] Treatment with activated charcoal may be used to limit absorption in cases of oral overdose.[11] Anyone suspected of overdosing on clomipramine should be hospitalised and kept under close surveillance for at least 72 hours.[11] Clomipramine has been reported as being less toxic in overdose than most other TCAs in one meta-analysis but this may well be due to the circumstances surrounding most overdoses as clomipramine is more frequently used to treat conditions for which the rate of suicide is not particularly high such as OCD.[33] In another meta-analysis, however, clomipramine was associated with a significant degree of toxicity in overdose.[34]
Interactions [ edit ]
Clomipramine may interact with a number of different medications, including the monoamine oxidase inhibitors which include isocarboxazid, moclobemide, phenelzine, selegiline and tranylcypromine, antiarrhythmic agents (due to the effects of TCAs like clomipramine on cardiac conduction. There is also a potential pharmacokinetic interaction with quinidine due to the fact that clomipramine is metabolised by CYP2D6 in vivo), diuretics (due to the potential for hypokalaemia (low blood potassium) to develop which increases the risk for QT interval prolongation and torsades de pointes), the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs; due to both potential additive serotonergic effects leading to serotonin syndrome and the potential for a pharmacokinetic interaction with the SSRIs that inhibit CYP2D6 [e.g. fluoxetine and paroxetine]) and serotonergic agents such as triptans, other tricyclic antidepressants, tramadol, etc. (due to the potential for serotonin syndrome).[11] Its use is also advised against in those concurrently on CYP2D6 inhibitors due the potential for increased plasma levels of clomipramine and the resulting potential for CNS and cardiotoxicity.[11]
Pharmacology [ edit ]
Pharmacodynamics [ edit ]
Clomipramine is a reuptake inhibitor of serotonin and norepinephrine, or a serotonin–norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (SNRI); that is, it blocks the reuptake of these neurotransmitters back into neurons by preventing them from interacting with their transporters, thereby increasing their extracellular concentrations in the synaptic cleft and resulting in increased serotonergic and noradrenergic neurotransmission.[48][36] In addition, clomipramine also has antiadrenergic, antihistamine, antiserotonergic, antidopaminergic, and anticholinergic activities. It is specifically an antagonist of the α 1 -adrenergic receptor, the histamine H 1 receptor, the serotonin 5-HT 2A, 5-HT 2C, 5-HT 3, 5-HT 6, and 5-HT 7 receptors, the dopamine D 1, D 2, and D 3 receptors, and the muscarinic acetylcholine receptors (M 1 –M 5 ).[44][37] Like other TCAs, clomipramine weakly blocks voltage-dependent sodium channels as well.[48][5][49]
Although clomipramine shows around 100- to 200-fold preference in affinity for the SERT over the NET, its major active metabolite, desmethylclomipramine (norclomipramine), binds to the NET with very high affinity (K i = 0.32 nM) and with dramatically reduced affinity for the SERT (K i = 31.6 nM).[50][51] Moreover, desmethylclomipramine circulates at concentrations that are approximately twice those of clomipramine.[52] In accordance, occupancy of both the SERT and the NET has been shown with clomipramine administration in positron emission tomography studies with humans and non-human primates.[53][54] As such, clomipramine is in fact a fairly balanced SNRI rather than only a serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SRI).[55]
The antidepressant effects of clomipramine are thought to be due to reuptake inhibition of serotonin and norepinephrine,[48] while serotonin reuptake inhibition only is thought to be responsible for the effectiveness of clomipramine in the treatment of OCD. Conversely, antagonism of the H 1, α 1 -adrenergic, and muscarinic acetylcholine receptors is thought to contribute to its side effects.[48] Blockade of the H 1 receptor is specifically responsible for the antihistamine effects of clomipramine and side effects like sedation and somnolence (sleepiness).[48] Antagonism of the α 1 -adrenergic receptor is thought to cause orthostatic hypotension and dizziness.[48] Inhibition of muscarinic acetylcholine receptors is responsible for the anticholinergic side effects of clomipramine like dry mouth, constipation, urinary retention, blurred vision, and cognitive/memory impairment.[48] In overdose, sodium channel blockade in the brain is believed to cause the coma and seizures associated with TCAs while blockade of sodium channels in the heart is considered to cause cardiac arrhythmias, cardiac arrest, and death.[48][5] On the other hand, sodium channel blockade is also thought to contribute to the analgesic effects of TCAs, for instance in the treatment of neuropathic pain.[56]
The exceptionally strong serotonin reuptake inhibition of clomipramine likely precludes the possibility of its antagonism of serotonin receptors (which it binds to with more than 100-fold lower affinity than the SERT) resulting in a net decrease in signaling by these receptors. In accordance, while serotonin receptor antagonists like cyproheptadine and chlorpromazine are effective as antidotes against serotonin syndrome,[57][58] clomipramine is nonetheless capable of inducing this syndrome.[55] In fact, while all TCAs are SRIs and serotonin receptor antagonists to varying extents, the only TCAs that are associated with serotonin syndrome are clomipramine and to a lesser extent its dechlorinated analogue imipramine,[55][57] which are the two most potent SRIs of the TCAs (and in relation to this have the highest ratios of serotonin reuptake inhibition to serotonin receptor antagonism).[59] As such, whereas other TCAs can be combined with monoamine oxidase inhibitors (with caution due to the risk of hypertensive crisis from NET inhibition; sometimes done in treatment-resistant depressives), clomipramine cannot be due to the risk of serotonin syndrome and death.[48] Unlike the case of its serotonin receptor antagonism, orthostatic hypotension is a common side effect of clomipramine, suggesting that its blockade of the α 1 -adrenergic receptor is strong enough to overcome the stimulatory effects on the α 1 -adrenergic receptor of its NET inhibition.[5][48]
Serotonergic activity [ edit ]
Comparison of SERT-active antidepressants[59] Medication SERT NET Dosage
(mg/day) t 1/2 ( M )
(hours) C p
(ng/mL) C p / SERT
ratio Amitriptyline 4.3 34.5 100–200 16 (30) 100–250 23–58 Amoxapine 58.5 16.1 200–300 8 (30) 200–500 3.4–8.5 Butriptyline[36] 1,360 5,100???? Clomipramine 0.14–0.28 37 100–200 32 (70) 150–500 536–3,570 Desipramine 17.5 0.8 100–200 30 125–300 7.1–17 Dosulepin[60][61][62] 8.3 45.5 150–225 25 (34) 50–200 6.0–24 Doxepin 66.7 29.4 100–200 18 (30) 150–250 2.2–3.7 Imipramine 1.4 37 100–200 12 (30) 175–300 125–214 Iprindole[36] 1,620 1,262???? Lofepramine[36] 70.0 5.4???? Nortriptyline 18.5 4.4 75–150 31 60–150 3.2–8.1 Protriptyline 19.6 1.4 15–40 80 100–250 5.1–13 Trimipramine[36] 149 2,450 75–200 16 (30) 100–300 0.67–2.0 Citalopram 1.4 5,100 20–40 36 75–150 54–107 Escitalopram 1.1 7,840 10–20 30 40–80 36–73 Fluoxetine 0.8 244 20–40 53 (240) 100–500 125–625 Fluvoxamine 2.2 1,300 100–200 18 100–200 45–91 Paroxetine 0.34 40 20–40 17 30–100 300–1,000 Sertraline 0.4 417 100–150 23 (66) 25–50 83–167 Duloxetine 1.6 11.2 80–100 11?? Milnacipran 123 200???? Venlafaxine 9.1 535 75–225 5 (11)?? The values for the SERT and NET are K i (nM). Note that in the C p / SERT ratio,
free versus protein-bound drug concentrations are not accounted for.
SERT occupancy by SRIs at clinically approved dosages Medication Dosage range
(mg/day)[63] ~80% SERT
occupancy
(mg/day)[64][65] Ratio (dosage /
80% occupancy) Citalopram 20–40 40 0.5–1 Escitalopram 10–20 10 1–2 Fluoxetine 20–80 20 1–4 Fluvoxamine 50–300 70 0.71–5 Paroxetine 10–60 20 0.5–3 Sertraline 25–200 50 0.5–4 Duloxetine 20–60 30 0.67–2 Venlafaxine 75–375 75 1–5 Clomipramine 50–250 10 5–25
Clomipramine is a very strong SRI.[66][67] Its affinity for the SERT was reported in one study using human tissues to be 0.14 nM, which is considerably higher than that of other TCAs.[37][59] For example, the TCAs with the next highest affinities for the SERT in the study were imipramine, amitriptyline, and dosulepin (dothiepin), with K i values of 1.4 nM, 4.3 nM, and 8.3 nM, respectively.[59] In addition, clomipramine has a terminal half-life that is around twice as long as that of amitriptyline and imipramine.[59][68] In spite of these differences however, clomipramine is used clinically at the same usual dosages as other serotonergic TCAs (100–200 mg/day).[59] It achieves typical circulating concentrations that are similar in range to those of other TCAs but with an upper limit that is around twice that of amitriptyline and imipramine.[59] For these reasons, clomipramine is the most potent SRI among the TCAs and is far stronger as an SRI than other TCAs at typical clinical dosages.[66][67] In addition, clomipramine is more potent as an SRI than any selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), it is more potent than paroxetine, which is the strongest SSRI.[59]
A positron emission tomography study found that a single low dose of 10 mg clomipramine to healthy volunteers resulted in 81.1% occupancy of the SERT, which was comparable to the 84.9% SERT occupancy by 50 mg fluvoxamine.[53] In the study, single doses of 5 to 50 mg clomipramine resulted in 67.2 to 94.0% SERT occupancy while single doses of 12.5 to 50 mg fluvoxamine resulted in 28.4 to 84.9% SERT occupancy.[53] Chronic treatment with higher doses was able to achieve up to 100.0% SERT occupancy with clomipramine and up to 93.6% SERT occupancy with fluvoxamine.[53] Other studies have found 83% SERT occupancy with 20 mg/day paroxetine and 77% SERT occupancy with 20 mg/day citalopram.[53][69] These results indicate that very low doses of clomipramine are able to substantially occupy the SERT and that clomipramine achieves higher occupancy of the SERT than SSRIs at comparable doses.[53][64] Moreover, clomipramine may be able to achieve more complete occupancy of the SERT at high doses, at least relative to fluvoxamine.[53]
If the ratios of the 80% SERT occupancy dosage and the approved clinical dosage range are calculated and compared for SSRIs, SNRIs, and clomipramine, it can be deduced that clomipramine is by far the strongest SRI used medically.[64][63] The lowest approved dosage of clomipramine can be estimated to be roughly comparable in SERT occupancy to the maximum approved dosages of the strongest SSRIs and SNRIs.[64][63] Because their mechanism of action was originally not known and dose-ranging studies were never conducted, first-generation antipsychotics were dramatically overdosed in patients.[64] It has been suggested that the same may have been true for clomipramine and other TCAs.[64]
Obsessive–compulsive disorder [ edit ]
Clomipramine was the first drug that was investigated for and found to be effective in the treatment of OCD.[5][70] In addition, it was the first drug to be approved by the FDA in the United States for the treatment of OCD.[71] The effectiveness of clomipramine in the treatment of OCD is far greater than that of other TCAs, which are comparatively weak SRIs; a meta-analysis found pre- versus post-treatment effect sizes of 1.55 for clomipramine relative to a range of 0.67 for imipramine and 0.11 for desipramine.[72] In contrast to other TCAs, studies have found that clomipramine and SSRIs, which are more potent SRIs, have similar effectiveness in the treatment of OCD.[72] However, multiple meta-analyses have found that clomipramine nonetheless retains a significant effectiveness advantage relative to SSRIs;[73] in the same meta-analysis mentioned previously, the effect sizes of SSRIs in the treatment of OCD ranged from 0.81 for fluoxetine to 1.36 for sertraline (relative to 1.55 for clomipramine).[72] However, the effectiveness advantage for clomipramine has not been apparent in head-to-head comparisons of clomipramine versus SSRIs for OCD.[73] The differences in effectiveness findings could be due to differences in methodologies across non-head-to-head studies.[72][73]
Relatively high doses of SRIs are needed for effectiveness in the treatment of OCD.[74] Studies have found that high dosages of SSRIs above the normally recommended maximums are significantly more effective in OCD treatment than lower dosages (e.g., 250 to 400 mg/day sertraline versus 200 mg/day sertraline).[74][75] In addition, the combination of clomipramine and SSRIs has also been found to be significantly more effective in alleviating OCD symptoms, and clomipramine is commonly used to augment SSRIs for this reason.[74][71] Studies have found that intravenous clomipramine, which is associated with very high circulating concentrations of the drug and a much higher ratio of clomipramine to its metabolite desmethylclomipramine, is more effective than oral clomipramine in the treatment of OCD.[74][5][71] There is a case report of complete remission from OCD for approximately one month following a massive overdose of fluoxetine, an SSRI with a uniquely long duration of action.[76] Taken together, stronger serotonin reuptake inhibition has consistently been associated with greater alleviation of OCD symptoms, and since clomipramine, at the clinical dosages in which it is employed, is effectively the strongest SRI used medically (see table above), this may underlie its unique effectiveness in the treatment of OCD.
In addition to serotonin reuptake inhibition, clomipramine is also a mild but clinically significant antagonist of the dopamine D 1, D 2, and D 3 receptors at high concentrations.[59][73][77] Addition of antipsychotics, which are potent dopamine receptor antagonists, to SSRIs, has been found to significantly augment their effectiveness in the treatment of OCD.[73][78] As such, besides strong serotonin reuptake inhibition, clomipramine at high doses might also block dopamine receptors to treat OCD symptoms, and this could additionally or alternatively be involved in its possible effectiveness advantage over SSRIs.[79][80]
Although clomipramine is probably more effective in the treatment of OCD compared to SSRIs, it is greatly inferior to them in terms of tolerability and safety due to its lack of selectivity for the SERT and promiscuous pharmacological activity.[73][81] In addition, clomipramine has high toxicity in overdose and can potentially result in death, whereas death rarely, if ever, occurs with overdose of SSRIs.[73][81] It is for these reasons that clomipramine, in spite of potentially superior effectiveness to SSRIs, is now rarely used as a first-line agent in the treatment of OCD, with SSRIs being used as first-line therapies instead and clomipramine generally being reserved for more severe cases and as a second-line agent.[81]
Pharmacokinetics [ edit ]
The oral bioavailability of clomipramine is approximately 50%.[9] Peak plasma concentrations occur around 2–6 hours (with an average of 4.7 hours) after taking clomipramine orally and are in the range of 56–154 ng/mL (178–489 nmol/L).[9] Steady-state concentrations of clomipramine are around 134–532 ng/mL (426–1,690 nmol/L), with an average of 218 ng/mL (692 nmol/L), and are reached after 7 to 14 days of repeated dosing.[9] Steady-state concentrations of the active metabolite, desmethylclomipramine, are around 230–550 ng/mL (730–1,750 nmol/L).[9] The volume of distribution (V d ) of clomipramine is approximately 17 L/kg.[10] It binds approximately 97–98% to plasma proteins,[9][10] primarily to albumin.[9] Clomipramine is metabolized in the liver mainly by CYP2D6.[10] It has a terminal half-life of 32 hours, and its N-desmethyl metabolite, desmethylclomipramine, has a terminal half-life of approximately 69 hours.[10] Clomipramine is mostly excreted in urine (60%) and feces (32%).[10]
Chemistry [ edit ]
Clomipramine is a tricyclic compound, specifically a dibenzazepine, and possesses three rings fused together with a side chain attached in its chemical structure.[82] Other dibenzazepine TCAs include imipramine, desipramine, and trimipramine.[82] Clomipramine is a derivative of imipramine with a chlorine atom added to one of its rings and is also known as 3-chloroimipramine.[83] It is a tertiary amine TCA, with its side chain-demethylated metabolite desmethylclomipramine being a secondary amine.[84][85] Other tertiary amine TCAs include amitriptyline, imipramine, dosulepin (dothiepin), doxepin, and trimipramine.[86][87] The chemical name of clomipramine is 3-(3-chloro-10,11-dihydro-5H-dibenzo[b,f]azepin-5-yl)-N,N-dimethylpropan-1-amine and its free base form has a chemical formula of C 19 H 23 ClN 2 with a molecular weight of 314.857 g/mol.[2] The drug is used commercially almost exclusively as the hydrochloride salt; the free base has been used rarely.[2][88] The CAS Registry Number of the free base is 303-49-1 and of the hydrochloride is 17321-77-6.[2][88]
History [ edit ]
Clomipramine was developed by Geigy.[5][89] It was first referenced in the literature in 1961 and was patented in 1963.[89] The drug was first approved for medical use in Europe in the treatment of depression in |
don't need to be - this isn't an election, and even if it were, they wouldn't be required to disclose expenditure until February. Analysis found the 'No' side had outspent the 'Yes' side on television advertising. Here's what we do know about one of the "No" campaign's largest contributors, the Australian Christian Lobby. Financial documents show its tax-exempt income over the past 10 years exceeded $20 million. In 2015-16, it earned $3 million in donations, and ended the year with $1.5 million in net assets. Part of the proof will be on our screens. An analysis earlier this month by analytics firm Ebiquity found the "No" side had outspent the "Yes" side five-to-one on television ads. Anecdotally, prime-time slots have been bursting with ads from the Coalition for Marriage. By comparison, the Equality Campaign recently crowd-funded $100,000 to return one of its ads to the screen.Awareness in the importance of the landscape approach is growing. Photo: Kate Evans / CIFOR
Agricultural intensification has fed the world, but are we healthier?
Leopards on the loose, a planet inferno, and will fast food giants spark a Domino’s effect for climate change?
Forests are being converted into agricultural land throughout the tropics, from Borneo to the Congo Basin. But this process – called agrarian change – can bring communities benefits as well as consequences.
Questions about the benefits and trade-offs of agrarian transitions are too often reduced into a simple debate over how best to increase agricultural production while minimizing deforestation.
“When you’re looking at patterns of agrarian change you need to consider all kinds of other things, not just agricultural production, but livelihoods, diets, ecosystem services,” said Terry Sunderland, a Principal Scientist with the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).
Sunderland and his colleagues lead the Agrarian Change in Tropical Landscapes project, which aims to get a more comprehensive understanding of the social and economic consequences of the agrarian transition.
The project uses multiple sites in each of seven countries.
“One of the strengths of the project is that we’re using this diversity of landscapes, both to come up with some generalized patterns but also to understand the importance of local context,” said Sunderland.
“And I think one big message that stands out is that context is really important.”
Expanding the debate
The Agrarian Change project takes as its premise the need to increase global food production to feed a growing global population. For many tropical landscapes, this will likely require a continued agrarian transition.
“Agriculture monocultures are becoming a more and more dominant land use, in part to address the challenge of growing more food. One way that’s going to happen is by transforming landscapes with tree cover and making them primarily agricultural landscapes,” said Liz Deakin, who coordinated the project.
The social impacts of this transition are one current blind spot the project is exploring.
“We are trying to quantify the impacts of the agrarian transition in terms of food security and nutrition levels, as well as the ways it could benefit households, for example through opportunities for employment and education,” said Deakin.
“We don’t want to just say that ‘agrarian change is bad’ for these landscapes. We’re using large datasets to get a more balanced idea,” she explained. “We’re identifying the ways that the change could actually benefit people living in these landscapes, and other ways in which it is not. We’re trying to tease out those ideas from the evidence.”
Acknowledging trade-offs
From the start, the project has highlighted the trade-offs that agricultural transitions tend to entail.
“You would think that the transition to a cash economy in Indonesia would have a positive impact on nutrition, for example, because people have more market access and power,” said Sunderland.
“But actually, research has been showing the opposite: people go through a dietary transition to a much poorer diet. So that’s one very clear and stark trade-off from the transition.”
“We’re also seeing things like social norms breaking down with access to cash, which can impact on livelihoods.”
These kinds of trade-offs are often glossed over, if not ignored completely, by the current debate over sustainable intensification.
“Everyone’s talking about land sparing and land sharing. What we’re trying to do with this project is present a more nuanced picture,” said Sunderland.
Context is key
The project aims to generate a globally representative picture by focusing on selected project sites across a range of landscapes.
What all these landscapes are showing is that you can have agriculture that’s sustainable in the context of broader landscape management, rather than trying to approach it in isolation Terry Sunderland
Despite similar patterns throughout its sites in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Indonesia and Zambia, the project has also been revealing the critical importance of local context.
“You can learn a lot from asking comparative questions, looking at who benefits in some landscapes and who benefits in others,” said Sunderland.
“One of the ideas we’ve been confirming is that context is everything. So what happens in Burkina Faso may not be able to be applied in Zambia, and vice versa.
“All that nuance is really important but gets missed in the lexicon of development, which often proposes somewhat simplistic solutions to very complex problems.”
Integrating for a landscape-based approach
Intensive data analysis for the Agrarian Change project will be conducted over the next six months, with one further finding expected to come through strongly: landscapes are an ideal scale to explore the social and ecological consequences of agrarian change.
“In terms of managing landscape-scale processes like the agrarian transition, the integration of function has multiple advantages over the segregation of function,” said Sunderland.
“And that shows up in the landscapes that we’re working in.”
Of course this type of management requires some governance tweaks, if not full reform. But examples are emerging where functions that are usually separate are being integrated, such as in the recent merger between the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry and Ministry of Environment.
And at a more localized scale, Cameroon is also demonstrating some really positive developments in integrating landscape management functions, said Sunderland.
So while some of the Agrarian Change project’s sites are more advanced in integrating landscape management than others, the idea itself is proving robust.
“What all these landscapes are showing is that you can have agriculture that’s sustainable in the context of broader landscape management, rather than trying to approach it in isolation,” said Sunderland.Read more about this story from CNN affiliates WFAA and KTVT. Are you there? Share your photos and video.
Dallas (CNN) -- Texas firefighters Wednesday battled blazes that have scorched more than a million acres and have been burning for more than a week, according to the Texas Forest Service.
"We're actually seeing Texas burn from border to border. We've got it in west Texas, in east Texas, in north Texas, in south Texas -- it's all over the state," Forest Service spokeswoman April Saginor told CNN Radio. "We've got one in the Dallas area that's four fires that have actually merged together."
Saginor said firefighters from 34 states are now in Texas battling blazes that, over the past two weeks, have destroyed more than 170 homes.
"Some (fires) are over 100,000 acres and they've been burning for over a week, so that's our priority right now," Saginor said, "to put out the big ones."
Firefighter Greg Simmons died Friday trying to extinguish the East Sidwynicks fire in Eastland County.
Five other volunteer firefighters have been injured by the East Sidwynicks fire, which has burned 3,000 acres.
High-res photos: Wildfires blaze across Texas
Another firefighter was treated and released from a hospital in Graham after his bulldozer clipped a gas line and caused an explosion.
"The state of Texas is under siege," Saginor said. "Wildfire is dangerous and it's threatening homes, lives and property on a daily basis. We caution residents to take this threat seriously and heed the call of their local authorities when told to evacuate."
The tinder-dry landscape has provided no shortage of fuel: On Wednesday, emergency personnel responded to four new fires across more than 1,000 acres, according to the Texas Forest Service. On Tuesday, they responded to 10 new fires, totaling more than 2,000 acres.
Since January 1, the Texas Forest Service said, it has responded to more than 800 fires that have damaged some 5,000 structures across 1.4 million acres.
Fire-friendly conditions were expected to return Thursday in various parts of the state, the National Weather Service said.
"Even if we get two inches of rain, the ground's going to eat it up," said David Hennig, a Weather Service meteorologist in Midland, Texas. "We need a pattern shift."
West Texas averages nearly 15 inches of rain a year, according to Hennig. In the past six months, only 13-hundredths of an inch of rain have been recorded in that part of the state. While October through March is typically the dry season, that amount of rainfall is far below what it should be, Hennig said.
He said weather models show the possibility of more storms this weekend and perhaps next week. While the rain is needed, storms accompanied by lightning pose a fire risk, he said.
The Guadalupe Mountains face an extreme risk of fire through Thursday, according to the National Weather Service.
Van Horn, which is 165 miles west of Odessa, is expected to face a critical fire threat on Thursday, as well as the nearby state Highway 54 corridor and the southeast New Mexico plains.
One of the largest fires plaguing Texas rampaged between the towns of Graham and Graford.
That fire, fewer than 70 miles west of Dallas-Fort Worth, burned into residential areas surrounding Possum Kingdom Lake Monday night, destroying and damaging homes in four or five neighborhoods, according to Marq Webb, a spokesman with the Texas Forest Service.
Possum Kingdom resident Jackie Fewell set up a blog to provide updates on the crisis since fire warnings first were extended to the 3,000-home lake community.
Crews protect Texas observatory with fire of their own
"I was frustrated by a lot of misinformation that was being passed around by a lot of well-intentioned people through Facebook and text-messaging," she said.
Fewell set up the blog Saturday as a part of the website for Pondera Properties, the lake's managing real-estate company, where she works.
"We have been able to generate this incredible response," Fewell said, noting the site has served as a bridge between residents in need of help and those able to provide it.
"We get remarks from people all over needing help," she said. "If we put out a query to get 200 leather gloves to the area, we'll have those gloves within a few days."
Wildfire ravages home but spares family roosters
Fewell said the site has been responsible for aiding residents in a number of ways, from saving abandoned pets to providing real-time updates on properties threatened by the blaze.
The Palo Pinto County Sheriff's office said it evacuated 200 residents from the town of Palo Pinto and moved them to shelters. Two buses were sent to evacuate jail inmates, said Deputy Randy Hunter. That evacuation order was lifted Wednesday afternoon.
Dianne Simpson told CNN affiliate KSAN that she and her husband watched nervously as a wildfire approached their house near the Tom Green County-Coke County line, where residents had evacuated.
Texas Forest Service: Fire dangers and advisories
"We just sat out here on the deck and watched it burn, and it was just pretty devastating," Simpson said. "You're just sitting here going 'There's nothing I can do.' "
According to KSAN, the blaze stopped just 330 yards from the Simpsons' house.
By Wednesday, the evacuation order for Coke County had been lifted, according to Texas Forest Service spokeswoman Saginor.
CNNRadio's Thomas Andres and CNN's Dave Alsup contributed to this report.Javier Hernandez could be available for as little as £8million this summer (Picture: Getty Images)
West Ham United are weighing up a shock summer move for Manchester United striker Javier Hernandez.
The striker is currently on a season-long loan at Real Madrid but has found opportunities at the European champions limited and is expected to return to England at the end of the campaign.
And according to Spanish newspaper AS, The Hammers are monitoring the situation and could be set to launch an £8million move to bring the Mexican to London in time for the club’s final season at Upton Park.
Hernandez has just 18 months left on his United contract and Louis van Gaal will be keen to cash in on the fan favourite rather than allow him to leave on a free the following summer.
West Ham are not short of striking options at the moment but will look to add to their firepower at the end of the season as they are likely to allow Carlton Cole to leave the club on a free transfer in the summer.
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Sam Allardyce had accepted an offer from West Brom for the veteran striker on transfer deadline day – only to pull out of the deal once it became clear he would not be able to sign Emmanuel Adebayor from Tottenham Hotspur.
MORE: Axel Witsel issues ‘come and get me plea’ ahead of possible Manchester United transferA jury of eight did not buy Kristen Wagner's argument that the bullet she put through a glass door and into her husband's back from 27 feet away was a wayward shot from an accidentally fired weapon.
A jury of eight did not buy Kristen Wagner’s argument that the bullet she put through a glass door and into her husband’s back from 27 feet away was a wayward shot from an accidentally fired weapon.
It convicted her Thursday of first degree premeditated attempted murder.
PHOTOS from the trial.
Wagner, a Crestview resident, faces a minimum mandatory sentence of 25 years and a maximum of life in prison, said Bill Bishop, the chief assistant state attorney in Okaloosa County. Sentencing is set for July 7.
“We’re very, very pleased with the jury verdict,” Bishop said. “We know it was a difficult case.”
Wagner’s attorney, Brad Stewart, argued it was his client, and not her husband, Ricky Wagner, who should have been treated as a victim of violence following the July 26, 2014 shooting at 543 Northern Dancer Drive in Crestview.
Ricky Wagner, Stewart said in a passionate closing argument, had choked his then-wife Kristen into unconsciousness prior to the shooting and held her in their home against her will.
He broke her cell phone to keep her from calling police.
Wagner, after finally escaping the home, had pulled the gun to defend herself from further assault, Stewart said, and it went off in her hand when she bent over to pick up keys that had been thrown at her.
“It was an unfortunate accident,” Stewart said. “That’s exactly what it was.”
Prosecuting attorney Kimberly Torres cautioned jurors to be leery of Stewart’s assessment of the details surrounding the shooting, and to carefully analyze testimony Wagner herself had given earlier in the trial.
She reminded them that at the moment she fired from outside into her home, and struck Ricky Wagner as he turned his back, there was no one preventing Kristen from simply walking away.
Torres picked up the gun used in the shooting and showed jurors the laser-aiming mechanism that allowed Kristen Wagner to know exactly what she was shooting at, even in the dark of night.
“The defendant said she wanted to get out of her relationship. On the night this occurred she decided how she was going to get out of that relationship,” Torres said. “She knew she had a gun, it was loaded and ready to go.”The folks at Heise online have put forward a report on how AMD's RX 500 series of graphics cards will be little less than direct rebrands of the Polaris 10 and Polaris 11 GPUs that AMD introduced with its RX 400 series of graphics cards. Apparently, a straight rebrand is in order, with the RX 580 entering the fray in the place of the RX 480, the RX 570 substituting the RX 470, and so on. Heise reports that the Polaris 10-based RX 500 should see the light of day as soon as April 4th, with Polaris 11-based solutions coming in a little later, on April 11th.Videocardz, however, reports that these will be slightly more than a straight rebrand - if you can call a slight bump in clockspeeds as trumping a rebrand. The RX 580 is supposed to ship with base clocks ar 1340 MHz (74 MHz more than the reference RX 480), with the RX 570 carrying a much less significant 38 MHz increase over its RX 470 counterpart. Videocardz also reports on the possibility of AMD introducing a new Polaris 12 GPU with the RX 500 series, which will apparently be an even lower-end part than even Polaris 11.AMD has had a recent history of following with rebrands every other year, which is disappointing, though these do make business sense. They're just not what we, as enthusiasts, like to see. This approach, however, goes on to confirm a little of what we already knew about Vega, and takes after AMD's approach with the Fiji GPUs - rebrand the lower and mainstream end of the GPU spectrum, whilst introducing a new, high-end design. As we know, Vega is an enthusiast-aimed GPU, and so a RX 500 series being introduced in April does pave the way for AMD to have a complete graphics line-up for 2017, starting from the bottom up - remember that AMD's own announcements put the launch of Vega strictly before the end of June. A RX 500 series also makes sense in regards to branding, since AMD has branded their RX Vega-based cards as simply " Radeon RX Vega ", opting for a name distinction between its mainstream and enthusiast-class cards, much like the company has done before with their Fury branding.
54 Comments on AMD's RX 500 Series of Graphics Cards Rumored as Rebrands of RX 400 Series
1 to 25 of 54 Go to Page 123 PreviousNext
#1 ZoneDymo
STOP DOING REBRANDS FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY.
I mean gawd at least put in the development we had since then PLEASE.
Like better thermals, better cooling, more overclocking headroom I mean come on!
Honestly this should borderline be illegal imo because it is pretty much lying to the customer. Posted on Mar 2nd 2017, 3:36 Reply
#2 VulkanBros
I really really hope that it´s not true..... rebrands should be forbidden.... Posted on Mar 2nd 2017, 3:38 Reply
#3 Liviu Cojocaru
I can see this as a retaliation to Nvidia introducing the 1060 boost, but AMD needs to focus on a different segment where they don't have any options for... Posted on Mar 2nd 2017, 3:42 Reply
#4 Tsukiyomi91
what's this? another cycle of refurbished chips like the days of HD7xxx turned into R9 2xx & 3xx? Geez AMD... == Posted on Mar 2nd 2017, 3:53 Reply
#5 springs113
I think these rebrands will be in the segment that that the 68x0 took and Vega will take the 69x0 segment. Posted on Mar 2nd 2017, 3:58 Reply
#6 RejZoR
Ok, that's just garbage. You can't re-release RX 480 with few MHz more and call it RX 580. That's idiotic. RX 480 could only be rebranded to RX 550 or something... Unless the RX 580 will cost 120€. In that case, ok, why not. But not for price RX480 is selling now or few weeks/months ago. Posted on Mar 2nd 2017, 4:06 Reply
#7 medi01
Let me start with rather unpopular opinion: there MUST be an easy way to figure if card has X or Y.
These "rebrands" are expected to run at higher base clock.
So it is GOOD if they get a new name.
Now, whether it is 485 or 580, I have no idea. Actually, former is more confusing, than the latter, in my humble opinion. Posted on Mar 2nd 2017, 4:10 Reply
#8 Dethroy
At least you don't need to buy a new MoBo in order to use these... :rolleyes: "Ohhh. Hi Intel!" :nutkick: Posted on Mar 2nd 2017, 4:20 Reply
#9 bistrocrat
saddly but this sounds realistic :(.... I mean if Vega was in the near future (like may-june.2017) then at this point we would have seen presentations, leaks leaks, rummros, leaked pcb designs, leaked product range, price scpeculations and what not (the thing we usually get when release is in next 8 weeks)... till this point we have nothing just a thing that there will be "Vega" in naming and that "HBM2 is fast memory" (duhh)... so I think that either Vega is a dud or Vega is at least 6 month+ away from market... so amd has nothing and must release something (I swer I have written this like 3 times before: "amd has nothing and must release something") and AMD will rebrand the shyt it has and end of this sad storry (again) for another year or so Posted on Mar 2nd 2017, 4:22 Reply
#10 Solid State Brain
Perhaps these ones will have chips that are really able to reach 1500 MHz as speculated before the RX480 release. In this case a new model number would be deserved. +74 Mhz for reference GPU clock isn't really a small bump in speed either. Posted on Mar 2nd 2017, 4:37 Reply
#11 Liviu Cojocaru
If this gets better efficiency and cooling and if it gets better OC capability for a similar price as 480 then this would be a good option otherwise...stop this stupid re-branding thing Posted on Mar 2nd 2017, 4:41 Reply
#12 ZipFreed
I think that the lower-end through high-end segments will indeed be filled out by little Vega and Polaris but it won't be the same Polaris tech of last year but rather a refresh.
There's been mentions / rumors of Polaris 12 and XT2, I think these will be higher clocked variants, using less power due to process maturity since OG Polaris' launch and maybe even GDDR5X.
I'm thinking we'll end up with a stack something like this:
Enthusiast:
RX Vega - Big Vega #1
RX Vega Nano - Big Vega #2
High-End:
RX590 - Little Vega #1
RX580 - Little Vega #2
Performance / Low-End:
RX570 - Polaris 10 XT2
RX560 - Polaris 12 (or 11 XT2 though we haven't seen any hint of it to my knowledge)
I think Vega 10/11 will both have two SKU's each, unless I missed something from yesterday's C2 stream, filling out the Enthusiast and High-End Segments.
Polaris 10 XT2 will fill-out the performance segment offering a 15-20%+ improvement over the 480 while lowering it's power envelope but as the RX570(560) and in their respective price brackets. (I realize that may seem like a bit much but the 480's have been all over the place TDP wise and some of managed to undervolt their cards to the 95-100w range while still using stock clocks)
If Polaris 12 isn't a mobile only SKU it may end up being the 560 and/or maybe even the 570 depending on how Vega, being named Vega, impacts the rest of the families nomenclature.
Obviously this is all speculation but I think we'll end up seeing something similar to this and I'm almost positive AMD isn't simply going to straight rebrand any of our existing Polaris 10/11 variants. We're going to see higher clocks, lower power consumption etc.
If this ends up being the case I'd have no issues with this and there'd be no real reason to bemoan or cry about it as it's not our standard run of the mill "Rembrandt". Posted on Mar 2nd 2017, 5:03 Reply
#13 R0H1T
ZipFreed said: I think that the lower-end through high-end segments will indeed be filled out by little Vega and Polaris but it won't be the same Polaris tech of last year but rather a refresh.
There's been mentions / rumors of Polaris 12 and XT2, I think these will be higher clocked variants, using less power due to process maturity since OG Polaris' launch and maybe even GDDR5X.
I'm thinking we'll end up with a stack something like this:
Enthusiast:
RX Vega - Big Vega #1
RX Vega Nano - Big Vega #2
High-End:
RX590 - Little Vega #1
RX580 - Little Vega #2
Performance / Low-End:
RX570 - Polaris 10 XT2
RX560 - Polaris 12 (or 11 XT2 though we haven't seen any hint of it to my knowledge)
I think Vega 10/11 will both have two SKU's each, unless I missed something from yesterday's C2 stream, filling out the Enthusiast and High-End Segments.
Polaris 10 XT2 will fill-out the performance segment offering a 15-20%+ improvement over the 480 while lowering it's power envelope but as the RX570(560) and in their respective price brackets. (I realize that may seem like a bit much but the 480's have been all over the place TDP wise and some of managed to undervolt their cards to the 95-100w range while still using stock clocks)
If Polaris 12 isn't a mobile only SKU it may end up being the 560 and/or maybe even the 570 depending on how Vega, being named Vega, impacts the rest of the families nomenclature.
Obviously this is all speculation but I think we'll end up seeing something similar to this and I'm almost positive AMD isn't simply going to straight rebrand any of our existing Polaris 10/11 variants. We're going to see higher clocks, lower power consumption etc.
If this ends up being the case I'd have no issues with this and there'd be no real reason to bemoan or cry about it as it's not our standard run of the mill "Rembrandt". Didn't Raja say that all Vega(s) would be branded as Vega, don't think there'd be any Vega sold as RX 5xx :wtf: Didn't Raja say that all Vega(s) would be branded as Vega, don't think there'd be any Vega sold as RX 5xx :wtf: Posted on Mar 2nd 2017, 5:11 Reply
#14 Prima.Vera
ZoneDymo said:
Honestly this should borderline be illegal imo because it is pretty much lying to the customer. This.
This crappy practice should be put under penal law, at least in the U.S., EMEA, and APAC. Is just an official scamming done by corporations. This.This crappy practice should be put under penal law, at least in the U.S., EMEA, and APAC. Is just an official scamming done by corporations. Posted on Mar 2nd 2017, 5:14 Reply
#15 medi01
ZoneDymo said: Honestly this should borderline be illegal imo because it is pretty much lying to the customer. 1060 3Gb is lying to the customer.
Giving new model name to a model with slightly bumped specs is not. 1060 3Gb is lying to the customer.Giving new model name to a model with slightly bumped specs is not. Posted on Mar 2nd 2017, 5:28 Reply
#16 bug
medi01 said: Let me start with rather unpopular opinion: there MUST be an easy way to figure if card has X or Y.
These "rebrands" are expected to run at higher base clock.
So it is GOOD if they get a new name.
Now, whether it is 485 or 580, I have no idea. Actually, former is more confusing, than the latter, in my humble opinion. 481 is more like it. The first digit should represent the generation/architecture if you don't want to mud things up.
I'm pretty sure you can already buy 480 models that out of the box are running higher frequencies than this rumoured 580. 481 is more like it. The first digit should represent the generation/architecture if you don't want to mud things up.I'm pretty sure you can already buy 480 models that out of the box are running higher frequencies than this rumoured 580. Posted on Mar 2nd 2017, 5:31 Reply
#17 jabbadap
Surely these are just OEMs, not that it's any good for them either. But wasn't there some rumor not so long a go for laptop with RX-5xx graphics card? Posted on Mar 2nd 2017, 5:32 Reply
#18 iO
I guess they simply dont have the resources to develop another GPU besides Vega hence they play the good old rebranding game again.. Posted on Mar 2nd 2017, 5:32 Reply
#19 chief-gunney
Solid State Brain said: Perhaps these ones will have chips that are really able to reach 1500 MHz as speculated before the RX480 release. In this case a new model number would be deserved. +74 Mhz for reference GPU clock isn't really a small bump in speed either. The base clock for my XFX RX480 GTR black came as 1340, so what's new about RX580? The base clock for my XFX RX480 GTR black came as 1340, so what's new about RX580? Posted on Mar 2nd 2017, 5:36 Reply
#20 Solid State Brain
chief-gunney said: The base clock for my XFX RX480 GTR black came as 1340, so what's new about RX580? Perhaps now the base clock of non-reference RX580 cards will also be higher? Perhaps now the base clock of non-reference RX580 cards will also be higher? Posted on Mar 2nd 2017, 5:38 Reply
#21 Fluffmeister
I thought the process had matured and we were going to see Polaris chips that used just 80w and clocked to 1600Mhz!? Posted on Mar 2nd 2017, 5:43 Reply
#22 bug
Fluffmeister said: I thought the process had matured and we were going to see Polaris chips that used just 80w and clocked to 1600Mhz!? That would be the RX 600 series. Coming 2018 :D That would be the RX 600 series. Coming 2018 :D Posted on Mar 2nd 2017, 5:49 Reply
#23 medi01
rebrand of Titan releases as "1080Ti" (800+ Euro in Germany, thank you very much) is fine.
bug said: That would be the RX 600 series. Coming 2018 :D That will depend on how many will go the "oh, AMD is faster for a given budget, but I'll go Intel/nVidia anyway" route. On the other hand, not-a-releases as "1080Ti" (800+ Euro in Germany, thank you very much) is fine.That will depend on how many will go the "oh, AMD is faster for a given budget, but I'll go Intel/nVidia anyway" route. Posted on Mar 2nd 2017, 6:19 Reply
#24 Basard
How dare they change the model name of a video card that has slightly different specs than the previous verion! There should be a surgeon generals warning on the front of the box warning you that it's only slightly faster than last year's model!!
We should all pay a tax to the government to form an agency to enforce laws protecting us from rebrands! Because when we make purchases, we do so blindly--looking only at the big numbers at the end of the brand name! Posted on Mar 2nd 2017, 6:30 Reply
#25 R-T-B
medi01 said: That will depend on how many will go the "oh, AMD is faster for a given budget, but I'll go Intel/nVidia anyway" route. That might be true if they were even present in the market segment my budget tends to target.
Right now, they hit mid-range at best, and not really any products above that. Pretty sad and I hope it changes soon. Because when we make purchases, we do so blindly--looking only at the big numbers at the end of the brand name! A ton of consumers do. That might be true if they were even present in the market segment my budget tends to target.Right now, they hit mid-range at best, and not really any products above that. Pretty sad and I hope it changes soon.A ton of consumers do. Posted on Mar 2nd 2017, 6:32 ReplySilkworm silk is gaining significant attention from both the textile industry and research society because of its outstanding mechanical properties and lustrous appearance. The possibility of creating tougher silks attracts particular research interest. Carbon nanotubes and graphene are widely studied for their use as reinforcement. In this work, we report mechanically enhanced silk directly collected by feeding Bombyx mori larval silkworms with single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) and graphene. We found that parts of the fed carbon nanomaterials were incorporated into the as-spun silk fibers, whereas the others went into the excrement of silkworms. Spectroscopy study indicated that nanocarbon additions hindered the conformation transition of silk fibroin from random coil and α-helix to β-sheet, which may contribute to increased elongation at break and toughness modules. We further investigated the pyrolysis of modified silk, and a highly developed graphitic structure with obviously enhanced electrical conductivity was obtained through the introduction of SWNTs and graphene. The successful generation of these SWNT- or graphene-embedded silks by in vivo feeding is expected to open up possibilities for the large-scale production of high-strength silk fibers.OTTAWA — Even as Foreign Minister Stéphane Dion called a recently announced nuclear disarmament negotiation “more symbolic than real” Tuesday, experts were urging Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to step up and make Canada a bigger part of the movement to ban nuclear weapons — just like his father did during the Cold War.
Last week, 123 countries voted in a UN committee to begin negotiations on a nuclear disarmament treaty next year. Canada was among more than 30 countries that voted against, including major nuclear powers and most members of NATO. The vote will be confirmed at the general assembly in December, where Canada could, but isn’t likely to, change its vote.
The Rideau Institute’s Peggy Mason, Canada’s ambassador for disarmament from 1989 to 1994, said Tuesday the “no” vote was a “shocker.” Canada should have abstained and signalled an intent to participate in negotiations, she said. The way it voted “is not in keeping with a country that is seeking election to the UN Security Council in 2021,” she added.
Paul Meyer, another Canadian ambassador for disarmament from 2003 to 2007 and currently a fellow at Simon Fraser University, agreed an abstention would have been better than a “no.”
“As a good international citizen, it’s important to recognize that when the General Assembly has established a process, that you should participate in a constructive fashion, and obviously use the process to continue to advocate for your preferred positions,” Meyer said. “To turn your back on the whole thing is not productive.”
Still, Dion told the National Post Tuesday he doesn’t think change will happen if non-nuclear states agree “between themselves,” though it’s “too hypothetical for now” to say whether Canada will play a role within or alongside negotiations.
“Since the nuclear countries are not in the process … it will be more symbolic than real,” he said. Asked whether he thinks nuclear powers will ever acquiesce to a treaty, he said, “not in the foreseeable future, but step by step, we’ll go there.”
Meyer rebutted there’s “probably no multilateral security agreement in existence” that had all states participating from day one, including the UN’s nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
Veteran politician and diplomat Douglas Roche, who headed the UN’s disarmament committee in 1988, recalled that a UN landmine convention initiated by the “Ottawa process” 20 years ago was first “blocked completely by the major landmine possessors.” But Canada was “undeterred” and went ahead anyway.
Now, usage of landmines is stigmatized and even states who aren’t parties to the convention generally abide by it. That “stigmatization” is what’s needed on the nuclear weapons front, he said.
In the modern background are escalating tensions between the U.S., its NATO allies and Russia. Dion said tension between the U.S. and Russia “must be addressed,” and in holding dialogue with Russia, Canada is now “much more aligned with our allies than before.”
On Oct. 17, the U.S. sent a “non paper” on nuclear deterrence to its NATO allies and, in an unclassified letter obtained by the National Post, asked them to vote “no” on negotiations and “avoid introducing any doubt” regarding allies’ commitment to deterrence and defence — with nuclear weapons at their heart.
The Netherlands, which hosts a launching base for U.S. tactical nukes, was the only NATO member to abstain from the vote, after a parliamentary resolution calling for a “yes.” Even the abstention took “courage,” Mason said.
Meyer noted if the U.S. wasn’t worried about the results of a negotiation it wouldn’t be “so energized” in trying to get its allies to oppose it — and it’s “regrettable” if allies “capitulate” only to align themselves with the States.
Even today, all nine nuclear states are engaged in modernization programs, with the U.S. dwarfing the others. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons estimates annual global spending at $120 billion.
We’re on a conveyor belt hurtling backwards
The rest of the world |
a few common missing item questions Having trouble getting badges and cards? First things first Take a screen shot — now, right this second! How do I do that? Make sure your screenshot shows both the game and the chat windows, like this: Make sure your name is clearly visible somewhere in the screenshot. It typically appears two or three places in the upper right corner of your screen. Try refreshing your browser In many cases this will solve the problem. Requesting missing achievements Use the form on the left. For the love of Greg, double-check that your name is visible in your screenshot. You’ll get a list of possible achievements in a drop-down; make sure you choose the one you’re actually missing. Are you missing multiple achievements? Submit a separate request for each one. Yes, we mean it. Yes, you can submit the same screen shot with multiple requests, provided it shows the necessary information about your game progress. Fixing connectivity problems See a little red plug over chat? This means that the game isn’t connecting to the achievement system. Sometimes just refreshing the page or restarting your computer can fix an intermittent problem. Getting serious Check that you don’t have a firewall, proxy, ad blocker, or browser add-on interfering with chat loading or connecting. Make sure that port 5222 is allowing traffic on your network. Getting medieval If the problem persists, you may have an old or corrupt installation of the Flash Player, which requires a complete reinstallation to fix. To do this, first uninstall the Flash Player. Then make sure that your browser is updated and reinstall the latest version of the Flash Player. Will my feedback get a response? If you have a question, we’ll do our best to answer. But remember, we send our responses using the email address associated with your Kongregate account, so make sure it’s a valid one! Answers to a few common game bug questions Game isn’t loading? Browser add-ons and ad blockers can sometimes interfere with games loading up. Try disabling those, and if the problem continues, try a full reinstall of the Flash Player. To do this, first uninstall the Flash Player. Then make sure that your browser is updated and reinstall the latest version of the Flash Player. Having trouble getting badges and cards? It may be that your chat is not connecting properly. Check that you don’t have a firewall, proxy, ad blocker, or browser add-on interfering with chat loading or connecting. Make sure that port 5222 is allowing traffic on your network.
You can submit a request for a missing card or badge by selecting “Report Missing Card or Badge” in the dropdown on the left. See a little red plug over chat? This means that the game isn’t connecting to the achievement system. Sometimes, just refreshing the page or restarting your computer can fix an intermittent problem, but if the problem is persistent, you may have an old or corrupt installation of the Flash Player, which requires a complete reinstallation to fix. To do this, first uninstall the Flash Player. Then make sure that your browser is updated and reinstall the latest version of the Flash Player. Will my feedback get a response? If you have a question, we’ll do our best to answer. But remember, we send our responses using the email address associated with your Kongregate account, so make sure it’s a valid one! Answers to a few common questions Got a problem with another user? Use the “report abuse” link on their profile, and we’ll look into it. Have an idea for us? Check out the suggestions thread in the forums to browse other player’s ideas and post your own. Having trouble getting badges? You can submit a request for a missing card or badge by using the support link inside the game. Still having technical difficulties? Check out our Technical Support forum to browse topics or post issues. Will my feedback get a response? If you have a question, we’ll do our best to answer. But remember, we send our responses using the email address associated with your Kongregate account, so make sure it’s a valid one! Answers to a few common questions Why did I not receive my Kreds? There could be a handful of factors as to why you did not receive your Kreds, but we will certainly work with you on finding out why you didn’t! On the form to the left, please include your username, form of payment, and which web browser you were using. If you are paying by credit/debit card, please include the last four digits of the card number to help us speed up the process. If you paid through Paypal, make sure you have your receipts available. All other forms of payment, please include as much detail as you can in the description. But wait, I didn’t receive TrialPay Kreds! For support with any free kred offers on Kongregate, or to check the status of a pending offer, visit the Get Kreds page, click “Fund your account”, choose ”Earn Free Kreds“ and click “Support” to view your pending offer status. From here you will also be able to contact the customer service team at TrialPay about your missing Kreds. Alternatively, you can contact Trial Pay Support I’ve spent my Kreds, but I didn’t receive my in-game purchase? Your first step would be to get in contact with the developer, as this could be a bug with the game. Typically on a game involving Kreds, there is a “report a bug” feature underneath the game, near the rating stars. You can also select “Report a Game Bug” on the dropdown menu to your left. Please be sure to include as much information as you can about the details of your purchase, and a screenshot of your purchase is always helpful as well! Some games may also have in-game support features, to ensure it is reviewed. If this does not work, please contact us using the form to the left. Will my feedback get a response? If you have a question, we’ll do our best to answer. But remember, we send our responses using the email address associated with your Kongregate account, so make sure it’s a valid one!You may have heard that we’ll be holding a presidential election in November. Perhaps you’re familiar with the candidates.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former first lady, senator, and secretary of state, is on the verge of becoming the first woman to win a major party’s nomination for president. Clinton is tireless, brilliant, and a lightning rod for criticism and controversy, real and imagined. While her views and voting record are those of a fairly conventional, mainstream Democrat, she’s been attacked by the left for being too hawkish and cozy with Wall Street, and by the right for every single thing you could possibly imagine (and many you can’t). Just a guess, but two decades of unrelenting insults and accusations may have contributed to her overly cautious, guarded persona — making her the most famous woman in the world whom few people really know.
On the other side, Republicans have chosen to go in a bit of a different direction. From a field of 17 governors, senators, business leaders, and brain surgeons, the party of Lincoln has chosen Donald of House Trump, Builder of Walls, Banner of Muslims, King of Debt, Father of Trolls, and Little-Fingered Tweeter of Sick Burns, Wack-Job Conspiracies, and White Resentment. In this campaign, Trump has been called “utterly amoral,” a “con artist,” a “fraud,” a “pathological liar,” a “serial philanderer,” a “narcissistic egomaniac,” a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot,” the “Kim Kardashian of politics,” “ISIL Man of the Year,” a “cancer on conservatism,” and an “orange-faced windbag” who shouldn’t have access to the nuclear codes. And those are just the views of his fellow Republicans.
The race as it stands today, however, is close — nationally, and in the states that matter. Polls show that Trump, who won only around 40 percent of the primary vote, is now drawing support from about 85 percent of Republicans and a large portion of Republican-leaning independents. Clinton, still fending off a primary challenge from Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, is winning only between 50 and 70 percent of his supporters, most of whom are young, liberal, and independent.
But the race is about to enter a new phase. A not-so-bold prediction: Shortly after the polls close in New Jersey on the night of June 7, Clinton will have the 2,383 delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination. She won’t even need to wait for California. At that point, Sanders will have a choice: He can spend the next two months arguing that superdelegates should wrest the nomination from the candidate who is hundreds of delegates and millions of votes ahead, or he can begin to play a role in unifying the party and shaping its platform. I believe he’ll do the latter and keep his promise from April: “I will do everything in my power and work as hard as I can to make sure [a Trump presidency] does not happen. And if Secretary Clinton is the nominee, I will certainly support her.”
Either way, Clinton’s primary victory will allow her to assemble a Democratic Dream Team of political talent to rally the party and take on Trump. She’ll have Bill Clinton, a popular ex-president who can testify to her character and defend her record better than anyone (his speech defending President Obama’s at the 2012 convention is the stuff of legend); Elizabeth Warren, a liberal icon in the Senate who has already begun to prosecute the party’s sharpest case against Trump; Joe Biden, a beloved vice president with a working-class, tell-it-like-it-is, God-knows-what-he’ll-say kind of appeal; and a running mate — whether it’s someone like Warren, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, Labor Secretary Tom Perez, or Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown — who will be well suited for the traditional role of attack dog.
Clinton will also have by her side the best political player in the game: Barack Obama.
In a few months, my old boss will hit the trail for the last time as president. He’ll do so with an approval rating that has been north of 50 percent nearly every week since March, a high he’d previously reached only in the months after his first and second elections. Political scientists point to a strong historical correlation between an outgoing president’s popularity and the final vote share of his party’s candidate. (You can read the full University of Virginia study here, but the upshot is this: If Obama is at 50 percent, Clinton is predicted to win 50.1 percent of the vote; at 45 percent, she gets 49.2 percent.)
Obama’s recent surge in popularity has been driven largely by independents, young people, women, and Latinos — four groups most likely to tip the election toward Clinton. He has an 82 percent approval rating among Sanders supporters, whom he’ll work to persuade as America’s most famous Clinton convert — someone who also waged a brutal primary against her, but eventually became a friend, partner, and champion.
I don’t want to overestimate the Obama effect. No one can win this for Clinton but Clinton. Even the UVA study stipulates that election outcomes ultimately depend on the quality of the campaigns and the popularity of the candidates on the ballot.
But I suspect that the president will give this campaign all that he has and more — for Clinton, for his own legacy, and for the vision of America that he’s asked us to believe in since the night he stepped onto the national stage in Boston and delivered his 2004 convention speech, a hopeful, bighearted vision that is the antithesis of everything that Trump represents.
The truth is, Obama has understood better than most the forces that gave rise to a candidacy like Trump’s. Since his earliest days in public life, he’s been focused on the hollowing out of the middle class in a global economy, and America’s ability to embrace its growing diversity. He ran for president as an outsider who grasped people’s frustration with Washington’s broken politics and the politicians who exploit fear and anger to incite suspicion and division. As he said in his announcement speech, “We’ve been told that climate change is a hoax, and that tough talk … can replace diplomacy. … We’ve been told that our crises are somebody else’s fault … and told to blame the other party, or gay people, or immigrants.” That was nearly 10 years ago.
Obama, contrary to what some might think, was never so naive or arrogant as to believe that his election would solve these problems. He knew that it would take time. He knew that he would make mistakes and disappoint some people. He knew that he would face a wall of opposition. He may even have sensed that parts of that opposition would have darker, conspiratorial roots — roots that led to the president’s very legitimacy as an American citizen being seriously questioned, the original lie upon which the entire fraud that is the Trump candidacy was built.
The difference with Trump is that everything is about I. I’m the best. I’m rich. I’m right. I can fix it. I can win. I can handle those other people. I can make those other countries pay. As he said the other day, “I will give you everything. I will give you what you’ve been looking for for 50 years. I’m the only one.”
It’s not just a maddeningly vague and moronic way to run for office, but a recipe for perpetual discontent, since even strong, brilliant leaders cannot bend the world to their will. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how our democracy works. Because it’s not democracy. It’s what places ruled by demagogues and tyrants look like.
Democracy is not about I or us vs. them. Democracy, as Obama often says, is about the word we. It is big, messy, and noisy. It is inclusive, welcoming, and tolerant. It’s about a willingness to compromise and assume good faith in others. It’s about a belief that America is not the project of any one person, party, race, or religion — that we all have a responsibility to find a way forward, together, even if we don’t get everything we want, even if we don’t always win the argument, even if sometimes we take two steps back.
Barack Obama was making the case against Trump’s candidacy long before it ever existed. But the first time I noticed the contrast was last June, about a week after the world’s most insecure billionaire rode down his escalator and into our nightmares.
I saw the president at a fundraiser in Los Angeles. He looked like he didn’t want to be there. It was the day after nine people had been gunned down at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Another mass shooting. Another push for gun safety that would go nowhere in Congress. Another call for a national conversation on race, even though our national conversation had long ago devolved into cable news screaming matches and internet flame wars.
In a set of wandering, off-the-cuff remarks, Obama told the crowd about his response to a letter from a former supporter who was discouraged because he said that the president had failed to fix Washington and get more done: “I reminded him that when I ran in 2008, I, in fact, did not say I would fix it; I said we could fix it.” He was right, and I got his point, but it came off as defensive and frustrated. He seemed tired.
Later, Obama heard about what Nadine Collier had said when she first saw her mother’s killer in a South Carolina courtroom: “I forgive you.” The following Friday, he delivered a eulogy in Charleston that he ended by leading the church in a chorus of “Amazing Grace.” It was the same day the Supreme Court ruled that the right to marry the person you love is enshrined in the Constitution, on the heels of the court upholding a crucial portion of the Affordable Care Act. The same week, Alabama and South Carolina began the process to remove the Confederate flag from their capitol grounds. And that evening, the first black president of the United States returned home to a White House that was bathed in rainbow lights.
The media called it the best week of his presidency. But as Obama has acknowledged, none of the victories were his alone. He was late to embrace marriage equality, nudged along by his daughters. It was two Republican governors who answered the call to take down the flag. Health care reform had been pushed forward by leaders in both parties for more than a century. And every one of these achievements was the work of millions whose names we may never know: family members who petitioned Congress because of medical bills that sick loved ones couldn’t pay; gay men and women who found the courage to come out, making it easier for others to do the same; black and white Americans who marched and bled and even died so that we all might be treated as equally as we were created.
Such is the path of progress in America — slow, difficult, collective, and always unfinished. It doesn’t come from sudden revolutions or charismatic strongmen. It comes from the quiet, persistent effort of citizens and leaders who are flawed and fallible human beings, but nevertheless press on, believing that for all the days filled with setbacks and disappointments, there will be some days when, to paraphrase the president’s favorite King quote, we have bent the long arc of the moral universe ever slightly toward justice.
Barack Obama has been making this case his entire life. Now, in the twilight of his presidency, he’ll have the chance to deliver his closing argument to the American people, and help bend that arc one last time.
Jon Favreau was President Obama’s chief speechwriter from 2005 to 2013. He is the cohost of The Ringer’s Keepin’ It 1600 podcast, and the cofounder of the speechwriting and communications firm Fenway Strategies.Tweet **10/6/11 UPDATE** Congratulations AE911Truth supporters - this Free Speech KPFA radio 94.1 FM pledge/interview was the most successful pledge hour of any during their pledge drive! You raised $9,000 for the Guns & Butter with Bonnie Faulkner show yesterday which was 3 times their goal for the hour! You voted with the currency that the KPFA management will understand, appreciate, and make management decisions about. You demonstrated to them what is the most important issue of our time - the truth about the events of 9/11. I'm very proud to be of service to you - our very dedicated AE911Truth supporters.
Richard Gage, AIA
AE911Truth to Be Featured on KPFA
94.1 FM Pledge Drive
Wed October 5, 1:00 pm PDT
Listen Online and Call In with Your Pledge! The final version of 9/11: Explosive Evidence – Experts Speak Out will be available in November and can be ordered at our online store now. (You will receive the pre-release version immediately in a paper sleeve, and then the final release in the plastic case in November.) AE911Truth’s new documentary 9/11: Explosive Evidence – Experts Speak Out will be played on the radio throughout Northern California on Pacifica Station KPFA 94.1 FM. Richard Gage, AIA, will be the interviewed and will introduce the expert-packed dynamic film – which is currently available to watch or to download online – in its Pre-Release v1.3a.
The air time is 1:00 pm PDT on Wednesday, October 5, and the 60 kW transmission reaches the majority of Northern CA and has over 100,000 mostly progressive listeners.
The new AE911Truth documentary features 50 technical experts such as high-rise architects, structural engineers, metallurgists, chemical engineers, physicists, explosives and demolitions experts, as well as psychology professionals with insight into the personal challenges posed by 9/11. The full-length documentary will be offered as a pledge premium during the one-hour pledge drive! Bonnie Faulkner is one of the exceptional progressive radio hosts willing to air the compelling evidence for 9/11 Truth. This will be her fourth interview of Richard Gage, AIA, who will be helping the Northern CA audience of millions to understand the critical evidence of the three WTC demolitions You can listen online at
http://www.kpfa.org/streams/kpfa_64k.m3u
Wednesday, October 5, at 1:00 pm PDT.
We encourage everyone to call into the station at 800-439-5732 at 1:00 pm on Wednesday to donate and to express your appreciation to KPFA for speaking the truth about 9/11. This topic is vital to our national security and the rule of law, yet precious few other stations are willing to air the truth about it. Let’s make this Bonnie’s most successful KPFA pledge drive ever and obligate the station management to support this coverage.
See you Wednesday! < Prev Next >After reports broke out earlier revealing that Jiyoung does not intend on renewing her contract has now confirmed fans' fears as they dropped their official statement revealing that she will indeed leave.
Their statement reads as follows:
Hello. This is DSP Media.
We wanted to inform you of our official position on the article concerning KARA's Jiyoung's�contract expiration which was released on the morning of the 15th.
Jiyoung still has time and schedules under DSP Media until her contract expires in April, and like reported earlier, she has expressed her wishes to study abroad while in negotiations with DSP.
We did not receive a letter in the form of certification of contents like mentioned [in the report], but rather a notice containing her position. The position was that 'We will not extend the contract without a new negotiation', so in time, we were planning to have further negotiations with Jiyoung's side about extending the contract.
(Portion of the notification we received) - 'Kang Ji Young will not extend her exclusive contract with DSP Media unless there is a new negotiation, we are officially informing you of this through this notice.'
However through the article that was released today, we have once again confirmed Jiyoung's intent, and received word that she still wishes to leave KARA for schooling and to walk the path of becoming an actress.
Thus, starting after April, the team will reorganize with Gyuri, Seungyeon, and Hara as the center to�carry on future schedules.
Thank You.Chinese internet users are abuzz about an online tool that calculates how one’s annual wages compare with those around the world. And many of them aren’t happy to know how little they make compared to their peers.
According to CNN’s online global wage calculator, which uses data from the International Labor Organization, the average annual salary of a worker in China’s private sector was 28,752 yuan (about $4,755) in 2012, or 38% of the global average. That’s roughly the same as a cleaner in Thailand, according to CNN’s data. (It’s also 4% of the average American CEO’s annual pay and only 0.01% of what the Queen of England makes in a year, in case you were wondering.)
CNN Global Wage Calculator How the average annual salary of a private-sector worker in China compares with the rest of the world.
These figures are circulating Chinese social media, generating over 13,000 posts on Sina Weibo, as internet users complain that their modest wages don’t match China’s status as the world’s second-largest economy. (There is some nuance, of course, related to the purchasing power of a smaller salary in China compared with the same amount in more advanced economies, but this doesn’t get much of an airing in these debates.) One blogger said (registration required), “So China is very rich but Chinese people are very poor.” One called on Chinese president Xi Jinping, writing, “China is that poor? Does Big Xi know?” Another simply said, “Where is my money?”
The discussion highlights the uneven distribution of wealth that persists amid China’s rapid economic growth. China has the world’s most billionaires after the US, according to a report by Wealth-X and UBS. At the same time, 18 provinces have downgraded their expectations for per capita disposable income this year, and overall measures of inequality in China only improved a smidgeon last year, according to government statistics.
Bloggers found that even higher-range Chinese salaries don’t fare very well in the global league tables. The average salary for public-sector workers is around 60% higher than the equivalent in the private sector, but is still only 60% of the global average. Using CNN’s tool, Chinese media plugged in government figures for the country’s “high income” bracket of urban disposable income (link in Chinese)—and discovered that the closest equivalent is a taxi driver in South Africa.
CNN Global Wage Calculator The average salary of a public sector worker in China.
Jennifer Chiu contributed additional reporting.London, England (CNN) -- French diplomats call it "soft power." But they know it's got real, hard value.
That's cultural diplomacy "a la francaise", the government-sponsored, multi-million dollar institutionalized campaign to spread, well, Frenchness throughout the world.
In an increasingly globalized planet where the English language and Hollywood dominate, the French are taking all things French very seriously.
And they're putting their money where their "bonjours" are.
The French foreign ministry -- and so the French taxpayer -- picks up the tab for roughly two-thirds of the budget for cultural diplomacy, ministry officials say, a sub-set of international diplomacy that diplomats consider ever more important.
It is estimated France spends a whopping $1.4 billion each year promoting its culture and language abroad. The number has to be estimated because the effort comes through a jumble of programs cutting across various government ministries, officials say.
At the Lycee Louis-Charles Dumais in Jakarta, Indonesia, for example, more French is spoken in the schoolyard than anything else. And that's because the lycee, or high school, is just one of 460 French primary and secondary schools operating in 130 countries outside France.
France has a quarter of a million students abroad, supported by its taxpayers, following the French national curriculum, most of whom are not citizens. That's just a small part of the country's cultural diplomacy.
The Alliance Francaise, a network of more than a thousand associations around the world, partly supported by the French government, teach the French language, show French films, operate libraries and generally spread Frenchness wherever they operate.
"It's sort of a global part of what diplomacy has to be," Gerald Candelle of the Alliance Francaise, told CNN. "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has always considered that culture is also a complete part of this diplomacy."
In the last two years, the French government has stepped up its cultural diplomacy, officials say, trying to better coordinate and target its cultural efforts, putting new value on what is clearly believed to be an important tool.
Cultural diplomacy "also helps our enterprises, our companies," Delphine Borione, of the French foreign ministry, told CNN. "It helps also to attract students to France, it promotes better capacity and interaction in other countries, which are under the French model, so it contributes to French influence."
Within France, too, keeping French culture pure is also institutionalized.
L'Academie Francaise, or the French academy, is the country's leading body on all matters pertaining to the French language. It is an erudite group tasked with being the country's last word on the usages, vocabulary and grammar of French. Although it publishes an official French dictionary, its rulings are not binding.
L'Academie, established in 1635 by the court of King Louis XIII, has tried to prevent the encroaching Anglicization of the French language, which has come under increased pressure with the widespread availability of English media and popular culture, like television and movies.
The Academy recommended, for example, that some words borrowed from English -- walkman, software and email -- be avoided in favor of words derived from French. It has met with mixed success, however, and critics have complained the 40-member body whose members are known as "les immortels" is too conservative.
Part of the effort to expand French influence abroad has been conducted through the country's overseas media outlets, where there are also moves to consolidate and rejuvenate operations to give them a more focused mission.
"It's very important that we use not only TV, but Internet and whatever else, to tell other people in the world what our ideas are, what our debates are, what are values are," Christine Ockrent from the French Audio-Visual board told CNN.
In the Paris suburbs, a French dance troupe known as the Castafiore group is rehearsing for an upcoming tour of China.
The trip is part of the $48 million (€35 million) a government agency called Culture France is spending each year to send French artists abroad.
"We're the cherry on the cake," a member of the dance troupe told CNN. "France has a lot of commercial and economic exchanges, but this cultural one is the little plus that might make a difference."
"We feel like diplomats," she told CNN. "But we are dancers, and it's the thing we can do."
CNN's Jim Bitterman contributed to this report.Image: CC-By-SA 2.0
The popular Chinese microblogging site Weibo sent a push notification to countless smartphones in China on Monday, advertising a post that claimed that anti-Trump demonstrators in the United States were responsible for a surge of hatred against Chinese-Americans.
Weibo is the Chinese language equivalent of Twitter. Although Chinese speakers do use Twitter, the US-based service is blocked in mainland China. Weibo is not, and subsequently enjoys massive popularity on the mainland.
Like Twitter, Weibo features trending topics, and sometimes sends push notifications to your smartphone about a current popular trend if you have the app installed. A key difference is that hashtags on Weibo have their own pages, one that is controlled by a "host" that started the hashtag, or paid for it. That host can pin a post to the top of the page.
"I've talked to well-educated, relatively liberal Chinese people who have asked me if Hillary really assassinated a guy."
On Monday, the hashtag "Trump wins" featured a post that recounted stories of slurs against Asian-Americans, and attributed them to anti-Trump protesters. The post even specifically claimed that journalist Wilfred Chan had received racist abuse and implied it was from anti-Trump protesters. It was, in fact, abuse from Trump supporters.
Christina Xu, a tech ethnographer who is currently in China, first noted what was happening. "Chinese audience, who (reasonably) don't understand US race dynamics, will believe this 100%. Reinforces belief that Trump is better for China," she wrote on Twitter.
Xu said that this misinformation might be the result of a translation error, but said that the "more likely" explanation was that it was "willfully directed by someone(s) stoking support of Trump [and] defensive ethnocentrism."
In an interview, she said that there had been a surge of misinformation in China about the American election. She wasn't completely sure why, but she noted that "there are really too many [false news stories] for it to be a coincidence, in my opinion."
"I've talked to well-educated, relatively liberal Chinese people who have asked me if Hillary really assassinated a guy," Xu said to me. (Hillary Clinton did not assassinate anyone.) "Someone here told me the other day they heard that Trump had won 90 percent of the popular vote." (Hillary Clinton won the popular vote.)
Earlier in the week, she also tweeted about a Weibo trending topic that claimed that Clinton had blamed Obama for her electoral loss.
Xu recounted one time that her father sent her an article about "a list of DNC mysterious deaths linked to Hillary." She found it so absurd that she spent time to look up where it had come from. "The only place I found this list [of names] really was Breitbart," she said, referring to the right-wing news site. Her theory is that someone is translating Breitbart articles into Chinese and feeding them into social media.
China's government has been known to crack down on false news reports spread via social media, part of a policy that goes back years. However, critics claim that the Chinese government's ultimate aim is to suppress dissenting speech. Academics who study Weibo have noted that some users have adopted a coded lingo for bypassing censorship.
On Sunday, President-Elect Donald Trump chose Stephen Bannon, the head of Breitbart Media, as as "chief strategist and special counselor." Bannon previously took a leave of absence from Breitbart to be Trump's campaign manager.
Get six of our favorite Motherboard stories every day by signing up for our newsletter.There is vast intellectual work to do to come to terms with the great delusion of the 20th century, namely that there would be a workers’ revolution against private ownership of capital that would end in something called socialism, whether of the right or left variety. Or perhaps what is needed is psychological work.
To believe in socialism, I’m convinced, requires a dogmatic theory of the direction of history. In this case, history means more than just stuff that happens. It postulates history as an actor independent of human choice, some kind of irresistible wind that buffets humanity from stage to stage.
This mental template is remarkably impervious to processing contrary information. Socialism is a case study in the capacity of the human mind to allow ideology to get in the way of good sense, to the point that nothing is what it appears to be.
It’s a common feature of all socialist ideology that it is dismissive of individual choice and replaces it with some form of Hegelian theorizing about what must be. It presumes that one’s own intelligence is capable of discerning directions of change that rise above normal human aspirations.
We like to think that this way of thinking is gone but this is doubtful. Socialist thought is the delusion that never quite fully goes away. It represents the fulfillment of a fundamental mistake, the belief that intellectuals can outsmart people’s choices in the course of their normal lives.
Gumballs on the Subway
What comes to mind for me is an amazing scene from 1917 New York. Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) was visiting the U.S. to cheer up the growing communist movement in the United States. He briefly hung out on the subway platform. He saw workers buying gumballs from machines and chewing madly as they rode. Trotsky might have been delighted that capitalism was providing such joy to regular people, but no: for him, the gum itself was evidence of exploitation and the inevitability of socialism.
"The car of the subway is jammed,” he wrote in a letter to friends. “In the subway are those who have become weaker. The color of their faces is greyish, their hands are hanging down weakly, their eyes are dim.... Only their jaws are moving, submissively, evenly, without joy or animation.... What are they trying to find in this miserable, degrading chewing? Capital does not like the working man to think and is afraid.... It has therefore adopted measures.... It has put up automats in each station and has filled them with disgusting candied gum. With an automatic movement of the hand the people extract from these automats pieces of sweetish gum, and they grind it with the automatic chewing of their jaws.... It looks like a religious rite, like some silent prayer to God-Capital."
Look, I’m not a huge fan of gum, but honestly, this is just too much. Maybe gum is not evidence of the Marxist parable. Maybe instead people were just buying and chewing gum because they enjoy it?
Sombart the Great
To gain a grasp of this intellectual disorder and its tendencies, let’s look back at an early work of communist/Nazi Werner Sombart (1863-1941). He was a German professor of sociology and economics, a gigantically influential socialist whose works rocked European intelligentsia, as much as that of Karl Marx or Max Weber. He shaped the thought of several generations.
Most strikingly, Sombart, in the course of his academic career, easily made the transition from post-Marxist thought to embrace National Socialist ideology in the 1930s and even mapped out a vision of the planned economy that was celebratory of the rise of the Nazis. He was emblematic of the dexterity of his generation of intellectuals who had decided that liberalism and capitalism had to go and be replaced by a new form of socialist economic planning.
The Masterwork
Let’s take a look at his Socialism and the Social Movement of the 19th Century, published in English translation in 1898, at the height of the maturity of the age of laissez faire before it was shattered by World War I.
The book appeared at a time of astounding social and economic transformation incomparable to anything that had ever happened in history. The population in Europe was rising dramatically. People were on the move from the country to the city. New choices were available to more people than ever. New technologies from indoor electricity to flight to telephony to steel were changing everything. Cities were rising up in the air as never before, with skyscrapers and huge bridges that had previously been technologically impossible. Incomes were growing and migrant classes all over Europe and America were finding new riches.
Somehow Sombart looked at this scene with a sense of panic, that instead of the new birth of civilization he saw only rising misery and progressive impoverishment. The data defied his impression but no matter. He had it in his mind that capitalism would necessarily entail rising misery (forget that average people for the first time could buy books, makeup, train tickets, and even own homes) and that was it.
“There must be a specific kind of misery which characterises the proletariat,” he wrote. “I refer, here, particularly to those unhealthy workplaces, mines, manufactories with their noise and dust and heat, that have arisen with the modern method of production; I think of the conditions produced by these methods of production which tend to draw into the work certain categories of workers,—as women and children; I think further of how the concentration of population in industrial centres and in the great cities has increased the misery of external life for the individual.”
Sombart Knew Nothing of Factories
It’s certainly true that Sombart himself knew nothing of factories, but neither did he know of life on a feudal plantation or of poverty or of the hopelessness of peasantry in the countryside. His experience was of an academic, which is neither merchant nor worker.
Nonetheless, because of his theories and his pedigree, Sombart believed that he knew it all, whereas the people who actually chose to move to the cities, work in the factories, accept the wages, surely did not know what they were doing. For some crazy reason, the individual workers, he discerned, have made all kinds of choices over what to do with their lives that have actually increased their own misery. It was up to the socialists to save these poor slobs from themselves. His rhapsodic prose would sweep in a new stage of history and save humanity from liberalism.
One claim, in particular, strikes me: the idea that capitalism has increased the misery of external life. As compared with what they had before? That very much depends on what they |
also told TheWrap she was “really comfortable” with McLaughlin even before joining the cast of “Stranger Things 2,” as both actors knew each other from living in New York City.
Also Read: 'Stranger Things': 15.8 Million Watched Season 2 Premiere in First Weekend, Nielsen Says
During the episode of “Beyond Stranger Things” that’s sparked the kissing concerns, Sink said she felt “stressed out” by the kiss, which was shot in a room full of cast and crew for a school dance scene in the season finale.
Show creators Matt and Ross Duffer were present for the segment, along with McLaughlin. They said the kiss wasn’t in the script, but when the idea came up, Ross said Sink’s reaction to the idea was “so strong” and she was “so freaked” that the Duffers insisted on it.
Fans who objected were particularly angry that Ross said the kiss was Sink’s “fault” because of her reaction.
Below is a clip of the kiss in question.Goodbye guesswork. Hello right swipes.
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We’re working our magic to make swiping more fun and more effective. Tinder’s Smart Photos feature is designed to bring you more matches, but it’s also a great way to see which way of presenting yourself is the most compelling to others. You may be surprised to find out which of your photos takes the lead. Is it casual you or career you? Active you or swanky you? We know you’re curious, so give it a try.
Get ready to swipe smarter.In “How to find a feminist boyfriend,” Lisa Bonos at the Washington Post wants to find the perfect man who is “cute, smart, funny and... yes, feminist.”
“But how do you spot a male feminist if he’s not at an abortion rights rally wearing a ‘This Is What a Feminist Looks Like’ T-shirt?” she asks. According to Bonos, you put a label on it—he needs to conform to the feminist creed. What is that? “Here’s how I’m defining it,” Bonos writes. “Feminist daters—male or female, gay or straight—aren’t constrained by gender roles. Anyone can do the asking-out, the feelings-confessing or the initiating of any kind.”
A true male feminist is supportive of, interested in and enthusiastic about his partner’s career. He might not expect to earn more than his partner or think that his career trumps hers; a feminist couple might relocate for the woman’s career.
‘If you’re a woman who wants a man to grab you and kiss you because that’s what sweeps you off your feet, realistically, a feminist man is not going to do that,’ says Rita Goodroe, a 38-year-old life coach in Northern Virginia who works mostly with singles. ‘He’s going to ask for permission.’
A feminist dater or boyfriend (and yes, feminists have boyfriends) is aware of the ways women have traditionally been held back, by others and by our own accord, and actively pushes against that. He’s sensitive to the fact that women’s bodies are frequently judged, abused and legislated, and takes no part in that. He gets it.
Bonos has unwittingly revealed a big part of what’s wrong with the feminist movement today. She is so caught up in labeling herself that she has lost her “self.” She’s a “feminist.” The man she wants to be with must be “feminist man.” Then they’ll be a “feminist couple.” Before that, they’re “feminist daters.”
Feminism is what defines her. It’s who she is, which is why she wants a man who is a feminist and who accepts her as one. She doesn’t see herself as a woman or the man as a man. Everything is defined and perceived through the grid of feminism, and feminism is contrary to being feminine, because being feminine is to be vulnerable.
Women—Humans—Can’t Exist Without Vulnerability
Feminists have constructed an image of themselves as self-assured, strong women, which makes it “harder to access the more feminine parts of yourself that could be more positive.”
Feminists’ persona is Henry Higgins’ musings come to life.
“There’s this persona we create for ourselves that doesn’t compute with vulnerability,” Bonos quotes one feminist as saying. But, she writes, we don’t want to be vulnerable “because a woman at her most vulnerable could be taken advantage of. And that’s no one’s feminist fantasy.”
Exactly. This is the fantasy feminists today have perpetuated: that women can exist without vulnerabilities, that they are better, more evolved by becoming more like a man. Their persona is Henry Higgins’ musings come to life.
Feminists who put their feminist creed before their identity as women create a tension in their own being because their femininity, their natural identity as women, is a liability, a weakness. Everything, then, becomes a power play. This is what many men react to with feminists who identify themselves as such. It’s about power, control, and demands for equality where no equality can truly be achieved. The only equality we have is equality before the law. Equality in value as human beings. Equality in worth. The desire for equality that the first-wave feminists fought for has been achieved. We still need to be vigilant in maintaining this, of course, but is this what we’re really talking about when we’re discussing personal relationships, which is what Bonos’ post is about?
See Me As a Feminist, Not a Woman
In demanding to be seen as a feminist and to date a feminist man, Bonos isn’t just concerned about respect, she wants to be treated like a man—a mirror image of the man sitting across from her. Or, she wants some distorted image of herself to be reflected back on the man. Either way, neither are being true to themselves as a man or as a woman. They’re being defined by feminism.
Women need to stop trying to strap on a penis.
She talks about women navigating the waters of being both strong and feminine, yet she recoils at vulnerability, and demands that a potential boyfriend see her first as a feminist, not as a woman. She creates this tension in herself by abandoning her identity as a woman for the feminist persona.
Women need to stop living the feminist fantasy. They need to stop trying to strap on a penis. They need to grab a mirror and take a look at what’s down there. It’s a vagina, ladies, and it has a power all its own—a beauty all its own. You’re different from men. You’re a woman. That’s your natural identity. You’re a human being and you’re a woman. You don’t need to grapple with that, or navigate, or struggle with it. You don’t need to be afraid of it simply because it can make you vulnerable to men. Being vulnerable isn’t the end of the world. The answer to being safe is not to become more like a man (or to make men more like women), but to foster love and respect between the sexes—and to cultivate your own strength as a woman.
Feminism has robbed women of their true selves. That needs to end. Women should be free to be themselves as women. They need to embrace their vulnerabilities (and their feminine powers) and understand that the only way those vulnerabilities can be respected, honored, and not abused is through love, not power plays.
How Is it Romantic to Ask Permission For Every Kiss and Touch?
When you date, look for a man who is a man—who is true to himself—and who loves and respects women. Let him be who he is. If he is a loving person, he will let you be who you are. It’s about mutual affection and honor between the genders, not about gender roles or conforming to a label or abandoning who you are and becoming something else.
When women allow themselves the freedom to be real women, then men will be free to be real men.
Living the feminist fantasy robs everyone of their true identity, as men and as women. Some women, for example, love for the man they care about to grab them and kiss them. She trusts him because they have developed love. He’s strong and the aggressor, as men are designed to be, and she loves it because she loves his masculine strength. She revels in it. She trusts him as a man, and he respects her as a woman.
But if it’s all about power between the sexes, then, no, such behavior isn’t allowed or even understood in the right context. The man is weakened, emasculated, and the woman is degraded, her feminine vulnerabilities—and the beauty that comes with them—rejected.
The feminine fantasy needs to be replaced with the reality of being a woman. When women allow themselves the freedom to be real women, then men will be free to be real men. But it doesn’t stop there. The two need to cultivate love and respect, not morph the man into some kind of feminist perversion or lose the woman in a feminist persona.
Be Yourself, Not a Label or Category
Women need to stop with the feminist label. Feminism in this context is no different than any other form of fundamentalism that robs people of their true selves because it defines them by an external creed, not by how God made them. Let men be men with all their masculine glory, and let women be women with all their feminine glory (and the power and vulnerabilities that come with it), and there will be peace—if, and only if, the relationships are cultivated in love. The greatest quality of love is that it is not “self-seeking.” The feminist who wants a man who is a feminist is a self-seeker, looking for a man who will change who he is to love a label, not the woman behind the label.
A feminist hates that she has a vagina—or to be more specific, that she has a womb.
While feminists have many legitimate concerns regarding shared work, roles, earnings, honoring one another’s bodies, etc., at the core of hyper-feminized thinking is a woman’s self-loathing of her own gender. That truth seeps out in all sorts of ways. She hates her perceived vulnerabilities and hates Nature’s God, who made them. She hates that she has a vagina—or to be more specific, that she has a womb.
To feminists like this, I just want to say that the message real women want to send to other women is not, “Declare yourself a feminist and find a man who lives up to your creed!” We want to tell women: If you like your vagina, you can keep it! Be who you were created to be: a woman, with all your vulnerabilities, challenges, and differences. Cultivate love, not power, and find men who are concerned about cultivating that love, too. If you don’t, you’ll be miserable because you will be living a lie, a fantasy, you will be existing as a label, not living a full life as a self-aware individual, as a woman.Subscribe to Nintendo Life on
Movies based on video games have a habit of being somewhat inconsistent; for every decent effort there are countless terrible examples which totally fail to live up to the promise of the source material.
We'll let you decide which camp the upcoming Contra flick will fall into. The script - by Beijing Starlit Movie and TV Culture - gained approval from China’s film bureau last month, and there is speculation that 28-year-old Jing Tian will be cast in the movie.
Here's the official synopsis:
In 1988, a huge meteorite lands on an uninhabited island in the South China Sea. Chen Qiang and Li Zhiyong investigate but come up empty handed. 29 years later, Chen sends commandos Bill and Lance into a combat mission there to neutralize the villainous Red Falcon Organization, but end up facing a different enemy altogether.
The original arcade title - which was famously ported to the NES - boasted Arnold Schwarzenegger (Lance) and Sylvester Stallone (Bill) lookalikes on the cover and took place in the fictional Galuga archipelago.
The chances of this movie making it outside of China in any major capacity are slim, but would you like to watch it?New video emerges of black cosplayer running for his life from cops who then shot and killed him
Two months after Darrien Hunt was shot in the back and killed by Utah police, surveillance video that captured the moments before his death has been released.
Hunt, 22, lived in Saratoga Springs Utah. The city’s population is 93% white and 0.5% black.
The footage shows that he was dressed as a samurai. His family says he was carrying a non-sharp replica sword, and was an anime fan who was cosplaying as a samurai character from a popular anime series. The cops shot him 6 times in the back while he was fleeing for his life. The video contradicts earlier statements by police that Hunt swung the sword at the police officers before they began shooting him.
From an earlier Gawker report:
Hunt's family disputes that he attacked the cops, and they say the 2 1/2-foot sword, which did not have a sharp edge, was bought at a gift shop and was purely decorative. Hunt, who left behind notebooks full of manga-style drawings, was wearing a red top and blue pants at the time of his death. He was apparently dressed as Mugen from Samurai Champloo.
Hunt's family plans to file a lawsuit against the police department.In the battle to provide nutritional choices for schoolchildren, isn’t chocolate milk better than no milk at all?
According to San Francisco legislators and school officials, the answer. apparently. is no.
Students from elementary through high school grades will no longer be able to enjoy this cafeteria staple in the coming school year, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
San Francisco tackles sugar, removing chocolate milk from school menus. https://t.co/s5qwweHw54 — UCSF COAST (@COAST_UCSF) July 13, 2017
Chocolate milk will officially be banned in elementary and middle grades in the fall followed by high school in the spring as school officials seek to dictate what is considered healthy for students.
… because anything enjoyable is obviously evil. — Ramspace (@ramspacek) July 10, 2017
In five area schools, the beverage was cut out over the past year resulting in no decrease in the number of milk cartons in two schools and a slight decrease in number in the other three.
Great way to get kids to drink less milk….? — David Barnum (@DavidBarnum10) July 11, 2017
“The kids grumbled about it for a couple of days,” but eventually just switched to white milk, Libby Albert, executive director of the district’s Student Nutrition Services, said.
What a travesty. I have an ongoing chocolate milk taste test with my two teenage boys. Great post workout drink too. This is meaningless — Todd Smith (@SmithToddM) July 10, 2017
“Kids are always going to choose flavored milk over regular milk because sweet tastes better,” Marlene Schwartz, director of the University of Connecticut Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, said. “That shouldn’t be the reason that you (offer) it.”
Los Angeles Unified School District eliminated chocolate milk for six years, but after a study of 21-schools last year, the district reversed its decision in order to “increase milk consumption and reduce waste,” according to the Chronicle.
The Chronicle reported:
District officials there found that serving chocolate milk could mean an increase of 12.5 million cartons consumed rather than wasted each year — which would translate to a 23 percent increase in milk consumption. District officials put chocolate milk back in all the district’s schools this spring. Los Angeles’ results mirrored those from a 2014 Cornell University study, which found that while banning chocolate milk could reduce calorie and sugar consumption, it could also mean less milk consumed, more waste and fewer kids buying school lunch.
An American Heart Association study from 2009 even found that chocolate milk provided the same nutritional value as white milk and had no adverse effects on the childrens’ weight.
“Just like many people, I have some nostalgia around drinking chocolate milk at lunch as a kid,” School board member Matt Haney said. “But if this change helps reduce overall sugar intake and improves student nutrition and wellness, it seems like a positive thing to me.”
I dunno. Overreach by some, I guess. Just don’t drink it if you feel it’s bad for you. And someone will say, “But, they’re just kids…” — IEN3 (@IEN3) July 11, 2017
“Nooooooo!” nine year-old Naijella Raybon said, pretending to wipe tears from her eyes. “It was my only source of (beverage). It’s tasty, and it’s so good to drink.”
Chocolate milk will soon go the way of sodas, cookies and other treats at San Francisco schools and officials are confident kids will get used to it.
Not like they have any other choice.
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Por Yeray Calvo
Os habéis enterado, ¿verdad? el caloret faller se ha marchado y empieza a hacer frescoret. Al menos en Madrid, que para eso somos centralistas de esos
“Ligera bajada de temperaturas en la Cornisa Cantábrica” pic.twitter.com/LyzhHTvsLe — Galleto Fontanedo (@Coponnnn) 11 de octubre de 2016
Buenas noticias para el PP, malas para el rey, que está trabajando más que en su vida
El Rey vuelve a convocar ronda de consultas con los grupos políticos! pic.twitter.com/IC9dwihxAC — Fer Novato (@fer_novato) 11 de octubre de 2016
¿Qué pasará? ¿A quién elegirá el rey? ¡Qué nervios!
El rey llama a consultas.
Ya está todo hecho.
Consumado el #PPSOE.
Javier Fernández ha dado el sí donde Ana Rosa, muy propio. — cristina fallaras (@LaFallaras) 11 de octubre de 2016
Vuelven las consultas de Felipe “entrenador pokémon” de Borbón. Te elijo a ti, Mariano!!!!!! ⚡️ — Dani Mateo (@DaniMateoAgain) 11 de octubre de 2016
El Rey se va a reunir con el presidente de una banda criminal y con una gestora golpista para formar un gobierno por y para el pueblo. — protestona (@protestona1) 11 de octubre de 2016
¿Cuántas rondas llevamos? ¿A esta quién invita?
El Rey abre otra ronda y su hijo Felipe también, pero éste de contactos. — Anacleto Panceto (@Xuxipc) 11 de octubre de 2016
El rey Felipe VI, sorprendido de jugar un papel activo en España y tener que trabajar: https://t.co/w1HpfZFyJw — El Mundo Today (@elmundotoday) 11 de octubre de 2016
Dice el Rey que lo tenéis hasta los huevos con tanta reunión. Que cuando él fue elegido Rey no hicieron falta tantas reuniones ni tanto lío. — Luisao Moratalla (@LuisaoMoratalla) 11 de octubre de 2016
Todo esto ocurre un día después de que salga a la luz el famoso powerpoint del PP para saber robar
Si lo del PowerPoint que enseña a blanquear dinero va a juicio en España, ¿sabéis quien acabará en la cárcel?
Efectivamente, Bill Gates. — LA MERKEL (@GobernoAlem) 10 de octubre de 2016
No hay que ser muy listo para saber que si el rey convoca consultas es que el gobierno del PP está clarinete. Los conservadores parece que se salen de nuevo con la suya. Incluso los del ‘no es no’ ya van a tope con el Susana Team, que va muy a tope con el partido de la Gürtel
Antonio Hernando pasará del NO a la abstención, el caso Gürtel no afectará al pacto del PP con Ciudadanos…Yo cada vez entiendo menos cosas — María Jesús Güemes (@mjguemes) 10 de octubre de 2016
Estamos impresionados por el fenómeno Hernando, el factor que permanece constante mande quien mande en el partido
La retoucherie de Susana ficha a Antonio Hernando para el gran remiendo https://t.co/bJef2pdAmg por @JCEscudier pic.twitter.com/xYfwiwi5i5 — Público (@publico_es) October 11, 2016
Por cierto, un saludo para Pedro Sánchez. Ya nadie parece acordarse de ti… menos nosotros
Cuando lo anuncian por la tele Vs Cuando te llega a casa pic.twitter.com/Wxb9oaZglz — Armando el pollo (@Arma_pollo) 11 de octubre de 2016
Mientras, el PSOE debe cerrar las heridas cuanto antes
Para limar asperezas, la gestora del PSOE regalará un Galaxy Note 7 a cada miembro del PSC. — Anacleto Panceto (@Xuxipc) 11 de octubre de 2016
Ganazas de que empiece The Walking Dead para enterarme bien de lo del PSOE. — SrCaronte (@SrCaronte) 10 de octubre de 2016
Aunque va a ser difícil cerrar las heridas, al menos las de sus votantes al apoyar al único partido capaz de cuestionar las leyes universales que explican nuestro mundo
Todo cuerpo sumergido en el PP, experimenta un empuje vertical y hacia la Audiencia Nacional igual al peso del cargo que ocupa. — Anacleto Panceto (@Xuxipc) 29 de julio de 2016
Donald Trump es un evasor de impuestos, machista, homófobo y clasista. Vamos, que si se presenta aquí sale con mayoría absoluta. — Señor Rembrandt (@Sr_Rembrandt) 10 de octubre de 2016
¿Qué mensaje le estamos lanzando al mundo, por el amor de DOS?
Pues si Trump os da vergüenza ajena, imaginad lo que pensamos en el mundo cuando elegís un partido condenado por corrupción para gobernar. — LA MERKEL (@GobernoAlem) 9 de octubre de 2016
Por cierto, ¿os acordáis de todas las mentiras que nos han estado diciendo para empujarnos hacia un Gobierno del PP? Que sin Gobierno la economía se resiente, que si Europa nos va a multar, que si hay mogollón de inestabilidad.
Tremenda preocupación en Europa por la “ausencia” de gobierno en España. pic.twitter.com/Gvtp1zxp4f — Víctor Gª Guerrero (@VictorGGuerrero) 11 de octubre de 2016
Con la tontería Rajoy va camino de un año de presidente en funciones y todavía le quedan cuatro años más. — Pablo Tilox (@PabloTilo) 10 de octubre de 2016
Eso sí que es una ley física, la que explica que todo cuerpo introducido en el Parlamento experimenta una fuerza centrífuga para que gobiernen los de siempre a la fuerza. No nay núcleo irradiador que pueda impedir este fenómeno
Se construyó un falso dilema para presionar a Pedro Sánchez con propaganda del PP. Era mentira. Algunos lo dijimos. https://t.co/oWaGfV8Vdb — Antonio Maestre (@AntonioMaestre) 11 de octubre de 2016
Mientras tanto, la maquinaria democrática del siglo XXI sigue a pleno rendimiento
Menos mal que tenemos un gobierno en funciones para encargarse de lo verdaderamente importante. pic.twitter.com/dkIV6wzMVz — Els quatre gats (@Els_quatre_gats) 11 de octubre de 2016
Por último, queremos analizar desde un punto de vista riguroso y científico la movida esa de los Samsung, que por lo visto explotan
Samsung deja de vender el Galaxy Note 7 y pide a los usuarios que no lo enciendan. pic.twitter.com/gemUVMagek — Proscojoncio (@Proscojoncio) 11 de octubre de 2016
Pictures emerging of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7… pic.twitter.com/JcDopOQiWd — Jordan Meyer (@Jordan_Meyer1) 10 de octubre de 2016
Antes de usar el Samsung Galaxy Note 7 / Después pic.twitter.com/myUNxFH2by — Señorita Puri (@SenoritaPuri) 11 de octubre de 2016
Aquí, probando mi Samsung Note 7. pic.twitter.com/XATMvd7UFq — Don Arfonzo (@donarfonzo) 11 de octubre de 2016
Que bonito homenaje de Samsung al PSOE. — Concejala D Festejos (@Concejajala) 11 de octubre de 2016
El PSOE pasa a llamarse PSOE Galaxy Note 7. — Lucía Taboada (@TaboadaLucia) 11 de octubre de 2016
El Galaxy Note 7 surgió de un “necesitamos algo explosivo para competir contra Apple” por parte de Samsung — Ache (@soynormal) 11 de octubre de 2016
Corea del Norte se interesa en comprar todas las existencias del Samsung Galaxy Note 7 para sustituir sus misiles Taepodong — Froilán I de España (@FroilLannister) 11 de octubre de 2016
Samsung debería aprender algunas cosas de Homer. pic.twitter.com/kiJoe9ocBJ — Saikuro (@Saikuro) 11 de octubre de 2016
Albert Rivera ya está en Corea para abrazar a los dueños de Samsung. — Bob Estropajo (@BobEstropajo) 11 de octubre de 2016
Qué pringados los de Samsung asumiendo responsabilidades por las explosiones del S7 en lugar de echarle la culpa a otros como hace el PP — Eterno Primavera (@SiPeroNo1) 11 de octubre de 2016
Los Samsung de Padrón.
Unos petan y otros non. — Agente Smint (@AgenteSmint) 11 de octubre de 2016
La ONU sólo habla de las bombas que fabricamos los norcoreanos, pero que yo sepa el Samsung Galaxy Note 7 es de Corea del Sur. — Kim Jong-un (@norcoreano) 11 de octubre de 2016
Cuando decían que Samsung iba a renacer de sus cenizas… Se referían a lo del Note 7? — Presidente Ralph (@ofdachurch) 11 de octubre de 2016
A los valencianos les encantan los Samsung Galaxy Note7 y las paellas. — satoshi (@dameuncoin) 11 de octubre de 2016
Para acabar, os dejo una frase de Paolo Cohelo, que me gusta cuidaros
Tampoco hace falta que os creáis absolutamente todo lo que os conviene. — Riau. (@xaviconde) 11 de octubre de 2016
LO ESTÁS VIENDO LO ESTÁS RIENDO (LOS TUITS ABSURDOS DEL DÍA)
Da gusto cuando hay educación. pic.twitter.com/fCG2AbfYof — Hugo Izarra (@HugoIzarra) 7 de octubre de 2016
Rafa Mora y Andy y Lucas en el Hola. Mis abuelos no lucharon para esto. pic.twitter.com/ZZefU8obdm — Petit Petard (@petitpejarl) 11 de octubre de 2016
– ¿Necesitas algo?
– Que me abraces fuerte y me digas que no te vas a ir nunca.
– Digo del Mercadona. — DW (@DWeightless) 16 de julio de 2015
– YO, BRO. He pecado, nigga. – De acto o de flow? – For real. – Rapéame tres holy fuckin virgin marys. – Respect. — Karl Kautsky (@Klkautsky) 18 de septiembre de 2013
EN EL ANTERIOR TREMENDING TOPIC…
“Formatear el ordenador 35 veces, romperlos a martillazos y que no se borre el PowerPoint sobre financiación ilegal” https://t.co/mAviZteTpL pic.twitter.com/ZPanzvXlDB — Tremending Topic (@Tremending) 10 de octubre de 2016“Monsanto Protection Act” Spreads to Oregon in New Bill Passed that Will Ban Local Control Over Food and Farms by
Saturday, April 20 2013 @ 11:26 AM EDT
Posted in News & Views
** http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/sign/stop_oregons_Monsanto_Protection_Act/**
Last week, SB 633, a bill that strips all local control of agricultural seed and seed production and replaces it with a “one size fits all” policy dictated by the state passed out of the Rural Communities and Economic Development committee by a vote of 3 to 2 in favor. SB 633, known as Oregon’s Monsanto Protection Act, earned the support of the committee Chair, Arnie Roblan (D-Coos Bay) whose office has cited the passage of Section 735, known as Monsanto Protection Act, of H.R. 933, as justification of the dangerous new seed preemption bill that is now awaiting a full vote on the Oregon Senate floor.
Under current Oregon law, local citizens have the right to make democratic decisions concerning local agricultural practices and Oregon’s Monsanto Protection Act is seen as a corporate handout to agribusiness to protect biotech seed and chemical monopolies like Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta from the growing number of American farmers and citizens who have become concerned about the flaws of genetically engineered crops and the undemocratic lobbying method these giant multinational companies use to deceptively garner growth in the marketplace.
"Barely two weeks after sneaking into U.S law, the Monsanto Protection Act is being cited as an example to strip Oregon’s family farmers of their basic democratic rights," said Dave Murphy, founder and executive director of Food Democracy Now! "By siting Section 735, better known as the Monsanto Protection Act, as a reason to subvert the citizen-led ballot initiative process, Oregon Senators have proven that the Monsanto Protection Act is a part of a well-coordinated effort by Monsanto and the biotech industry to undermine simple protections from GMO crops that a growing number of farmers and citizens across the U.S. are demanding."
Ominously, the Monsanto Protection Act, Section 735, is cited as supporting evidence for the Oregon seed preemption bill in an email to a constituent from Rosie Shatkin, Roblan’s legislative policy adviser. According to Senator Roblan’s office:
"With this background information in mind, and given that the DA promulgated rules through the APHIS, does the CFCAA, 2013, H.B. 933 § 735, impact a State’s ability to regulate GMOs? In essence, one reviewer of the act noted that ‘Even if the courts find that a (genetically engineered) crop shouldn’t be planted until more research is done about its safety, no one could stop that crop from being planted, even temporarily’ because Federal Law supersedes state law and most definitely, local Ordinance,” wrote Shatkin.
Oregon’s Monsanto Protection Act is a direct attempt to silence farmers critical of genetically engineered crops who are looking for a reasonable democratic solution to protect their organic and non-GMO seed supply from genetic contamination.
In an effort to protect local agriculture and farmer’s economic livelihoods, on January 2nd of this year, GMO-Free Jackson County, led by a local farmer, submitted nearly 6,500 signatures to get a ban on genetically engineered crops on the ballot. The initiative will appear on the ballot May 2014, if not sooner and Monsanto, Syngenta and other biotech seed companies are working behind the scenes to make sure that SB 633 strips Oregon residents of their right to make local agricultural decisions at the county level.
According to Oregon farmers, SB 633 is a thinly veiled attempt to silence the growing concern over genetically engineered foods and gut all county efforts to address the real problems that growing GMO crops can have on seed purity and the economic livelihoods of family farmers.
Last week Senator Roblan was joined by Herman Baerschiger (R-Grants Pass) and Betsy Close (R-Albany) in voting in favor of SB 633. The bill must now be assigned to a committee in the House and then be voted on by both chambers of the Oregon legislature.
This vote comes barely two weeks after Congress passed the Monsanto Protection Act and President Obama signed it into law, over the objections of more than 300,000 Food Democracy Now! members who signed a letter to Obama and Congress to the stop the provision from becoming law. Now in Oregon, state senators are hiding behind the precedent of the Monsanto Protection Act undermining efforts in Jackson County to pass a countywide ban on GMO crops, a ballot initiative that qualified for the May 2014 ballot.
SIGN THE PETITION HERE:
http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/sign/obama_signs_monsanto_protection_act_time_to_label_gmos/
The intent of SB 633, a seed preemption bill, is to strip the right of local control from Jackson County and other critics of GMOs because they have sought to impose a ban on growing genetically engineered crops within the confines of their county to protect local family farmers and economic interests through a ballot initiative.
VIEW THE BILL HERE: https://olis.leg.state.or.us/liz/2013R1/Measures/OverView/SB633
According to Oregon farmers, SB 633 is a thinly veiled attempt to silence the growing concern over genetically engineered foods and gut all county efforts to address the real problems that growing GMO crops can have on seed purity and the economic livelihoods of family farmers.
TAKE ACTION HERE: http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/sign/stop_oregons_Monsanto_Protection_Act/
AdvertisementOnce or twice a week, the woman who lived with Gloria and Alfred Edwards Jr. would come out to tend tomatoes in the front yard or, in some cases, tidy up a neighbor’s home.
She didn’t speak much, neighbors in the Upper Marlboro cul-de-sac said, but they knew a bit about her. They knew she was from the Philippines; they knew she enjoyed gardening and early morning walks; and she sometimes visited their homes, which she cleaned when they asked the couple for help.
Then, in fall 2009, they stopped seeing her around. This week, they learned that a federal grand jury had indicted the couple on charges that they held the woman in domestic servitude for a decade, paying her minimal or no wages to work long days.
Robert C. Bonsib and Andrew D. Alpert, the attorneys for the couple, said Thursday that their clients denied the allegations in the five-count indictment.
Neither would comment on the relationship between the woman and the couple. The woman’s identity has not been released — in the indictment, she is called “T.E.” — but Vickie LeDuc, spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office for Maryland, said she is safe.
Gloria Edwards, 60, and her husband, Alfred, 73, a retired obstetrician/gynecologist, now face charges of forced labor, domestic servitude, among other counts. Each could face up to 50 years in prison and as much as $250,000 in fines if convicted.
Gloria Edwards lured the woman to the United States with a promise of employment while in the Philippines about 10 years ago, according to court documents. When the woman arrived at the couple’s home in May 1999, the indictment alleges, they took her passport and refused to return it.
The woman cooked, cleaned, ironed, gardened and provided nightly massages for Edwards’s mother for $50 a month, according to court documents. She also cleaned for neighbors and relatives to pay rent on Edwards’s small apartment in the Philippines, where the woman’s eight children lived at times during the 10 years.
Court documents also |
already have a technical co-founder, you can always outsource technology and not give up equity.
32) Should I barter equity for services?
No. You get what you pay for.
33) Should I build a product?
Maybe. But first see if, manually, your product works. Then think about providing it as a service. Then productize the commonly used services. Too many people do this in reverse and then fail.
34) How much dilution is too much dilution?
If someone wants to give you money, then take it. The old saying, “100 percent of nothing is worth less than 1 percent of something” is true.
35) What if nobody seems to be buying my product?
Then change to a service and do whatever anyone is willing to pay for using the skills you developed while making your product.
36) If a client wants me to hire their friend or they won’t give me the business (e.g. like a bribe) what should I do?
Always do the ethical thing: Hire the friend and get the client’s business.
37) What do I do when a customer rejects me in a B2B business?
Stay in touch once a month. Never be angry.
38) In a B2C business?
Release fast. Add new features every week.
39) What if my client asks me to do something not in my business plan?
Do it, or find someone who can do it, even if it’s a competitor.
40) Should I ever talk badly about a partner or an employee even though they are awful?
Never gossip. Always be straight with the culprit.
41) I have lots of ideas. How do I pick the right one?
Do as many ideas as possible. The right idea will pick you.
42) Should I get an office?
No, not unless you have revenues.
43) Should I do market research?
Yes. Find one customer who DEFINITELY – without a doubt – will buy a service from you. Note that I don’t say buy your product, because your initial product is always not what the customer wanted.
44) Should I pay taxes?
No. You should always reinvest your money and operate at a loss.
45) Should I pay dividends?
See above.
46) When should I fire employees?
When you have fewer than six months’ burn in the bank and you aren’t getting revenues growing fast enough.
47) For what other reasons should someone fire an employee?
When they gossip.
When they don’t over-deliver constantly.
When they ask for a raise because they think they are making below industry standard.
When they talk badly about a client.
When they have an attitude.
48) When should I give a raise?
Rarely.
49) How big should the employee option pool be?
15 to 20 percent.
50) How much do advisers get?
One-fourth of 1 percent. Advisers are useless. Don’t even have an advisory board.
51) How much do board members get?
Nothing. They should all be investors. If they aren’t an investor, then one-half of 1 percent.
52) What if one client is almost all of my revenues?
Treat them very nicely. Don’t forget the Christmas gift basket.
53) What’s the best way to sell anything?
Show arbitrage: If they pay X, now they are buying something worth X * Y. That is the ONLY way to sell.
54) What is the best way to sell anything?
Part II: fear and agitation.
Get them afraid: The world is falling apart!
Then get them agitated: This is the only way to stop it.
55) What’s the best way to talk about my competition in a meeting?
Use “choice ambiguity” (Google it). Say, “All of my competition is great. I wouldn’t even know how to choose among them.”
56) What’s the best way to value a company?
Ask yourself (no BS): How much would it cost to recreate the technology, services, brand, and customers you have already built. Then quadruple it and see what people would pay.
57) How do I charge more for my services?
Itemize as finely as possible and charge for each item.
58) Do I charge per hour, per project, or per month?
First per project, then per-month maintenance.
59) How do I prepare for a meeting?
Know everything about the clients. Their competition, employees, industry. Over-read everything.
60) What is the only effective email marketing?
Highly targeted email marketing written by professional copywriters, and an email list made up of people who have bought similar services in the past six months.
60a) Corollary: If you have zero skills as a copywriter, then everything you write will be boring.
61) Should I give stuff away for free?
Maybe. But don’t expect free customers to turn into paying customers. Your free customers actually hate you and want everything from you for nothing, so you better have a different business model.
62) Should I have schwag?
No.
63) Should I go to SXSW?
No.
64) Should I go to industry parties and meetups?
No.
65) Should I hire people because I can travel on a seven-hour plane ride with them?
Don’t be an idiot. If anything, hire people the opposite of you. Or else, who will you delegate to?
66) When should I say “no” to a client?
When they approach you.
67) When should I say “yes” to a client?
Every other conversation you ever have with them after that initial “no.”
68) Should I have sex with an employee?
Stop asking that.
69) Should I negotiate the best terms with a VC?
No. Pick the VC you like. Times are going to get tough at some point, and you need to be able to have a heart-to-heart with them.
70) Should I even start a business?
No. Make money. Build shit. Then start a business.
71) Should I give employees bonuses for a job well done?
No. Give them gifts but not bonuses.
72) What should I do at Christmas?
Send everyone you know a gift basket.
73) If my customer just got divorced, what should I say to him?
“I can introduce you to lots of women/men.”
74) Why didn’t the VC or customer call back after we met yesterday and it was great?
They hate you.
75) Why didn’t the above call back after we met yesterday and it was great?
“Yesterday” was like a split second ago for them and a lifetime for you. There’s the law of entrepreneurial relativity. Figure out what that means and live by it.
76) Should I hire a professional CEO?
No. Never.
77) Should I hire a head of sales?
No. The founder is the head of sales until at least 10 million in sales.
78) My client called at 3 a.m. Should I tell him to respect boundaries?
No. You no longer have any boundaries.
79) My investors want me to focus.
Should you listen to them? No. Diversify in every way you can.
80) I personally need money. Should I borrow from the business?
Only if the business can survive for another six months no matter what.
81) I just bought two companies. Should I put them under the same roof and start consolidating?
No. Not for at least two years.
82) What do I do when I have doubts?
Ask your customers if your doubts are trustworthy.
83) I have too much competition. What should I do?
Competition is good. It shows you have a decent business model. Now simply outperform them.
84) My wife/husband thinks I spend too much time on my startup.
Divorce them or close your business.
85) I’m starting my business, but I have relationship problems. What should I do?
Get rid of your relationship.
86) Should I expand geographically as quickly as possible?
No. Get all the business you can in your local area. Travel is too expensive time-wise.
87) How do I keep clients from yelling at me?
Document every meeting line-by-line, and send your document to the client right after the meeting.
88) I have an idea for an app but don’t know how to execute. What should I do?
Draw every screen and function. Then outsource someone to make the drawings look like they come from a real app. Then outsource the development of the app.
Get a specific schedule. Micromanage the schedule.
89) I want to buy a franchise in X. Is that a good idea?
Only buy a franchise if it’s underperforming and you can see how to improve it. Don’t buy on future hopes; only buy on past mistakes.
90) I want to buy a franchise in X. Is that a good idea?
Rely on the three Ds: death, debt, divorce.
When someone dies, the heirs will sell a business cheap.
When someone is in debt, they will sell a business cheap.
When someone divorces, the couple usually has to sell a business cheap.
IMPORTANT: Even if the trends in the industry are in your favor, you CANNOT predict the future. But you can use the past to help you get a deal. Always get a deal.
91) I have no traffic. How do I get traffic?
Shut down your business.
92) Should I hire a PR firm?
No. Do guerilla marketing. Read “Newsjacking” and “Trust Me, I’m Lying.”
PR firms screw up from beginning to end. The first time I hired a PR firm, instead of sending me my contract, they accidentally sent me their contract for “Terry Bradshaw.” He was paying $12,000 a month. Was it worth it for him?
93) My competition is doing better than me across every metric. What should I do?
Don’t be afraid to instantly shut down your business and start over if you can’t sell it. Time is a horrible thing to waste.
94) Is it unethical to run my business from the side while still at my job?
I don’t know. Did God tell you that in a dream?
95) My customer called me at 5 p.m. on a Friday and said, “We have to talk.” And now I can’t talk to him until Monday. What does it mean?
It means you’re fired.
96) XYZ just sold for $100 million. Should I be valued at that? I’m better!
No, you should shut up.
97) Investors want to meet me and customers want to meet me. Who do I meet if I need money?
You should know the answer to that by now.
98) If an acquirer asks me why I want to sell, what should I say?
That you feel it would be easier for you to grow in the context of a bigger company that has experienced the growing pains you are just starting to go through. That 1 + 1 = 45.
99) I just started my business. What should I do?
Sell it as fast as possible (applies in 99 percent of situations). Sell for cash.
100) I can change the world with my technology.
No you can’t.
100a) Corollary: Don’t smoke crack.
101) If you’re so smart, why aren’t you a billionaire?
Because I sold my businesses early, lost everything, started new businesses, sold them, and got lucky every now and then.
101a) Corollary: These rules don’t always apply. But like Kurt Vonnegut said, “If you want to break the rules of grammar, first learn the rules of grammar.”
RULE #infinity: You create your luck by being healthy and not regretting the past or being anxious about the future.
Don’t forget: If you have something to add or disagree with anything, let me know in the comments.NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. court judge threw out an insider trading case against Dallas Mavericks basketball team owner Mark Cuban on Friday, but gave the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission a month to file an amended lawsuit.
Dallas Mavericks team owner Mark Cuban (C) jokes with reporters as he leaves the Earle Cabell Federal Court building after attending a hearing held to address the insider trading suit filed against him by the Securities and Exchange Commission in Dallas, Texas May 26, 2009. REUTERS/Jessica Rinaldi
Cuban, one of the 400 richest Americans, faced civil charges that he acted on nonpublic information when he sold his stake in Internet search engine company Mamma.com to avoid more than $750,000 in losses.
The SEC failed to allege that Cuban undertook a duty to refrain from trading information on a public stock offering that Mamma.com had planned, U.S. District Judge Sidney Fitzwater wrote in his ruling.
“Cuban cannot be held liable under the misappropriation theory of insider trading liability, even accepting all the well-pleaded facts as true and viewing them in the light most favorable to the SEC,” Fitzwater wrote.
He gave the SEC 30 days to file an amended complaint, “if the SEC can allege that Cuban undertook a duty, expressly or implicitly, not to trade or other otherwise use material, nonpublic information.”
Paul Coggins, a lawyer at Fish & Richardson who represented Cuban, said he would be surprised if the SEC refiled.
“Frankly I think the government can’t prove the facts that they put in the first round, so I would be surprised if they re-plead here,” said Coggins. “I think they threw everything they had and more into this.”
Cuban, who is worth $2.6 billion according to Forbes magazine, did not respond to an email seeking comment.
He is an avid blogger at website blogmaverick.com, but it had no update on Friday morning. He also has a Twitter account. "Its been a great day so far, and its only going to get better! Back to Dallas to see the (family)," he posted on the account around noon ET (1600 GMT).
“As far as media, im not going to be commenting at all, but thx for asking,” he later wrote on Twitter.
The SEC declined to say if it would file an amended case. “We are reviewing the court’s ruling and weighing our options,” said Scott Friestad, associate director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement.
Cuban has a range of business interests and other activities. His hot temper when arguing with referees during Mavericks games has earned him almost $1.7 million in fines. His dancing skills landed him on the television show “Dancing With the Stars.”
Cuban also owns HDNet, a national high-definition television network, and Landmark Theatres. Magnolia Pictures, the theatrical and home entertainment distribution company that he co-owns through the company 2929 Entertainment, released the documentary “Enron: Smartest Guys in the Room.”
He also is the majority partner in ShareSleuth.com, a site that reports on “securities fraud and corporate chicanery,” according to its website.
According to the SEC’s original complaint from last November, Quebec-based Mamma.com invited Cuban in June 2004 to participate in a private placement offering after he agreed to keep the information confidential.
When Cuban found out the offering would dilute the holdings of existing shareholders and be sold at a discount to the market price, he became “angry and upset,” the SEC said.
At the end of a call with Mamma.com’s CEO, Cuban said: “Well, now I’m screwed. I can’t sell,” according to the SEC’s complaint. Later, he told his broker, “Sell what you can tonight and just get me out the next day,” the SEC alleged.
During after-hours trading on June 28, 2004, Cuban sold 10,000 of his 600,000 shares and the following morning sold his remaining stake. After markets closed, Mamma.com announced its offering. When markets reopened the following day, the company’s stock fell 9.3 percent at $11.89.
According to the complaint, Cuban later publicly said he sold his stake because the company was conducting a private investment in public equity (PIPE), which issued shares at a discount to the market and would have diluted his stake.
The complaint alleged Cuban never disclosed to Mamma.com he was going to sell shares before the company’s announcement.
Mamma.com has since changed its name to Copernic Inc. Its shares were down 3.8 percent at 25 cents on the Nasdaq on Friday.
The SEC filed its civil case in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas in Dallas. The case number is 3:08-CV-2050-D.I wrote here about the Obama administration’s proposed rule on “affirmatively furthering fair housing” (AFFH), an attempt to dictate how we shall live. I argued that, in essence, President Obama seeks to use the power of the national government to create communities of a certain kind, each having what the federal government deems an appropriate mix of economic, racial, and ethnic diversity.
To get a good idea of what this looks like in practice, we need only examine the unfortunate experience of Westchester County with AFFH and the Obama administration’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Terry Eastland provides a harrowing summary.
Westchester County made the mistake of entering into a settlement with HUD, regarding it as a reasonable bureaucracy based on its experience with the Bush administration. Unfortunately, the settlement was with Obama’s HUD.
Under the settlement, the County agreed to build 750 “affordable housing units,” 650 of which would be in municipalities with less than 3 percent American-American population and less than 7 percent Hispanic population. HUD insisted on this deal even though Westchester County had not been accused of engaging in housing discrimination.
As further penance for its non-wrongdoing, Westchester County agreed to advertise its affordable housing units to people living outside the County. The non-residents were to be lured into the County to try to ensure that the new housing units would be filled by the desired number of members of the HUD-preferred racial and ethic groups. To this end, Westchester County was required to spend money on behalf of people who don’t live there. This is “regionalism” in action.
It is also a form of “steering.” Racial discrimination in housing has traditionally occurred when realtors steered clients from one neighborhood to another according to where, based on race, the realtor (and forces behind the realtor) thought they should live. Now the government is steering people into certain neighborhoods based, once again, on race.
Westchester County has proceeded apace with the building and steering called for by the Obama administration. But the Obama administration isn’t satisfied. In line with its proposed AFFH rule, it now calls for 5,000 more affordable housing units to be built, most of them in predominantly white communities.
This would require re-zoning, which HUD expects Westchester County to impose. But the County has analyzed all 853 local zoning districts and found no evidence of exclusionary practices, and its analysis has been supported by independent review. Accordingly, Westchester County has refused to sue municipalities to force zoning changes. In response HUD has cut off $17 million in housing grants.
Clearly, the Obama administration’s interest is not in combatting discrimination in housing; its interest is imposing a preordained view of the proper racial and ethnic mix for neighborhoods. And I mean all neighborhoods. For as Rob Astorino, the executive of Westchester County, says, “the battle for zoning in Westchester County [will be] the battle everywhere” — a battle that is “about changing every block, every neighborhood to the viewpoint of federal bureaucrats at HUD.”
Astorino’s assessment may sound melodramatic, but it is supported by the Secretary of HUD himself. Shaun Donovan says, “there are no stones we won’t turn; there are no places we won’t go.”
Can power-hungry leftists like Donovan, Obama, and the “community organizers” whose bidding they are doing be thwarted? This will be the subject of my next post in this series.Chelsea Manning, the soldier and Guardian columnist, has been denied access to a prison legal library days before a crucial hearing at which she will represent herself against charges including possession of unapproved reading material, according to a message posted to her official Twitter account at the weekend.
The hearing is part of a legal process that could result in indefinite solitary confinement for Manning, for reported violations that also include storing a tube of expired toothpaste in her military prison cell.
The army has scheduled a hearing on the violations for Tuesday at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where Manning is being held. She was given a 35-year sentence for having been the source of the vast leak of US state secrets to WikiLeaks.
“Prison staff are now denying me access to the law library @ scheduled times – w/only 2 days until my board,” read the tweet, which was posted by supporters in contact with the prisoner.
A call to the US disciplinary barracks at Fort Leavenworth was not immediately returned.
Earlier this week, Chase Strangio, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who is handling Manning’s legal dispute with the US military over her health treatment in prison as a transgender woman, told the Guardian it seemed Manning was being unfairly targeted.
“Chelsea has a growing voice in the public discussion,” Stangio said, “and it would not surprise me were these charges connected to who she is.”
A petition calling on the military the drop charges against Manning for the reported prison infractions has gained 64,000 signatures, said Evan Greer, campaign director of the activist nonprofit Fight for the Future, one of four groups circulating the petition.
The groups plan to deliver the signatures to John McHugh, the secretary of the army, in Washington on Tuesday morning, in advance of Manning’s hearing.
“This is a hearing where she’s facing a disciplinary board that has the power to essentially remand her to indefinite solitary confinement,” Greer told the Guardian. “She has to face this board without her attorneys present. And now she’s being denied access to the resources to prepare a proper defense.
“Those things being denied paint a really grim picture of what it looks like the military’s trying to do to her, and should arouse suspicion from the public and from journalists.”
Manning has told supporters that property confiscated from her cell included the memoir I Am Malala by Nobel peace prize laureate Malala Yousafzai, the Caitlyn Jenner issue of Vanity Fair, a novel featuring trans women called A Safe Girl to Love and the LGBT publication Out Magazine.
Also confiscated was a copy of the US Senate report on torture.(Harrisburg) -- Planning is underway to move the state's extensive archives - just days after the state announced its building a new facility in Harrisburg.
The state says the $24 million facility will help meet the needs of a digital world.
Speaking on WITF's Smart Talk, State Archivist David Carmichael says the process to preserve paper archives is pretty straightforward: control the environment where it's stored.
"But when you give me a digital record to preserve, think about putting it on the shelf and coming back in a hundred years. The hardware has changed incredibly, the software to read it has changed. And so we have many different formats of records that we are going to have to preserve for hundreds of years, and that is a great, great challenge."
Carmichael says he's also watching long-term costs on the new facility.
"We've been hammering the fact that we need to think about long-term costs and make certain we are as cost effective as possible. I'm a taxpayer too, and so I'm always trying to save my own money," he says.
It will have state-of-the-art heating and ventiliation, but he says after working to put together a new archives building in his previous job in Georgia, he's learned to make sure maintenance costs will be manageable.
The building on Harrisburg's 6th Street won't open for years - the earliest date predicted at this point is sometime in late-2019.First Dark, Shadowy Teaser Poster for Marvel's Thor is Revealed
He is the immortal God of Thunder - The Mighty Thor! Marvel.com has revealed the first official teaser poster for Thor, their next epic adaptation of the mythical superhero from Asgard. The first trailer (not a bootleg) for Thor will be online tomorrow evening at around 4PM PST, so this is our first tease to hold us over until then. It looks like they might be downplaying the costume and hiding it a bit in the shadows, or just hinting that this is an epic comic book adaptation that will be dark and should be taken seriously. I'm leaning towards the latter. This is a pretty badass first poster, so check it out in all of its full glory below!
This epic adventure spans the Marvel Universe - from present day Earth to the mythical realm of Asgard. At the center of the story is The Mighty Thor (Chris Hemsworth), a powerful but arrogant warrior whose reckless actions reignite an ancient war. Thor is cast down to Earth and forced to live among humans as punishment. Once here, Thor learns what it takes to be a true hero when the most dangerous villain of his world sends the darkest forces of Asgard to invade Earth. Paramount has already set a May 6th summer release in 3D for Marvel's Thor. Stay tuned for the official trailer premiere tomorrow evening. Thoughts?
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Sorry, no commenting is allowed at this time.Every time the Sharks come up in the news for anything nowadays, the overwhelming response from the general public is "Fire DW." And you know what? I'm tired of it.
You're frustrated, I know. We're clearly frustrated here at FTF, too. Wilson tore apart a team that had 111 points and made them into a lottery team. That's just a fact. But you know who built that 111 point team? Doug Wilson. I don't believe the reaction to one playoff series turned him into into an idiot that just wants to see the team burn after being a damn good general manager for many years.
Maybe I already lost you. Doug Wilson was a damn good GM. Up until this season, he assembled quality rosters year after year that were built to get the team deep into the playoffs. Obviously the team never made it to a Stanley Cup Final. But how much of that is actually on him? A general manager for a contending team gets paid to put together the best possible roster on paper. The Sharks' problems have never been on paper until this season.
I'm not saying the team has been perfectly built over the years. Honestly, every team since Rob Blake retired has been missing a top-4 defenseman. Goaltending was average at best. But in the salary cap era, there's going to be a flaw or two in every team - even Stanley Cup winning teams. You just have to hope you can take better advantage of your opponent's fatal flaw than they can yours.
But let's get to the point: the 2014 Playoffs. You know what happened in the series.
The ultimate goal for the Sharks is the Stanley Cup. Despite having a team that was good enough on paper to win a Cup, they blew it in spectacular fashion. After blowing it in years past too. The Sharks couldn't have come back with the same exact team in 2014-15. They just couldn't.
In that time period during and right after the playoffs, look around the Western Conference and project the 14-15 season. The Ducks and Blues were on the rise. The Kings and Blackhawks showed no signs of slowing down (though they both did). The West had the potential to be an absolute gauntlet. Looking at probability alone, the same team would likely fall short, even a slightly improved team would need luck to fall in their favor to reach the Stanley Cup. And luck has never been on the Sharks side. And if they failed again? Fans would riot. They'd want heads to roll. That happened this year. But ownership would want heads to roll too.
Let's think about this practically. The team is only going to get so many more years out of Joe Thornton, Patrick Marleau, Joe Pavelski and Brent Burns. But, if 2014-15 doesn't look promising, where do you go? A full scorched-earth rebuild?
"Do we as a franchise want to take a 7-year hiatus from the playoffs? No we don't. So what we've done is we've got probably 4-5 key players in key positions that are young players, that we're probably 2/3 of the way through that phase." - Doug Wilson on Yahoo! SportsTalk Live 5/23/14
"I can understand when people say there are different types of rebuild. We're not going to finish last to try and draft people first or second. This is not something this franchise can do, because we already have some good players in key positions." - Doug Wilson on Hannan re-signing conference call 6/10/14
"We said last summer it was going to be a transition, this was the year we were going to go through it. We stayed right to our word." - Doug Wilson at McLellan "parting ways" press conference 4/20/15
Agree with a rebuild idea or not, we can at least confirm that there is a clear message being put out here.
The team still has at least a 4 year window on Pavelski, Burns, Vlasic, Couture, and Braun. Hertl and Nieto just had outstanding rookie years. There's too much talent at too many different positions to be as awful as the Oilers or Sabres.
Also, the team has prospects for the first time in a while. After years of trading top picks away as currency to get rentals like Brian Campbell or core players like Burns and Boyle, the organization kept 3 first rounders and 4 second rounders since 2012. Some of those players could make an impact soon. Some of them already did. And by not trading away the 2015 draft picks for rentals, those are even more assets the team is holding onto.
So, where does that leave the Sharks organization? Let's aim for 2015-16 and 2016-2017.
Tomorrow Team
"I’ve had a lot of calls, a lot of people at the GM meetings (last week in new York), they know where we’re going," Wilson said. "We now become a tomorrow team. When you spell that out, it does create a response." - Doug Wilson to Kevin Kurz 6/17/14
While in my scenario the "tomorrow team" label does translate to "not this year, but the next couple years", I think the overabundant use of "rebuild" instead of refresh, reset, restock or whatever other "re" you could say was to manipulate other general managers. If the Sharks say they're rebuilding, teams will start calling the Sharks asking to set up deals instead of the other way around. Maybe multiple teams ask about Brad Stuart, and the price gets driven up more than if he was getting shopped around by the Sharks as if he were damaged goods (which he was).
This, I admit, may just grasping at straws. But, undeniably, if the team writes off 14-15 as a development year and doesn't bring in anyone major, it allows opportunities for youngsters to test the water with the big club rather than getting thrown into the fire in 15-16 as a rookie on a hopefully established playoff team.
Hertl and Nieto were almost guaranteed to get a lot of reps in the top six, even if they struggled - and they did. A few rookies could also get a lot of playing time in the bottom six, which Tierney and Goodrow did. The same thing goes on defense. There were a lot of maybes on defense in San Jose's prospect pool. But Mirco Mueller and Matt Tennyson at least got extended looks. Mueller looked out of place, and probably would have been better served in juniors, but worst case scenario, he's with the Barracuda next season with a chip on his shoulder trying to get back on the big squad.
If that's the plan, how do the rest of those offseason moves look:
Boyle, Havlat, Burns
If this is the plan, what does the team do with the roster in the meantime? Well, Dan Boyle wants a multi-year deal, will be 39 when the 15-16 season starts and has a history with concussions. Unfortunately, he has to go, rebuild or not.
Martin Havlat needs to go while we still have a compliance buyout. The coaching staff only put him into one playoff game despite having a solid postseason track record and a hat-trick the week before the playoffs started. Injuries tore him apart. Literally. The Kings exploited injury risks to build their cup team: Justin Williams and Willie Mitchell were hits, Simon Gagne was a miss. Of course, luck wasn't on the Sharks side here either.
Brent Burns is possibly the best power forward in the league. However, with Boyle needing to go, the best offensive defenseman on the team is Jason Demers, who has a career high of 34 points. That's not going to cut it. Maybe the team can sign Matt Niskanen, but maybe he wants to stay east. Burns is already an All-Star defenseman on the roster.
"When you take a look at that type of dynamic on the back end, guys that move the puck up, shoot the puck on the power play, it creates a tough matchup. And, the size and physicality that he brings. … To me, our commitment and our need is him back as a defenseman." - Doug Wilson on conference call 5/15/14
And as dominant as Brent Burns was as a forward during the season, he looked worn down by the time the playoffs rolled around. He only had three points in the series, and two of them were in game one. As terrible a stat as plus/minus is, he was minus in every playoff game against L.A. despite playing on a line with Joe Thornton. If he's back on defense, the team can keep his 55-60 points in the lineup and hopefully keep his body from wearing down by not having 82 games of forecheking like a wild animal. Unfortunately for this year's Sharks, defensively, he was ranked somewhere between "an adventure" and "a tire fire."
"You don't mind, if you have the right people around him." - Doug Wilson on conference call 5/15/14
That was the problem with Burns in 14-15. If you had someone to cover his ass when he blew it, you could really use a defenseman who could dominate stretches of play like he did offensively. Especially if the other two pairs could hold their own. Going forward to 2015-16, I think Burns stays at defense. And if the rest of the blueline is shored up it may even be a decent move.
The other downside, of course, is that it starts a domino effect, leaving Pavelski on Thornton's wing instead of as third line center. On the other hand, it's arguable Pavelski doesn't enjoy being third line center anymore as he seems to get defensive whenever he's asked about playing there. And if you're Wilson, you need to keep Pavelski happy.
Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau
I'm not going to say that Doug Wilson never considered trading Thornton and/or Marleau. Post-playoffs, it crossed all of our minds once or twice. Although the rest of the core probably has at least 4 years left in them, Thornton and Marleau do not. They were just re-signed to 3 year deals, and despite still being in phenomenal shape, likely won't be worth much by 2017.
"When you enter into this type of phase, no options should be off the table," Wilson said. "You explore everything." - Doug Wilson on conference call 5/15/14
First of all, this is a great thing to say to take off some heat when you've got thousands of Sharks fans foaming at the mouth. That being said, they were just given new contracts with no-movement clauses, so you can't just scapegoat them and move on.
"The integrity of building that type of contract with those types of players, they would have to come to me. I’ve been very transparent on where this team is at, and where it’s going. They have a clause that’s in their contract, and I at no point have ever asked either one of them." - Doug Wilson on Yahoo! SportsTalk Live 3/2/15
If a team approached Wilson with an offer that blew him away, maybe he would have asked them. Or maybe they'd want to leave if they didn't think they could afford a year where they purposely weren't going 100% for the |
, so controllers can use the OpenFlow protocol to set flows in OVS.
Resources:
Open vSwitch Under The Hood – Ivan Pepelnjak
Introduction to Open vSwitch – David Mahler
Show 219 – Open vSwitch Obtains Ludicrous Speed – Packet Pushers
Datanauts 009 – The Silo Series: Designing A vSwitch – Packet Pushers
PQ 138: Inside Open vSwitch – Packet Pushers
Description:
P4 is an open-source language, released under an Apache 2.0 license, for programming packet-forwarding devices, such as a Broadcom ASIC, a network server adapter, or a software switch.
A blog by Nick McKeown & Jen Rexford, two of the people instrumental in creating the language, describes P4 this way: “P4 gives us a way to tell the switch what it should do, and how it should process packets. P4 lets us define what headers a switch will recognize (or “parse”), how to match on each header, and what actions we would like the switch to perform on each header.”
Originally developed in conjunction with academics and several large tech companies, P4 is now overseen by the P4 Language Consortium, a non-profit.
Why It’s Relevant:
By creating a low-level language to tell network devices how to process packets, P4 puts more control in the hands of network operators; they can add features and capabilities when they need to, such as support for a new protocol, instead of waiting for a chip manufacturer to burn a set of functions into an ASIC.
And because it creates a common abstraction layer, P4 should, in theory, enable more interoperability among network devices, including ASIC-driven hardware and virtual switches.
Resources:
PQ Show 80: P4 – A Language For Programming Switches – Packet Pushers
Clarifying the differences between P4 and OpenFlow – P4 Consortium blog
Programming Protocol-Independent Packet Processors – Slide presentation by Jennifer Rexford
Why Does the Internet Need a Programmable Forwarding Plane with Nick McKeown – Tech Field Day (Vimeo)
Description:
SAI, or the Switch Abstraction Interface, was originally developed by Microsoft in 2014 as an API for programming ASICs. It was later accepted into the Open Compute Project.
Why It’s Relevant:
The disaggregation that has separated the network OS from the underlying CPU is also happening at the ASIC layer. Similar to P4, the goal of SAI is to provide a common interface to program network ASICs.
This programmability gives network operators more control over switch functions, enabling greater customization as well as a standard software layer that can be used across a variety of devices.
As you might imagine, the SAI project aims largely at Web giants, service providers, and telcos that have the use cases and internal resources to customize switch functions all the way down to the ASIC layer.
Resources:
SAI – GitHub
Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI) officially accepted by the Open Compute Project (OCP) – Microsoft Azure Blog
SAI: Releasing the Potential of Switch ASIC – Open Compute Project (YouTube)Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan tightened his grip Wednesday on the judiciary and the Internet in an effort to tamp down a corruption scandal that’s rattled his government and now appears to implicate his immediate family and him.
Evidence mounted that a series of audio recordings in which Erdogan can be heard instructing his son, Bilal, to get rid of enormous sums of money are authentic, with the government firing two senior officials at the state scientific agency responsible for the security of encrypted telephones and a U.S.-based expert on encrypted communications, after examining the recordings, telling McClatchy that the recordings appear to be genuine.
Erdogan on Tuesday called the five purported conversations an “immoral montage” that had been “dubbed.” But he acknowledged that even his secure telephone had been tapped.
The only apparent “montage” was combining the five different conversations into one audio file, said Joshua Marpet, a U.S.-based cyber analyst who has testified in court on the validity of computer evidence in other Turkish criminal cases. He said there was no sign that the individual conversations had been edited.
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“If it’s fake, it’s of a sophistication that I haven’t seen,” he said.
The purported telephone conversations took place over a 26-hour period, beginning on the morning of Dec. 17, when Turkish police launched raids on the houses and offices of members of the Erdogan government, businessmen and their families.
“Whatever you have in the house, get rid of it, OK?” the prime minister can be heard telling Bilal in the opening conversation. Erdogan tells Bilal that his sister Sumeyye is on her way to help him and admonishes Bilal to tell others in the family also to get rid of cash, including Sumeyye’s husband, Bilal’s brother Burak, his uncle Mustafa Erdogan, and Erdogan’s brother-in-law, Berat Albayrak.
“It will be good if you completely ‘zero’ it,” the prime minster is heard saying in the second conversation, which took place later that morning. In the fourth conversation at 11:15 that night, Bilal says he had almost “zeroed” out the money, but that there were some 30 million euros (about $39 million) left. When his father asks why he didn’t transfer all the money to Mehmet Gur, a contractor who was building the Erdogan family villa, Bilal responds: because “it takes a lot of space.”
At different points, Erdogan can be heard warning Bilal not to use a regular telephone. In the final conversation on the morning of Dec. 18, after Bilal admits that the money had not been “zeroed out,” the prime minister again says Bilal should get rid of all the funds.
“OK, Dad, but we are probably being monitored at the moment,” Bilal said. His father replied: “Son, you’re being wiretapped,” to Bilal responds: “But they are monitoring us with cameras as well.”
Two more conversations were published on the Internet Wednesday night, one purporting to capture Erdogan and Bilal discussing how much money they should expect from a Turkish businessman, and the other recording two other businessmen discussing a payoff. More are expected, at least until the country votes in municipal elections March 31.
If the recordings don’t unsettle politics in this vital U.S. ally of 78 million people, Erdogan’s new laws very well could. The legislation now being rushed through Parliament is widely viewed as Erdogan’s effort to control the corruption probe.
Late Tuesday night, Parliament, where Erdogan’s Justice and Development party holds an absolute majority, gave final approval to a much-criticized bill that gives the government the right to block Internet content, subject to a court’s approval within three days, and gives it access to personal traffic data.
Then on Wednesday President Abdullah Gul approved a controversial bill that gives Erdogan’s justice minister control over an agency that appoints judges and prosecutors and conducts investigations.
Together with a bill now already approved by a parliamentary committee giving the state MIT intelligence service access to data held by the government, private institutions and courts upon the approval of one judge, the three bills appeared to be different ways to quash future corruption investigations.
“These three laws together look like the government trying to arm itself against its critics and its opponents, in a way that restricts human rights,” said Emma Sinclair-Webb, the senior Turkey researcher at Human Rights Watch. “This is reactive legislation, being rushed through…It is occurring at the time of a massive political fight, and a corruption scandal the government is trying to bury.”
Even Gul, who’s a party ally of Erdogan, had deep misgivings on the law giving the government virtual control over the High Council of Judges and Prosecutors. He said in a statement he had found 15 provisions of the original bill that were unconstitutional, but that several of them were fixed before it came to his desk. Those remaining should be addressed by Turkey’s constitutional court, he said.
Among the most surprising revelations this week was that Erdogan’s conversations with his son – about where to stash the tens of millions of dollars in the homes of family members – were conducted on secure, government-issued telephones and were tapped by another agency of the government.
The eavesdropping now appears to have been facilitated by staff at the government’s Scientific and Technological Research Council, known as Tubitek. Fikri Isik, the minister of science, industry and technology, announced Wednesday that two department heads had been dismissed and that five employees responsible for the encrypted telephones had been suspended.
He noted that Erdogan had not requested an analysis of the alleged conversations with his son but said the institute was ready to do so if asked.
At McClatchy’s request, Marpet, the managing principal of Guarded Risk, a Wilmington, Del., cyber analytics firm, examined the conversations purported to be between Erdogan and his son.
Marpet, who has a background in law enforcement and has done work for the Federal Reserve Bank in Philadelphia as well as testifying in Turkish criminal cases, said there were small sound “spikes” in the recording when one of the speakers mentioned a place name or an individual, but they could be annotations by whoever was monitoring the recording.
Marpet said the audio levels were consistent in each call. The speaker said to be Erdogan had a more “pixilated” or mechanical sounding voice, while the speaker said to be Bilal sounded clearer throughout. This could be because of differences in the phones – pro-government newspapers identified them as CryptoPhones – or in the way they were monitored. Marpet said it was possible that Erdogan’s phone was being intercepted electronically, while Bilal’s phone might have had a listening device planted in the receiver.
Based on the judgment of a Turkish-speaking McClatchy special correspondent that the two men’s voices sounded natural and that the question and answers flowed naturally, and the tone was appropriate for the conversation, “then I’m actually thinking it’s probably real,” Marpet said.TripleDES
Posts: 1086
Terracotta ArmyPosts: 1086 on: May 21, 2011, 07:57:30 AM I'm reposting my shit from SA!
A friend has married abroad. Soon after, after-wedding party invitations flew in. A bunch of friends and I grouped up to collect for a present. At some point, we decided, fuck presents, because you rarely find something one might actually like or want. Quickly it was decided, we'll be gifting money.
But sure as hell, there's gonna be a catch...
The idea came quickly, as unoriginal as it was, since it probably has been done to death. In some form, anyway. We'll get a load of coins and encase them in a cube of something. Everyone agreed and was happy about it.
But in what? Concrete? Fuck no, while the easiest way out for making the encasement, the guy might actually call it quits trying to get the coins out. Especially if he'll postpone it and lets the concrete dry even more. And it was been done often enough. The next idea was salt. You could make it look like one of those silly salt lamps. But fuck that, too, because salt has a melting point of like 800°C. Kinda impractical. Next up was ballistic gel. Too expensive. The runner up was something called Agar Agar. I don't know what the fuck it is, but if you'll ask a vegetarian, he'll probably be able to tell you. But we've been told they also use that stuff in petri dishes. So it was disqualified for impracticality, too, because we didn't want mold growing on it over night. Then we figured, sugar would be nice. Since you can turn it into caramel, which is pretty hard when cold.
So it was decided. One night, we did a little prototype. Some square tubing did the trick. That was what came of it:
Thanks to some beer, we started brainstorming a bit. The proto-cube kinda looked nice on that stainless steel plate. Thus we decided, it needs to have a pedestal, which would also make it easier to transport. We were also pretty surprised how translucent it ended up, even if the picture doesn't show. We wanted to check the internal structure due to cracks that formed, thanks to a nearby flashlight and some more beer, it was decided that it's going to be a fucking lamp. To illuminate all coins in the cube. By putting a bunch of LEDs in the bottom.
After deciding on some proportions, trying to be dorky, a CGI version was attempted. It was next to impossible to figure out the translucency of caramel. Apparently no one cares about that sort of information. After a lot of Googling, we stumbled upon some values and put them in. Then we let it render using some "physically based renderer". If it's "physically accurate" as it claims, our lamp idea looked less feasible. Anyway, here's the stupid concept render:
As you'll notice, the coins are barely visible or even illuminated.
It was going to become a 30x30x30cm cube of sugar on a 40x40x5cm stainless steel pedestal. The measurements of the cube result in 27 liters. Thanks to Wikipedia we found out that the density of sugar is 1.6kg per liter. That means we'd need a little more than 43kg of sugar. One kilo of sugar has 4000kcal, at least that's what it says on the packaging.
Well, here it is:
One of us works in metal construction, so he made the pedestal, including LEDs. And the walls to pour the shit in. The tape means nothing, the walls were tack-welded. There's a bunch of plexiglass tubes on the LEDs. It was improvised during construction as a temperature protection (see later) and to transport the light away from the pedestal. And there's a bunch of screws to hold the cube in place, altho the prototype proved that caramel sticks like shit.
During the research, if you could call that, we found out that the color of the resulting caramel, when melting sugar, depends on the temperature. Staying below 140-145°C is supposed to keep it relatively clear altho golden. This is a good thing to know, since it was still supposed to be a lamp. We proceeded to scientifically determine the setting we should run the induction hob at:
With that done, lets start melting sugar:
Jesus Christ, it's barely melting. Fuck it! Up the power!
Okay, that's better. Sadly, it began to darken more than we'd like. And there's lot of entrapped air in the soup. Ah well, it's half improvised, so things will not go as wished. Anyway, it's melted, let's start building the cube.
The liquid should have a guesstimated 160°C, if not hotter. We were worried that our LEDs would break under that stress. Turns out not so.
Wheeeee, they still work.
Anyway, we put another pot on the hob and started melting more sugar.
At a certain level, we let it stay a little to cool and lose some energy. Then we dropped some coins into it. They reached the bottom pretty quickly. The idea was to layer them in. The caramel didn't however lose heat quickly enough to lose some viscosity. So it required an industrial cooling solution.
Turned out later on that this didn't really help. We decided to continue to fill the cube, and drop the coins in at a later point, when it looked like the viscosity was lowering.
Packages were being emptied...
The form was filling up...
At this point, I had to go on my nightshift, and there's no pictures of this. It's not like anything exciting was going to happen anymore. It took almost three hours to fill it up to the point in the picture above. During this we overboiled one pot however, which required cleaning up the hob, so time was lost there. Another hour, and it was full. It was left cooling off for an hour, until my friends lost temper and dropped the coins into it.
Then it was left to cool off two days. It actually took that long, because after 24 hours, it was still pretty warm.
This is what it looked today:
A dremel was applied to remove the tack-welds. Then we removed the wall plating. It came off pretty quickly, which was surprising, because we expected to have to heat it with a torch first. It broke some of the edges, tho.
The glass like aggregate we expected never came to be. The part of it being a lamp turned out to be a massive failure. A 250lumen LED flashlight barely managed to shine through even the edges. Ah well.
This is the end result:
We don't know where the money ended up. Seeing the different layers, we hope it isn't on the bottom.
I hope our friend will have a nice time picking this apart. He could break off pieces and put it in his coffee, hoping to net an Euro out of it every time. Or put it in the shower or bathroom, under running water, making a whole damn mess of the room and drain. Or he could hose it off in his garden, ensuring multiple ant colonies. Anything involving water will sure as hell result in a big fucking mess, as we noticed when cleaning up the hob after the fuck up, as well as cleaning the pots.
Well, at this point, it won't be our problem anymore.
We still didn't figure out what the fuck we were doing, either.
A friend has married abroad. Soon after, after-wedding party invitations flew in. A bunch of friends and I grouped up to collect for a present. At some point, we decided, fuck presents, because you rarely find something one might actually like or want. Quickly it was decided, we'll be gifting money.But sure as hell, there's gonna be a catch...The idea came quickly, as unoriginal as it was, since it probably has been done to death. In some form, anyway. We'll get a load of coins and encase them in a cube of something. Everyone agreed and was happy about it.But in what? Concrete? Fuck no, while the easiest way out for making the encasement, the guy might actually call it quits trying to get the coins out. Especially if he'll postpone it and lets the concrete dry even more. And it was been done often enough. The next idea was salt. You could make it look like one of those silly salt lamps. But fuck that, too, because salt has a melting point of like 800°C. Kinda impractical. Next up was ballistic gel. Too expensive. The runner up was something called Agar Agar. I don't know what the fuck it is, but if you'll ask a vegetarian, he'll probably be able to tell you. But we've been told they also use that stuff in petri dishes. So it was disqualified for impracticality, too, because we didn't want mold growing on it over night. Then we figured, sugar would be nice. Since you can turn it into caramel, which is pretty hard when cold.So it was decided. One night, we did a little prototype. Some square tubing did the trick. That was what came of it:Thanks to some beer, we started brainstorming a bit. The proto-cube kinda looked nice on that stainless steel plate. Thus we decided, it needs to have a pedestal, which would also make it easier to transport. We were also pretty surprised how translucent it ended up, even if the picture doesn't show. We wanted to check the internal structure due to cracks that formed, thanks to a nearby flashlight and some more beer, it was decided that it's going to be a fucking lamp. To illuminate all coins in the cube. By putting a bunch of LEDs in the bottom.After deciding on some proportions, trying to be dorky, a CGI version was attempted. It was next to impossible to figure out the translucency of caramel. Apparently no one cares about that sort of information. After a lot of Googling, we stumbled upon some values and put them in. Then we let it render using some "physically based renderer". If it's "physically accurate" as it claims, our lamp idea looked less feasible. Anyway, here's the stupid concept render:As you'll notice, the coins are barely visible or even illuminated.It was going to become a 30x30x30cm cube of sugar on a 40x40x5cm stainless steel pedestal. The measurements of the cube result in 27 liters. Thanks to Wikipedia we found out that the density of sugar is 1.6kg per liter. That means we'd need a little more than 43kg of sugar. One kilo of sugar has 4000kcal, at least that's what it says on the packaging.Well, here it is:One of us works in metal construction, so he made the pedestal, including LEDs. And the walls to pour the shit in. The tape means nothing, the walls were tack-welded. There's a bunch of plexiglass tubes on the LEDs. It was improvised during construction as a temperature protection (see later) and to transport the light away from the pedestal. And there's a bunch of screws to hold the cube in place, altho the prototype proved that caramel sticks like shit.During the research, if you could call that, we found out that the color of the resulting caramel, when melting sugar, depends on the temperature. Staying below 140-145°C is supposed to keep it relatively clear altho golden. This is a good thing to know, since it was still supposed to be a lamp. We proceeded to scientifically determine the setting we should run the induction hob at:With that done, lets start melting sugar:Jesus Christ, it's barely melting. Fuck it! Up the power!Okay, that's better. Sadly, it began to darken more than we'd like. And there's lot of entrapped air in the soup. Ah well, it's half improvised, so things will not go as wished. Anyway, it's melted, let's start building the cube.The liquid should have a guesstimated 160°C, if not hotter. We were worried that our LEDs would break under that stress. Turns out not so.Wheeeee, they still work.Anyway, we put another pot on the hob and started melting more sugar.At a certain level, we let it stay a little to cool and lose some energy. Then we dropped some coins into it. They reached the bottom pretty quickly. The idea was to layer them in. The caramel didn't however lose heat quickly enough to lose some viscosity. So it required an industrial cooling solution.Turned out later on that this didn't really help. We decided to continue to fill the cube, and drop the coins in at a later point, when it looked like the viscosity was lowering.Packages were being emptied...The form was filling up...At this point, I had to go on my nightshift, and there's no pictures of this. It's not like anything exciting was going to happen anymore. It took almost three hours to fill it up to the point in the picture above. During this we overboiled one pot however, which required cleaning up the hob, so time was lost there. Another hour, and it was full. It was left cooling off for an hour, until my friends lost temper and dropped the coins into it.Then it was left to cool off two days. It actually took that long, because after 24 hours, it was still pretty warm.This is what it looked today:A dremel was applied to remove the tack-welds. Then we removed the wall plating. It came off pretty quickly, which was surprising, because we expected to have to heat it with a torch first. It broke some of the edges, tho.The glass like aggregate we expected never came to be. The part of it being a lamp turned out to be a massive failure. A 250lumen LED flashlight barely managed to shine through even the edges. Ah well.This is the end result:We don't know where the money ended up. Seeing the different layers, we hope it isn't on the bottom.I hope our friend will have a nice time picking this apart. He could break off pieces and put it in his coffee, hoping to net an Euro out of it every time. Or put it in the shower or bathroom, under running water, making a whole damn mess of the room and drain. Or he could hose it off in his garden, ensuring multiple ant colonies. Anything involving water will sure as hell result in a big fucking mess, as we noticed when cleaning up the hob after the fuck up, as well as cleaning the pots.Well, at this point, it won't be our problem anymore.We still didn't figure out what the fuck we were doing, either. EVE (inactive): Deakin Frost -- APB (fukken dead): Kayleigh (on Patriot).Related:
Hantz Farms denies Monsanto connection
Hantz Farms test run pleases neighbors
Possible Hantz Farms deal nears
Hantz Farms prepares to break ground
DETROIT
— Hantz Farms has received criticism and it has earned praise.
People are both skeptical and optimistic about the private company's plan to purchase up to 190 acres of city-owned lots at $300 each for a total of near $600,000, where they intednd to plant hardwood trees.
The company's work on a 3-acre plot behind the Hantz Farms office at 17403 Mount Elliott in Detroit, a test cleanup and planting of 900 oaks,
Hantz Farms President Mike Score says company representatives walked door to door in the lower-east side neighborhood near Indian Village where it plans to implement its large-scale planting and 90 percent of the people they talked to supported the effort.
Score said the trees could be sold for nursery stock or, in 50 or more years, harvested for lumber; but he said any economic gains will only offset maintenance and the $5 million the company plans to invest within the first three years.
But in an era of scorn for "1-percenters," not all are pleased to see a businessman gobbling up large chunks of Detroit's public lands.
One skeptic, a Royal Oak MoveOn.org member
stating that Hantz Farms is in cahoots with Monsanto, a multinational agricultural gene engineering company and pesticide producer, which Hantz Farms said is entirely untrue.
There is no question that the future value of property in Detroit is uncertain, and could improve, but how long can a city that is in economic turmoil wait?
Heirs to John Hantz, a 20-year resident of Detroit's Indian Village, the chief executive officer of the Southfield-based Hantz Group which manages about $3 billion in assets, stand to gain a considerable equity should Detroit again flourish.
But that is speculative. What can be gauged today is the current market value of property; and it's low.
With many residential homes in Detroit, even nice ones
on Glenfield, selling for $10,000 or less, it hardly makes sense for anyone to build on the lots.
So what then?
So far, it's been a waiting game. The school district, Detroit City Hall and Wayne County all have inventories acquired lands and not enough money to maintain them.
Score said many of the city-owned lots have been in Detroit's possession since the 1970s.
And comes along Hantz Farms with a proposal that, on the surface, sounds ideal: They'll scoop up a large chuck of property that no one else is clamoring for, put them back on the property tax rolls, clean them up and plant aesthetically pleasing trees.
Score said it is his hope that Detroit City Council will vote on the proposed purchased and development plan by early fall.
What do you think? Is this a good deal for the residents of Detroit? What are the pros and cons if this deal goes through? What are your worries, if any, should the plan proceed? Join the conversation.Appalachian Mountain Wrestling (AMW) is featuring a new villain: Progressive Liberal.
Played by Daniel Richards, Progressive Liberal is cast as a Hillary Clinton supporter who opposes President Donald Trump.
Progressive Liberal delivers conventional left-wing condescension to AMW fans while wearing “NOT MY PRESIDENT” t-shirts and tank tops:
The one thing I can’t stand about all these East Kentucky hilljack country boys, is they all think they’re so tough, ‘cuz they’re corn-bred, and corn-fed....
You people need to be reprogrammed. You continually vote against your own interests. You put people in Congress, in the White House that aren’t gonna help you. They’re not gonna bring your jobs back. So let me tell you what the Progressive Liberal — Daniel Richards — is gonna do. We’re gonna reprogram you. We’re gonna reeducate you. We’re gonna teach you read n’ write. We’re gonna help you get jobs with clean energy.Aug 4, 2015 Ξ Comments are off
The academic success of many Asian Americans has been the focus of much speculation.
Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother has dominated the discussion, but a new book The Asian American Achievement Paradox takes that debate into a whole different direction.
Inside Higher Education talked to Jennifer Lee, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Irvine, and Min Zhou, a professor of sociology at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the University of California at Los Angeles about their book. Both disagree that Asian American culture plays a role in academic success.
“The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 gave preferences to highly-educated, highly-skilled applicants from Asia, which, in turn, ushered in a new stream of Asian immigrants of diverse skills and socioeconomic backgrounds,” the two answered via email. “Some Asian immigrant groups are hyper-selected, meaning they are doubly positively selected; they are not only more highly educated than their compatriots from their countries of origin who did not immigrate, but also more highly educated than the U.S. average.”
This hyper-selectivity not only gives new arrivals an advantage, but also gives an advantage to their children “advantaged starting points” over other minorities. The two are quick to point out, however, that this hyper-selectivity doesn’t apply to all Asian Americans. Cambodians, Laotians, and Hmong trail behind in academic achievement. Many of their families arrived to America as refugees to escape communism.
Using the starting point analogy, they say the academic success of Mexicans actually outpaces that of Asian Americans. They also say Mexicans feel better about their academic achievements than to Asian Americans.
You can read about that, and also how all this plays into the arguments for and against affirmative action in Inside Higher Education.This article is about the David Bowie persona. For the electronic music producer who uses this title for remixes, see Stuart Price
The Thin White Duke First appearance 1974 Last appearance 1976 Created by David Bowie Portrayed by David Bowie Information Occupation aristocrat, cabaret performer
The Thin White Duke was David Bowie's 1975 and 1976 persona and character. He is primarily identified with Bowie's 1976 album Station to Station and is mentioned by name in the title track. However, Bowie had begun to adopt the "Duke" persona during the preceding Young Americans tour and promotion in 1975. The persona's look and character are somewhat based on Thomas Jerome Newton, the titular humanoid alien played by Bowie in the 1976 film The Man Who Fell to Earth.
The Thin White Duke was a controversial figure due to ostensibly pro-fascist statements made by Bowie in press interviews during this period. Soon after making the comments, Bowie claimed that they were "theatrical" remarks made in character and did not reflect his actual views. In later years, he blamed his erratic behaviour during his mid-1970s Duke era on an "astronomical" use of hard drugs (particularly cocaine) while living in Los Angeles.
Bowie left California for Europe in 1976 to improve his mental and physical well-being. He settled in West Berlin in early 1977, at which point he quietly retired the Thin White Duke persona.
Development [ edit ]
At the O'Keefe Centre
David Bowie, who had experience performing in experimental theatre before becoming famous as a musician, began adopting different performing personas in the early 1970s, most notably the glam alien Ziggy Stardust. He famously retired Ziggy in 1973 and adopted the dystopian Halloween Jack persona for his Diamond Dogs album and most of the following tour.
An early version of the Thin White Duke character began to appear in late 1974 during the "Philly Soul" leg of the Diamond Dogs tour. During this "plastic soul" lead-up to his Young Americans album, Bowie's hair was still orange, but it was cut shorter, and his stage costumes moderated from colorful glam outfits to more conventional dress clothes. The Thin White Duke was mentioned by name in the title track of Bowie's next album, Station to Station, and he appeared in that persona during the following Isolar – 1976 Tour.
Characteristics [ edit ]
At first glance, the Thin White Duke appeared more conventional than Bowie's previously flamboyant glam incarnations. Sporting well-groomed blonde hair and wearing a simple, cabaret-style wardrobe consisting of a white shirt, black trousers, and a waistcoat, the Duke was a hollow man who sang songs of romance with an agonised intensity while feeling nothing, "ice masquerading as fire".[1] The persona has been described as "a mad aristocrat",[1] "an amoral zombie",[2] and "an emotionless Aryan superman".[3] Bowie himself described the character as "A very Aryan, fascist type; a would-be romantic with absolutely no emotion at all but who spouted a lot of neo-romance."[4]
Controversy [ edit ]
The Thin White Duke was a controversial figure. While being interviewed in the persona in 1975 and 1976, Bowie made statements about Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany that some interpreted as expressing sympathy for fascism or even promoting fascism.[5] The controversy deepened in May 1976 when, while acknowledging a group of fans outside of London Victoria station, he was photographed making what some alleged to be a Nazi salute. Bowie denied this, saying that he was simply waving and the photographer captured his image mid-wave.[6]
As early as 1976, Bowie began disavowing his allegedly pro-Fascist comments and said that he was misunderstood. In an interview that year in the Daily Express, he explained that while performing in his various characters, "I'm Pierrot. I'm Everyman. What I'm doing is theatre, and only theatre... What you see on stage isn't sinister. It's pure clown. I'm using myself as a canvas and trying to paint the truth of our time on it. The white face, the baggy pants - they're Pierrot, the eternal clown putting over the great sadness."[7] In 1977 (after retiring the Duke), Bowie stated that "I have made my two or three glib, theatrical observations on English society and the only thing I can now counter with is to state that I am NOT a Fascist".[8]
In later years, Bowie called the period from about late 1974 until early 1977 "the darkest days of my life" due to "astronomical" usage of cocaine and other drugs.[9] He blamed his offensive statements, erratic behavior, and fascination with Nazi and occult symbols during that time on his precarious mental state, and claimed that he could not even remember the late-1975 recording sessions for Station to Station.[10] "It was a dangerous period for me," he explained. "I was at the end of my tether physically and emotionally and had serious doubts about my sanity." [11] He also began to see the Thin White Duke as "a nasty character indeed",[12] and later, "an ogre".[13]
Aftermath [ edit ]
In an attempt to salvage his mental and physical health, Bowie left the drug-fueled social scene of Los Angeles in 1976, moving first to Geneva, Switzerland before joining his friend Iggy Pop in West Berlin in early 1977. Though he did not publicly retire the Thin White Duke as he had Ziggy Stardust, Bowie did not appear in the persona after settling in Europe.
Bowie lived in West Berlin for almost two years, during which time he moved on both musically and personally with his "Berlin Trilogy" albums (Low, "Heroes", and Lodger) in collaboration with Brian Eno and Tony Visconti. He also produced Pop's albums The Idiot and Lust for Life.[14]Olive Garden Olive Garden can't seem to catch a break.
The struggling Italian chain has been trying to revive declining sales by lowering prices and expanding its menu.
Despite its efforts, customer traffic plunged 13% in December and sales dropped 5.4% at restaurants open at least a year in the most recent quarter, according to preliminary estimates reported by the Associated Press.
Now, the company is unveiling a new logo and menu presentation, and the logo is getting battered on social media.
Here's the old logo, by comparison:
WikiMedia Commons
Executives from Darden Restaurants, which owns Olive Garden, told analysts on a call Monday that they are confident the logo change will bring about a "brand Renaissance," according to the AP.
Here's a roundup of how people are reacting to the new look:In part one of this two-part feature, I had covered the all-time best XIs to visit Australia, England and South Africa. There was very lively reader response and nearly 150 comments were received. In this article I will cover the other five countries - India, New Zealand, West Indies, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. I will also summarise the selections at the end.
It is strongly recommended that those who missed reading the first part, read that article before perusing this one. The lengthy introduction and explanation of the processes will go a long way towards clarifying the complex selection process. I will not publish comments that indicate a lack of awareness of the selection methodology. Just as a recap, I have summarised the process below.
- Only batsmen who have scored 500 runs and bowlers who have captured 25 wickets (20 for Pakistan) are considered for selection.
- The players are judged on three criteria: Longevity (Runs/Wickets), Performance (RpAI/Bowling average) and Quality of opposition (Bowling/Batting quality).
- RpAI (Runs per Adjusted Innings) is used instead of the Batting Average and is explained in depth in Part 1.
- The top ten batsmen and bowlers are shortlisted for selection.
- To the extent possible (almost 95%), the final selection is made from these players.
- The normal team will be comprised of six batsmen, four bowlers and a wicketkeeper. In each team there has to be an allrounder who will provide additional bowling support.
- The keeper is judged more on keeping skills and less on batting skills.
- For |
, my fellow activists in Los Angeles County for Trump have Jewish, Black, Hispanic, and Asian members. But we still get hammered with “You are all a bunch of white supremacists!” One hateful agitator even claimed that white supremacy is not just about skin color, but ideology! Yes, in their view, men and women of non-European backgrounds can still be white supremacists. Frankly, if I had a black wife, Hispanic children, and Asian parents, they would still call me racist. There’s no opportunity for civil dialogue here. There is no interest in facts or evidence, either.
So, why does this perverse distortion of race in America still dominate the media? Why does the Left and the self-defeating Democratic Party continue to play the race card, despite all the evidence among Republicans that we are the most diverse group of politicos out there? Left-wing activism is all about silencing people. That has been the goal of the Left since Saul Alinsky. They cannot debate, reason, or convince. They have to denounce, race-bait, and con people. That’s all they have.
Great. I’ve outlined the argument, but what’s the solution? How do we “trump” the race card, especially since it’s non-stop on the media?!
So, Step One: don’t stop speaking.
If their goal has been to silence the right, they have failed massively. Donald Trump’s election win is the cherry on top of the conservative counter-revolution and restoration. Just keep making your point when they play the race card.
Step Two: Ask them pointedly: “Why am I racist?” Or, “Why do you say that I am racist?”
Put the burden of proof on the haters. When they stammer to answer you - as they will, since they are brazenly lying anyway - you catch them in their own devices and utterly humiliate them. Don’t be afraid to ask the question; they don’t have an answer. But you can provide your own rebuttal: “Doesn’t that make you racist, then, to play the race card in the first place?”
Step Three: Call them out for ignoring the actual racism in their own ranks.
In one sanctuary city, they declared themselves a “safe space” for Muslims. But two of my fellow Trump supporter activists are Jewish, and they were both thrown out of their meetings. I demanded that the city council declare their city a safe space for Jews—calling out their racism.
This goes for the media, too. One activist taught me to stop answering reporters’ race-baiting questions as though I had to defend myself. Instead, hammer them for ignoring the overt, racist agenda of elected officials and their ethnic identity activists. It’s pretty effective, actually. Go beyond rejecting the premise of the question. Call out the media for their willful color-blindness to the history of racism among Democratic lawmakers. I especially love confronting Spanish-language media for calling conservatives “anti-immigrant”. I have chased off at least three reporters with those confrontations, and they don’t come back!
Step Four: Reject guilt, especially for white people, the white guilt variety. I wear my MAGA hat with pride. Leftists love to bait me with “When was this country great before?” as though it never was, and often it has a racial tinge to it. A few answers: “When 600,000 white people died on fields of battle to end slavery.” Are they Hispanic? I mention Admiral David Farragut, the Admiral who defeated the South—the first Hispanic-American to head the navy, appointed by Republican Abraham Lincoln. I talk about Cesar Chavez—yes, that guy—who organized labor and fought illegal immigration, too! Are they Asian? I mention Republican presidents Reagan then Bush 41, who signed off on reparations for Japanese-Americans, many of whom were interned by a Democratic President, sanctioned by a Democratic-dominated Supreme Court. I further point out that blacks went from 0 to 50% literacy in a generation because of Republican activism in the post-bellum South, and that the number of black Republicans registered and in office is exploding today. How about that?!
Step Five: Call them on their explicit use of the card to cover up their lack of principles. This failure occurred among US Senate Republicans in 2009 during the confirmation appointment of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. They should have pointed out that Obama nominated her only because she was a “Wise Latina” with no discernible judicial philosophy. You know what that’s called? Racism. Then Republicans can easily remark: “We agree with Martin Luther King Jr.—and we want to judge all nominees by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.” Stop denouncing racism in general, then say nothing afterwards. Talk about race, and show that you are more educated about it.
Step Six: Start scolding leftists on other issues and connect it to race!
Tell Democrats: “So many black/Hispanic/Asian/White families in your district are poor! Why don’t you want to improve the quality of their lives?” Ben Shapiro masterfully crushed Piers Morgan with this tactic, asking him first why he did not support an all-out handgun ban: “Don’t you care about the black and brown kids in Chicago?” Do they really think that black and Hispanic voters are that stupid or incompetent that they cannot provide ID? Lots of black folks responded to his query that they possess different forms of ID. Leftists also demonize the hard work and integrity of Asian families, convinced that racial quotas should drag down their margin of success in college admissions.
Step Seven: Recite “The Democracy’s” history of racism—from slavery to Jim Crow to socialism, including LBJ’s invidious discrimination against blacks. Remind them that Hillary Clinton called one of his Jewish campaign staffers “kike” and black people “super-predators.”
Just for fun, throw in the fact that you agreed that Bernie Sanders got robbed, and the race card will not get played anymore.How does a comet smell? Since early August the Rosetta Orbiter Sensor for Ion and Neutral Analysis (ROSINA) is sniffing the fumes of the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko with its two mass spectrometers. The detected chemistry in the coma of the comet is surprisingly rich already at more than 400 million kilometres from the Sun.
The perfume of this comet is quite strong, with the odour of rotten eggs (hydrogen sulphide), of horse stable (ammonia) and the pungent, suffocating odour of formaldehyde. This is mixed with the faint, bitter, almond-like aroma of hydrogen cyanide. Add some whiff of alcohol (methanol) to this mixture paired with the vinegar like aroma of sulphur dioxide and a hint of the sweet aromatic scent of carbon disulphide and you arrive at the perfume of our comet.
While this doesn't probably make a very attractive perfume, remember that the density of these molecules is still very low and that the main part of the coma is made up of sparkling water (water and carbon dioxide molecules) mixed with carbon monoxide. "This all makes a scientifically enormously interesting mixture in order to study the origin of our solar system material, the formation of our Earth and the origin of life," says Kathrin Altwegg from the Center of Space and Habitability (CSH) of the University of Bern. "And after all: it seems like comet Churyumov was indeed attracted by comet Gerasimenko to form Churyumov-Gerasimenko, even though its perfume may not be Chanel No 5, but comets clearly have their own preferences"…
The idea was that at distances outside of 3 astronomical units (450 Mio km) the comet would mostly sublimate the very volatile molecules: carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. However, apart from all these smelling ingredients ROSINA is detecting many more molecules already at large distances from the Sun which comes quite as a surprise. A quantitative analysis will show how the comet compares with other comets where data are available mostly from remote sensing. This comparison will reveal if Churyumov-Gerasimenko being a Kuiper belt comet differs from the better known Oort cloud comets and this will then shed light on the solar nebula from which our solar system emerged.CHARLES Bronfman and his wife, Bonnie, are inviting 100 of their friends to an elegant evening of cocktails for what they hope will be a once-in-a-lifetime event.
The occasion? Their pending divorce.
The event isn’t likely to approach the extravagance of their wedding party less than three years ago, when they invited 200 guests to a seated dinner at the Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building. The first-time bride wore an off-white, long silk gown by Angel Sanchez, and guests danced to the music of Peter Duchin.
Still, the party has engraved invitations with a request for business attire and an effusive statement about the couple’s affection for each other. It is signed, “Fondly, Bonnie and Charles.”
Some of those invited have found the whole idea odd.
Mr. Bronfman, the former chairman of the Seagram Company, and Mrs. Bronfman, an architect, explained that their “friendship is stronger without being married” and that they wanted to thank their friends for the support. On the invitation, they wrote that they looked forward “to continuing these relationships with everyone.”
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Mr. Bronfman’s lawyer, William Zabel of Schulte Roth & Zabel, said, “Many people would consider this a very civilized divorce.”The Original Resident Evil Was Gonna Be a SNES Game
In a recent interview GameInformer had with Koji Oda (the director of Resident Evil Zero) about the newly announced Mega Man 11, Oda mentioned several interesting facts to them about the original Resident Evil.
First being that the game was given the code name ‘horror game’, which is easily the most compelling title for a video game I have ever witnessed. The other interesting factoid was that the original Resident Evil was planned to be released on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.
Apparently, it wasn’t until the hugely successful release of the PlayStation One (which was probably code-named ‘magical game box’), that the management at Capcom decided to transfer the development of the game away from to the new console, allowing for the Resident Evil we all know today. Oda cited the more powerful specs of the PlayStation One as the being the catalyst for the change. This is noteworthy as Resident Evil wasn’t the only significant franchise to transfer development from the SNES to the PlayStation, as Square Enix also began the development of ‘Japanese Role Playing Game VII’ for SNES as well. Fortunately for Nintendo, Resident Evil wasn’t absent from their consoles for too long as Resident Evil Gaiden would be released on the Gameboy Color, and various other entries would come to the Gamecube and Wii.
For a more recent Nintendo Resident Evil game you can play, check out RelyOnHorror’s review of the Resident Evil: Revelations Collection here.
[Source]Speaking about Mrs. Clinton’s case, Mr. Obama said, “There’s stuff that is really top-secret, top-secret, and there’s stuff that is being presented to the president or the secretary of state that you might not want on the transom, or going out over the wire, but is basically stuff that you could get” from unclassified sources.
But after more than seven years in office, the administration has only recently gotten serious about curbing the reflex to stamp “secret” or “top secret” on the cables that flow each day from embassies to the State Department, or course through the Pentagon.
In a memorandum issued on March 17, the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper, asked for a “fundamental classification guidance review” that could allow information that is only sensitive for a brief time to be declassified quickly, rather than waiting the customary 15 or 25 years. He even asked whether the classification category “Confidential,” which no two government agencies seem to define the same way, should be eliminated.
In fact, Mr. Obama’s distinction between genuine secrets and vaguely secret material echoes arguments that The New York Times and other news media organizations made after the WikiLeaks disclosures, some of which were published in The Times. A substantial percentage of the 250,000 cables consisted of articles published in local news media. As officials entered them into the State Department’s system, many were marked “classified,” even though they could be found in simple Google searches.
In a news conference after the disclosure of the State Department cables, Mr. Obama pledged to energetically pursue those who leaked government secrets. “We have mechanisms in place where if we can root out folks who have leaked, they will suffer consequences,,” Mr. Obama said at the time. “In some cases it’s criminal.”
Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama, in those days, did not see much distinction among classified documents. She said then that publishing the cables would “tear at the fabric” of alliances, and particularly objected to the publication of “any information that was intended to be confidential, including private discussions between counterparts or our diplomats’ personal assessments and observations.”
Some officials predicted that foreign leaders would never again have confidential conversations with their American counterparts. That turned out not to be the case, though many diplomats now say they put more information into private emails, or intelligence channels, and avoid the State Department’s official cable system.And it's set to be Europe-legal...
Even Honda have been taken aback by the success of the MSX125 since its launch in 2014 and now the firm is out to capitalise on its popularity by mixing the MSX’s usability with the classic style of its legendary Z50 Monkey.
The MSX – known as the Grom in the American market – was launched as something of a curiosity but struck a chord with buyers. Cheap, fun, light and stylish, it’s a 3/4-size bike; small enough to be thrown about but big enough to be usable for commutes and city riding.
In the UK Honda sold around 1000 of them in 2015, outperforming any of the firm’s larger-capacity models. Elsewhere the bike has proved equally popular.
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The recipe isn’t a new one; put a scooter-derived engine in a scaled-down motorcycle. And it’s hard to find a road test of the MSX125 that hasn’t made reference to its great-grandfather, the Honda Z50 Monkey, which first popularised that idea back in the 1960s. While the Monkey is still in production, it hasn’t been sold in Europe for years as it has little hope of meeting emissions regulations and is too small for real-world use.
Now Honda looks set to mix the MSX’s mechanical parts with the styling of the original Monkey, creating a modern take on the classic machine that will be legal to sell in emissions-restricted markets like Europe and America.
The above pictures come from Honda’s own patents for the bike’s styling, clearly showing the model’s final appearance.
The frame and engine are from the MSX125, which also donates its wheels, brakes and front suspension. At the back there’s a new single-seat subframe which also serves to create mounting points for the twin shocks that replace the MSX’s monoshock design. Below them lies a tube-section swingarm, mimicking the original Monkey and replacing the box-section arm of the MSX125.
While these patents are the first clear hint at a production future for the machine, Honda has already dropped suggestions that it could make such a bike. A very similar-looking, MSX-based concept was shown in Bangkok earlier this year. It was largely ignored as there was no official Honda publicity surrounding it and the bike was seen as a creation of Honda’s local Thai arm. Now it appears that the concept might have been previewing a production model because these patents have been filed by Honda’s head office in Japan. The patents also feature subtle differences when compared to the concept, adding to the likelihood that they actually show a production machine.
Larger than the original
Despite the clear Monkey bike looks, it’s a much larger machine than the original. The current Z50, still sold in Japan, is just 1365mm long with an 895mm wheelbase, with 8-inch wheels. The MSX has 12-inch rims which are shared by the bike in these pictures. That this new model retains the classic Monkey proportions despite using the much larger MSX wheels hints that it’s significantly bigger overall, probably close to the 1010mm wheelbase and 1760mm overall length of the MSX.
It also lacks the original Monkey’s folding handlebars, so forget notions of easily packing it away into the boot of your car. However, those larger dimensions also mean it should be just as real-world usable as the MSX125 and infinitely better to ride than a ‘real’ Monkey.
In pursuit of convincing looks, the bike gains a different exhaust to the MSX, taking the classic Monkey’s scrambler-style high-level pipe instead. However, Honda has tucked a catalytic converter into the bash-plate, so gasses from the cylinder exit straight down into the cat to be filtered before they’re routed back upwards again into the retro-style pipework.
Above the engine there’s a large air filter case on the right hand side, hiding the fuel injection system, and matching panel on the left that’s actually a storage locker.
Although it’s possible that this design is intended for a mere concept bike, it’s unlikely. Details like the licence plate hanger are production hints. The number plate light cleverly extends the rear just enough to meet European legal demands that bodywork must extend beyond the rear edge of the back tyre. Details like this, and of course the carefully-positioned catalytic converter, tend to be missed out on concept bikes.
In terms of performance the bike will be pure MSX125 – 9.65bhp at 7000rpm from a 125cc single and a weight of around 100kg. With luck the price will also be in the MSX’s sub-£3000 area.
Looking for the perfect two-wheeled companion? Visit MCN Bikes For Sale website or use MCN's Bikes For Sale App.Last time I talked about some of our core game systems – attributes, skills, and progression. For today’s update, I want to switch gears a bit and talk about Kyros’ Empire and the role your character will play in the world of Tyranny: that of a Fatebinder.
The Fatebinders serve a key role in Kyros’ vast Empire. While the Overlord’s rule is absolute, the Empire is too large for Kyros to directly control everyone. Instead, Kyros grants authority over different parts of the Empire to the Archons. Some Archons are governors of provinces or military districts, others control important groups like armies, mage guilds, or specialized agents like the Fatebinders.
Each Archon is granted limited autonomy over their area of control. As long as they serve Kyros’ goals and do not break any of the Overlord’s laws, Kyros permits the Archons to rule their armies and provinces in a manner of their choosing. Because of this, the Archons and the groups they control will often clash with one another. The Fatebinders were created by Tunon the Adjudicator, Archon of Justice, to solve these problems.
As a Fatebinder and servant of Tunon, it is your duty to resolve disputes that arise between the different armies and mage guilds. You decide whose actions are best in line with Kyros’ laws, mediate where you can, and order punishments – and executions – where required. Any citizen in Kyros’ Empire can appeal to a Fatebinder for judgment, even if their problem doesn’t involve a dispute between factions. Doing so is dangerous, as a Fatebinder’s judgments cannot be appealed and some Binders deal harshly with those who bother them for trivial complaints.
Laws of Kyros
Kyros’ laws are numerous, and it is the duty of Fatebinders to interpret them in their judgments. Some laws are absolute, some are contradictory, and some are both absolute and contradictory. Fatebinders spend many years learning Kyros’ laws, the judgments handed down by previous generations of Binders, and the times when Kyros punished a Fatebinder for overstepping with their judgments.
Some of Kyros’ laws include:
Kyros’ Peace: Your life belongs to the Overlord if you vow fealty, and cannot be taken from you except by the Overlord. Legally this means that surrendering in the midst of battle should make Kyros soldiers stop killing you, as your life does not belong to them. It also grants Archons, as extensions of Kyros’ will, the right to conscript citizens into their service as soldiers, mages, or agents. As a Fatebinder you are an extension of Kyros’ Will, and have the right to order the execution of those guilty of breaking the law.
The Magician’s Folly: If a mage inadvertently causes harm or death due to the unknowable perils of magic, the mage will not be held liable if the magic was used for the glory of the Overlord. Many believe this law grants mages more rights in Kyros’ Empire, but they are wrong. Mages must belong to sanctioned guilds under the supervision and control of an Archon. Any use of magic, even a spell as simple as lighting a candle, must occur for the glory of Kyros. To do otherwise means death.
Vows Made in Kyros’ Name: Any vow or expression made using Kyros’ name is a binding legal contract. Breaking such a vow is punishable by death. A statement as simple as, “By Kyros, that man is an idiot!” places the speaker in dire peril. An enemy who hears that and can gather both witnesses to your vow, and proof that the man in question is not an idiot, can have you executed.
The Oldwalls are Forbidden: What are the Oldwalls, you ask? Wouldn’t you like to know…
Right of Appeal
A Fatebinder’s judgment, once made, is final. There is no right of appeal. That does not mean a Fatebinder can make any decisions they want, without fear of consequence or reprisal.
If someone is powerful enough, or the favorite of an Archon, they can demand audience with the Archon of Justice. Tunon will never completely overrule a Fatebinder’s decision. Doing so would undermine the rule of law and the integrity of the Fatebinders. However, if Tunon decides that a Binder has stepped beyond the limits of Kyros’ law, he will order their immediate execution.
Archon of Justice
Tunon the Adjudicator is the Archon of Justice and creator of the Fatebinders. Eldest of the Archons in service to Kyros, he has served the Overlord for over 400 years. Though legends tell of many Archons of Justice in the years before Kyros’ ascension, none have been born to challenge Tunon’s claim to the title in the past centuries.
Tunon is a cold and dispassionate figure, devoid of emotion and sentiment. All that moves him is his devotion to Kyros’ law. His true face is hidden behind a metal mask, his Face of Judgment, so that none may see his expression and so determine his feelings about a case before him.
The full extent of Tunon’s powers is unknown. What is known is that the other Archons, beings of immense power in their own right, fear his judgment almost as much as they fear the Overlord’s displeasure.
-Brian Heins, Game DirectorMike Ehrmann/Getty Images
After 20 games, it's time to get a close-up on LeBron James' numbers this season.
LeBron James' achievements so far this season have been well-documented.
He has jumped over people. He has commuted to a nationally televised game on a bicycle. He has scored 22 points in a quarter. He has raised his field goal percentage by nearly 50 points while the everyone else struggles to find iron in this hectic season. He is averaging more than eight rebounds and more than seven assists -- something that has only been accomplished once over the past 15 years -- and averaging 29.2 points on top of that. He has completely separated himself, at least statistically, from the rest of the NBA.
The list goes on and on. And yet, we're not moved all that much by his accomplishments. James is playing at such a high level at this point that the only fair comparison is to himself. His current 33.4 player efficiency rating (PER) is better than he's ever done over a full season, better than his torrid 2008-09 campaign that earned him 109 of the 121 first-place votes for MVP. Only Wilt Chamberlain and Michael Jordan have approached this level statistically, but even they topped out at 31.8 and 31.7 PER respectively.
His dominance in his first 20 games of the season might be historical, but we don't bat an eye because, well, it feels like we've seen this kind of start from him before.
But, really, have we? We know James hasn't kept up this kind of pace for an entire season, but is this the best start of his career? Plenty of players come out spitting hot fire and then tapered off as the season progressed, so perhaps James has jumped out of the gate better in season's past.
Actually, when we look closely at the first 20 games of each of his eight seasons in the league, we find that James has never been better out of the gate.
Here's a colorful chart that illustrates his numbers over the first 20 games of each season. We've included his numbers at a per-game level and at a per-36-minutes level which adjusts for playing time (assist-point to NBA StatsCube for the data).
James' 33.4 PER after 20 games is his best, barely eclipsing his 2008-09 start when he put up a 32.1 PER along with 26.5 points, 7.0 rebounds, 6.5 assists, 2.1 steals and 1.1 blocks per game in just 35.1 minutes of nightly action. The 17-3 Cavs were embarrassing teams so badly that season that James sat the bench for over a quarter's worth of time in the early going. But still, on a per-minute basis, James' current campaign bests even that one.
What sets the current pace apart from his past starts is his rebounding and shooting efficiency. Sure, he's averaged 29 points and seven assists before, but never eight rebounds and never with 55 percent shooting. As you can see from the 3-point columns, James has made a smart transaction, exchanging some 3-pointers for higher-percentage 2s, mostly at the rim and some just inside the arc.
Another catalyst for James' emergence has been his slow migration to the post. Heat coach Erik Spoelstra has planted James on the block more often this season, which has indirectly kept his ill-advised 3-point attempts to a minimum. James isn't a great 3-point shooter, but he's capable enough that he shouldn't be afraid to take a couple 3-pointers every game in rhythm. From an efficiency standpoint, erasing some 3-pointers from his arsenal isn't a bad idea as long as he continues to attack the basket with reckless abandon. Can he maintain this scorching pace over the entire 66-game season is a fair question, but he has shown absolutely zero signs of slowing down.
After a massively underwhelming Finals performance, plenty of people will react to James' remarkable start with indifference and make a comment about the meaninglessness of regular season numbers. It's true that until he wins a championship and consistently plays up to his capabilities in the fourth quarter, many won't feel comfortable giving him praise even if he's objectively putting up monster stats.
But considering nearly everyone's numbers are down in this condensed season and James has lifted his numbers to unprecedented heights, it's a start that demands even the attention of his most critical opponents. At just 27 years old, James continues to evolve as a basketball player. And in the process, he has raised the only statistical bar that he sees eye-to-eye with anymore -- his own.A Wake County sheriff's deputy is recovering from serious injuries after being beaten outside a child's birthday party Saturday.Sheriff Donnie Harrison said it happened about 11:45 p.m. outside the Panther Branch Community Center on Ten-Ten Road.He said about a hundred people, including his off-duty deputy and the four suspects now charged, were at the party where people were drinking alcohol.Warrants allege Gabriel Moreno asked the deputy to come outside the building and when he did, Remi Nambo, Delfino Alejo, and Gabriel's brother Miguel jumped out from behind parked cars. The four are accused of pinning the unarmed deputy on the ground, punching and kicking him so badly that Sheriff Harrison said his officer didn't have a chance to fight back.Harrison believes they tried to kill the deputy."I think they would have," he said. "What they were doing, the way they were kicking him and beating him- he could've very easily died. And I don't think they cared either way."He said the men were yelling expletives at the deputy as they punched and kicked him and that they targeted him solely because he's a law enforcement officer."To me, that's just uncalled for," he said. "There he is at a child's birthday party and people that don't like law enforcement are going to single him out to beat him up - I have no use for 'em."But the Morenos' sister, Alex, who was in the courtroom for their first appearance Wednesday, said prosecutors aren't telling the story the way it actually happened."I know how they are. I know what they are. I'm not gonna defend them- they're not victims here," Alex said of her brothers. "But they're just exaggerating. They're exaggerating. We know this person. We know the cop and there's a lot of things that he does that a cop does not do."Moreno said she left the party before the deputy was beaten, but she believes alcohol played a role in what happened."I think something either party said - something that might have disagreed with the other crowd. I don't know," she said. "But yea, he was definitely not targeted - not because he's a cop."In court Wednesday, the DA said all four suspects are validated gang members. They're being held separately at the Wake County Detention Center under bonds of up to $2 million.They're due in court again next month.Evandro Carlos Selva is one of 1,400 hi-tech environmental cops who use eyes in space and feet on the ground to patrol a deadly border
As his helicopter descends through the smoke towards an Amazonian inferno, Evandro Carlos Selva checks the co-ordinates via a global positioning satellite and radios back to base a witness testimony to deforestation.
Flames lick up from below the canopy, smoke billows across the horizon, and down below, the carbon that has been stored in the forest for hundreds of years is released into the atmosphere.
Skeletal trees are charred grey, others burnt black. Nearby, what was once forest is reduced to an expanse of ash, dust and embers. Trudging through the debris, Carlos Selva points to a soya farm: "They've been paid to do this. Forty per cent of next year's harvest on this land has already been bought."
The clearance is illegal and Carlos Selva – a ranger with Brazil's environmental protection agency, Ibama – sets in motion the process of levying fines, business embargos and other penalties that have helped to slow the pace of deforestation by almost 80% in the past eight years. This represents impressive progress, but it is at risk. The pressure to convert more Amazonian forest is growing stronger due to drought in the US, rising world food prices and a weakening of Brazilian laws.
Carlos Selva works in Mato Grosso, the frontline of efforts to find a balance between protecting the climate and feeding a growing world population. Next year, Brazil is expected to overtake the US as the world's biggest soya producer. Most of that crop will be grown in Mato Grosso – where the Amazon forest meets the Cerrado savannah – and both are being engulfed by farm fields.
Smoke from forest fires allegedly set by farmers and cattle ranchers. Photograph: Rodrigo Baleia/Getty Images
Global priorities are etched on to the land here with geometric precision. Far from most people's image of a vast, unbroken Amazon, the forest has been sliced and diced into polygons that divide the world's most productive soya fields from the world's greatest land carbon sinks.
The borders between the two ought to be determined by whether humanity places more value on our lungs or our bellies. In reality, it has become a contest between economics and the law. Carlos Selva is responsible for patrolling and maintaining this restless boundary. It may well be the ultimate 21st-century job: analyst, accountant, climate regulator and eco-cop rolled into one dangerous and important role that is constantly being transformed by satellite data, global warming, world hunger and international commodity prices.
He gets deforestation warnings from space and death threats from his neighbours – all the hi-tech support available in the 21st century, with the same risks faced by a wild west sheriff 200 years ago. He is equipped with a GPS system, a camera, a tablet computer and a gun.
Monitoring ownership and land change is no easy task. In the state of Mato Grosso alone, there are 110,000 properties. Most are extremely remote. Many owners have invested their lives here and do not take kindly to being told they cannot use the land as they want.
Carlos Selva received death threats in June, while the world was debating the pros and cons of sustainability at the Rio +20 Earth summit. He has been held hostage by landowners. They have punctured the tyres on his four-wheel drive. Corrupt local politicians are not on his side. After his most successful operation – a sting that exposed widespread forgery of forest documentation – he and the police chief he worked with were transferred to out-of-the way districts. It could be worse. Other rangers have had their homes shot at. Many environmental campaigners have been killed trying to protect the Amazon.
It is hard to overestimate what is at stake. The two sides in the debate put it in stark terms. Save the forest and you fight climate change. Clear the forest and you ease global hunger. Agribusinesses see the Amazon as one of the last great areas for expansion.
The rangers are caught in the middle, but this is not a simple either-or choice. There are alarming signs that the Amazon is caught in a vicious circle and the more this great climate regulator is cleared, the less predictable global weather systems will become. That increases the risk of droughts and floods, ruining crops across the world. This in turn, adds to the pressure to clear the forest.
Twenty-five million people make their home in the Brazilian Amazon, which covers 2m square miles. Already, 17% has been stripped by cattle ranchers, loggers and soya farmers. At the recent peak of clearance in 2004, an area of 10,723 square miles was deforested in a year, equivalent to the size of Albania, Haiti or Belgium.
Since then, deforestation has slowed dramatically thanks to a system that combines eyes in the sky, boots on the ground and a growing collection of carrots and sticks to persuade farmers and ranchers that they are better off leaving the forest intact.
Smoke and fires set on the livestock pastures threaten the forest. Photograph: Rodrigo Baleia/Getty Images
It is primarily based on two sets of satellite data: Prodes, which is an annual forest audit down to the level of 6.25 hectares (currently using a UK satellite), and Deter, which provides almost real-time information to rangers in the field such as Carlos Selva, who can reach the affected areas rapidly in helicopters and trucks. Individual violators can be fined, jailed, have machinery confiscated and be barred from access to bank loans.
The environment institute said it seized 650 trucks, 60 bulldozers and 200 chainsaws in 2011. Municipalities where more than 30 square miles are illegally stripped are put on a blacklist, which means companies in the area are blocked from cheap financing and firms that trade with them also face restrictions.
Francisco de Oliveira Filho, the director of deforestation combat policies in the environment ministry, says the scheme has helped Brazil to move more than half the way towards its Copenhagen commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 36% by 2020.
"In 2004, people said it was impossible to stop the deforestation of the Amazon, but we have proved it can be reduced," he said.
The hard work is still to come, however, because the polygons of deforestation are getting smaller and more scattered. Farmers have learned the limits of satellite observation and the financial incentive to break the law increases with the rise in soya prices. "We are reviewing the system now. We know we're getting to the limits of monitoring and control," said De Oliveira Filho. "Until now, we have made good progress by focusing on big land owners and large deforestation polygons. But we have reached the point where, if we are to meet our goals, we need to target holdings of less than 25 hectares. That is why we need higher resolution satellites."
The environment ministry focuses its attention on an arc of deforestation from the north-east to the south-west. This is the frontline where farmers are eating into the forest. By far the worst-hit states are Pará, Mato Grosso and Rondonia. With abundant water resources and flat, fertile land on the border of the Amazon and the Cerrado, Mato Grosso is considered some of the best agricultural territory in Brazil, which has made its forests the hardest to protect.
Soya fields have expanded by 10% in the past year. Locals say this is mostly due to the conversion of cattle pastures into cropland. But there is clearly also pressure on the forest. In September, Mato Grosso was the only state where land clearance continued to accelerate – a hefty increase of 158% compared with the same period last year.
One of the worst areas is Feliz Natal (Happy Christmas). Many farmers here have already been penalised, but there appears to be no sign that pressure on the forest is letting up.
There are plumes of smoke every few hundred metres across a broad expanse of forest. The haze stretches across the sky, but this is far from the worst burn-off. Satellite images of previous blazes show smoke stretching 100 miles.
The process of deforestation is simple. Its various stages – carried out over a period of two to 10 years – can all be seen on a one-hour helicopter ride above Mato Grosso.
First, there is the cutting. Small secret trails are pierced through the undergrowth by illegal loggers who covertly fell and sell the |
’s Paradise in Winnetka, CA, about 25 miles north of downtown Los Angeles.
The star of the night was Filip Sablik, publisher of Top Cow, and co-writer/creator of the new Top Cow/Minotaur Press series, Last Mortal. Sablik was not only signing copies of the book with best bud since childhood and co-writer/creator, John Mahoney, but he also received one of the coolest tattoo’s ever done at a comic book shop: the logo of Last Mortal, the Ouroboros.
It took about 3 hours to complete, but once finished, it looked damn sexy:
Jim McCann, writer/creator of one of my personal favorite comic books of all time, Return of the Dapper Men, also got himself some ink. His was of a barcode from Dapper Men, which is the pinstripe pattern from the titular characters’ coats. The numbers 314 and 41 are also present; 314 representing the amount of Dapper Men that rained down from the sky in the book in order to re-start time, and 41 symbolizes the lead Dapper Man. You can watch a video of him getting tattooed, on youtube!
I also joined in the fun, getting some ink of my own. The tattoo was designed by comic book artists Tess Fowler and Chris Gutierrez, and is symbolic in that it’s all about my newborn daughter, Elizabeth. She was born on 3/1/11 at 11:50 pm, and all of that is there in the design…if you can find it. Plus, I’ve always loved elephants as a kid.
Diana Munoz was the tattoo artist on the scene, who worked straight from 8pm until about 1:30am. She was awesome, and I think that’s evident in her work. Be sure to check out her DCM Tattoo Facebook page!
Last Mortal artist, Thomas Nachlik, who is located in Germany, still managed to make an appearance via live videocast, doing requested sketches and showing them on screen to fans.
Sablik and Mahoney were signing and giving away limited edition lithographs to the first 40 people to attend the event, and on display in the store for all to see were original art pages from the book, including this awesome piece which I now own:
There was also a DJ present spinning tunes, free beer, and Phil Smith (editor of many Top Cow books) playing the role of bartender, mixing drinks with a Last Mortal theme. Let me be the first to say, those things were freaking strong!
Other creators in attendance included Joshua Fialkov (Tumor, Echoes), Mel Caylo (Marketing Manager of Archaia Entertainment), Rick Loverd (Berserker), Troy Peteri (Abattoir), and Tess Fowler (Grimm Fairy Tales). Even Marc Silvestri was there to support his crew! You can see many of these guys in a video interview (check it out) hosted by myself and Bryan J. Daggett of GeekWeek.com.
Below are a bunch of photos from the event:
ComicBookResources.com did a cool stop motion video of both McCann and Sablik’s tattoos, which you can view here. Caitlin Holland of Killer Cupcake Event Photography was the photographer, with most of her images being showcased in the CBR video, as well as some above.
The fact that Jim McCann and Filip Sablik love their work so much that they were willing to get symbolic representations of it permanently placed on their bodies speaks volumes for them as creators. It’s irrefutable that the passion is there with these guys in what they do, and that emotion not only translates into how they treat their fans, but how intensely it transcends the pages of their work. I dare you to pick up a copy of Return of the Dapper Men and Last Mortal #1 and state otherwise. Both books are not only gorgeous to look at, but the stories are a testament to the bar being raised in this industry for creator owned work. The same could be said of Collector’s Paradise owner, Edward Greenberg. By hosting an event like this, he has broken the norm of the LCS, and has shown that a comic book shop can be a destination, not just a place.
Andy Liegl
andy@comicattack.netOne team only wants the chance to compete in a sport where men are not yet welcome.
Equality has been a word used to describe the 2012 Olympics. Women’s boxing was added to the London games, making this the first-ever Olympics where there will be no sports that do not include an event for women (as well as the same milestone being achieved in the 2014 Winter Olympics).
But no one ever thought to ask if this was also the case for men. The London Olympics include two sports where men are not allowed: rhythmic gymnastics and synchronized swimming.
In 1952, synchronized swimming was “first demonstrated” at the Olympics, but it was added as an official sport in 1984, according to ABC News. However, even then men were not allowed.
“The Out To Swim Angels are Britain’s only male synchronized swimming team,” said ABC News. “Last month they wrote a letter to the International Olympic Committee and FINA, swimming’s governing body, arguing that men deserve to compete in synchronized swimming as well.”
This is not the first time the International Olympic Committee has faced this problem. In 2008, Californian synchronized swimmer Kenyon Smith asked to be allowed to compete in Beijing. In 2004, Bill May, who regularly competed with women’s teams, was not allowed to compete in Athens, according to ABC News. Both were denied their requests.
“There’s still this same of sort old mindset. Oh well it’s pretty, it’s for girls,” said Angels team member Ronan Daly. “But no, we want to challenge that and say boys can do this as well.”
The British team is asking to be considered for the 2016 Olympic games in Rio.
“I think it’s incredibly ironic that the Olympics are all about equality, yet we don’t have a chance to compete, and other mens’ teams don’t have a chance to participate,” said team captain Stephen Adshead to ABC News.
The team is only three-years-old, but won gold at the recent Eurogames, adding to the argument that they should be able to compete.
The Out to Swim Angels have vowed not to give up, so that they can give a voice to allowing men in the synchronized swimming category in the future.
Photo courtesy WENN.comCaroline Craido-Perez (far right) poses with a poster showing the design of the UK's new 10-pound note. Photo: Getty Images
When UK journalist and co-founder of The Women's Room Caroline Criado-Perez spearheaded a campaign to replace Charles Darwin’s image with Jane Austen’s on a British banknote, her efforts were rewarded by a sustained Twitter attack from some of the more repugnant turds excreted by society’s sulphurous bottom.
Within hours, Criado-Perez’ experience reinforced what female users of Twitter have known since its launch - that the social media site woefully fails to support the vast network of women who are subjected to abuse (often graphic and violent) simply for daring to have claim space in the ‘conversation’ that Twitter positions itself as being the locus of. She is now leading a campaign similar to the #fbrape one conducted a few months ago, with the intention of having Twitter become more accountable for the way their platform is used. Twitter has been threatened with a mass boycott on August 4 from prominent celebrities, MPs and writers should they continue to sidestep responsibility over the issue. (So far, Twitter UK general manager Tony Wang has responded by stating that they are looking at simplifying the process of reporting offensive tweets.)
Also, we're testing ways to simplify reporting, e.g. within a Tweet by using the "Report Tweet" button in our iPhone app and on mobile web. — Tony Wang (@TonyW) July 27, 2013
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The question of what can be done to counter gendered online abuse is routinely painted as a woman’s problem to solve with the most frequently offered directive being to ‘just ignore it’. Having experienced such unwelcome intrusions on repeated occasions, I am familiar with those responses aimed at discrediting the justifiable anger of being told, for example, that even though you’re too ugly to rape, you probably still deserve it. ‘Don’t pay attention to them’, such advice dictates. ‘You’re only giving them the attention they want.’ Or, ‘You have X number of followers, and this person only has a handful. Why are you abusing your power like this?’
Occasionally, I have been lectured on my attempts to ‘shut down free speech’ - as if it is my objection to sexual assault being used as a warning that threatens the fabric of society, and not the fact that some people still find it a useful tool of debate.
Criado-Perez quite rightly calls bullshit on this tactic, advocating instead a commitment to ‘shout back’. Ignoring abuse doesn’t make it go away. Believe me, I know. What it does is make you feel invaded, powerless and (if the troll in question seems to have a greater than usual insight into your online activities) vaguely paranoid. Too often, trolls are left untended simply because they are invisible. They are the Peeping Toms of the online world - they can peer through your windows, but you can’t see their faces. So to stop them from salivating over your distress, you become weathered against their hatred.
The result is twofold. Firstly, women become superficially immune to the pain of being told in minute detail what it is we deserve to have done to us as punishment for the crime of speaking. It still surprises me when I hear gasps from groups as I reveal some of the things that have been said to me in the past, and urges me to remind myself that this experience of dehumanisation is not the rent a woman must pay for being given a spot at the table.
But there is deeper damage being done, an erosion of the sense of self. One can only be exposed to this sheer hatred so many times before it begins to seep into your core. You read it and hear it and see it without flinching, and then suddenly without warning find yourself standing in the shower one evening feeling broken yet unable to cry because you’ve been steeling yourself against vulnerability for so long that you don’t seem to know how to do it anymore. It is a theft of emotion, and it is unforgiveable.
These misogynists ejaculate their rage all over the internet, using their threat of both a rutting penis and the denial of it to try and keep women in their place. It happened to Lindy West when she criticised the abundance of jokes about rape. It happened to Marion Bartoli when she won Wimbledon, and viewers decided she was too ugly and unf--kable to deserve this honour.
And when the trolls are found out, what do they do? They scurry away and hide, delete their accounts, protect their tweets, complain about how women can't take a joke and whinge that feminists are trying to censor them. Mostly, they bank on the fact that no one will find them out - that their real life personas, complete with jobs, partners, children and friends will remain separate from the online one where they use handles like RapeCr3w and talk about how 'consent' is irrelevant.
To them, degrading women on a routine basis is both an enjoyable game and a silencing tool. As Tanya Gold wrote recently in The Guardian, “Rape, and the threat of rape, is a favoured weapon for men who hate women. It is an effective mode of decapitation, speaking (or rather shouting) only to the vagina, pretending the brain doesn't exist.”
But occasionally we can fight back. At the time of writing this, a 21-year-old man from Manchester had been arrested in relation to the threats made against Criado-Perez, with the possibility of more to follow. Despite what some might say about the sanctity of free speech and the lawlessness of the internet, this is not an overreaction. These trolls bank on women’s silence while ironically defending their fundamental right to say whatever they like without consequence.
Well, women aren’t going to roll over and ignore it. We’re not going to enable their entitlement by keeping our mouths shut. Like Criado-Perez says, we’re shouting back - and if these misogynist troglodytes don’t like the sound of one banshee standing up for herself, they’re going to really hate it what it sounds like when millions of us do it together.Art Stream
It’s finally the end of the month, and that means it’s time for another Art Stream! Join us on Garrets Twitch channel on Wednesday at 1pm PST to chat while watching some new Parkitect art being created.
Translation Progress
Since starting the translation site lots of translations for many languages have been contributed, which is awesome! Thanks :)
One small problem is that many translations have been suggested, but there aren’t enough people voting for these suggestions. The way these community translations work is that after a suggestion has been made it requires a couple of votes to actually get into the game.
To vote for suggestions, click on the “Suggestions” tab, then use the Vote for/Vote against buttons. You need to be logged in for this.
Devlog
Progress has been rather slow this week due to some none-development related tasks that might continue into early next week, but things should be better again then.
We’ve added the option to view the coaster stat heatmaps without having to go into build mode, and while we were at it also added some graphs for this data:
The heatmaps are much more useful and easier to understand in my opinion, but it can’t hurt to have the graphs and if nothing else they’re at least helpful for debugging.Sean Kingston has been accused of gang-raping a drunk teenager back in 2010, according to a new lawsuit.
TMZ reports that Carissa Capeloto, 22, has filed a lawsuit against the rapper claiming that Kingston forced her to have sex with him, his bodyguard and one of the rapper's band members at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Seattle in July 2010.
Kingston, 23, he has already filed legal documents insisting the sex was completely consensual.
Capeloto, who is suing all three men, claims she was invited back to Kingston's hotel room for a meet-and-greet after a Justin Bieber concert, where the rapper had also performed, but when she arrived, the rapper was waiting naked on his bed. She claims the assault happened after she smoked marijuana and took 7 to 10 shots of vodka and was inebriated.
She claims Kingston's bodyguard picked her up and placed her on top of the nude rapper, and then all three men proceeded to gang rape her while she was "obviously intoxicated, incapable of consent."
Capeloto is now suing for $5 million in damages, claiming that her life has been ruined. A trial has been set for November.
Back in 2010, when the sexual assault claim was first made against the rapper, law enforcement sources told TMZ that two women arrived at the rapper's hotel room intoxicated with bottles of vodka and beer in hand, and that one woman had sex with Kingston. And at the time, the site reported that sources said cops didn't believe the woman's claims that she was assaulted. Criminal charges against Kingston were dropped, when they concluded that the woman "wasn't credible enough for a legit case," according to the website.
A request for comment made to Kingston's reps was not immediately answered.Game on.
Eight years after being upstaged in Iowa by Barack Obama, Monday night brought more disappointing results for Hillary Clinton, who leaves the state with a razor-thin lead over Democratic rival Bernie Sanders after the first nominating contest of 2016.
"I am a progressive who gets things done for people," Clinton declared to supporters in Des Moines, saying she was "excited about really getting into the debate with Sen. Sanders about the best way forward to fight for us and America."
The former secretary of state, whose once formidable lead over Sanders evaporated over months of campaigning, promised to "finish the job of universal health care coverage for every man, woman and child."
And after pledging to sustain the Democratic vision in the face of Republican opposition, she concluded, "I stand here tonight, breathing a big sigh of relief. Thank you, Iowa.... I will keep doing what I have done my entire life."
Read MoreImage copyright RACHEL CARLING-JENKINS Image caption Rachel Carling-Jenkins reported her husband to police
An Australian politician has delivered a harrowing speech revealing that her estranged husband was jailed for possessing child abuse images.
Rachel Carling-Jenkins, a member of Victoria's state parliament, said she discovered the extensive collection in their family home last year.
Her husband was convicted after Dr Carling-Jenkins and her son went to police.
She said the discovery had turned her life upside down.
"In this discovery, I personally viewed deeply distressing images which have caused me immediate and ongoing anguish," she said.
"My marriage ended instantly and I left home the day I made that discovery and I have not returned to the family home since, except to pick up belongings."
The conservative politician told a sitting of the Victorian upper house on Thursday that she had kept silent on the matter to prevent interfering with police and court proceedings.
She had never had suspicions that her husband was addicted to child abuse images.
"I have no regrets as a mother or a wife in reporting and exposing this dreadful crime which occurred within the privacy of my home," she said.
'Poor, helpless victims'
Dr Carling-Jenkins said her husband had since refused to sign divorce papers and also denied her a property settlement and access to assets.
She said she had been financially and mentally abused by her husband, who had been sentenced to prison.
She also spoke of the anguish she felt for the young victims.
"The faces of many are etched into my memory for eternity and I pray that the police were able to identify and rescue as many of the poor, helpless, vulnerable victims as possible," she said.
"These little girls would not be abused if people like my ex-husband did not provide a market."
Fellow MPs hugged Dr Carling-Jenkins in the chamber after her speech.John Kerry was making his “beyond a reasonable doubt” case against Syria’s Bashar al-Assad on Wednesday when he gave lawmakers a bit of faulty intelligence.
“Just today, before coming in here, I read an e-mail to me about a general, the minister of defense, former minister or assistant minister, I forget which, who has just defected and is now in Turkey,” the secretary of state testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “And there are other defections that we are hearing about because of the potential that we might take action.”
A few minutes later, Kerry revised his account: This official-sounding “e-mail” was actually a Reuters news account about a former defense minister based on a claim by the Syrian opposition. “Reuters has now said the Syrian government is saying the defection has not taken place,” Kerry said. “So who knows whether it has or hasn’t?”
Who knows?
This is the problem with the case the Obama administration is making for attacking Syria.
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Officials say the evidence is incontrovertible that Assad used sarin gas against his people. Lawmakers emerging from secret, classified briefings seem to agree. But while members of Congress are coming around to an attack on Syria, the American public remains skeptical. Why? Maybe it’s because the government won’t let them in on the secret.
The public heard about another “slam dunk” case a decade ago and, then as now, Democratic and Republican lawmakers agreed that the secret evidence was compelling. And it turned out to be wrong. Now, administration officials are telling Americans to trust their assurances that the secret evidence is convincing and that their war planning is solid. But they won’t provide details.
Estimates of collateral damage? “Lower than a certain number which I would rather share with you in a classified setting,” Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey told lawmakers.
Response of the Arab and Muslim countries? “This is something I’d be happier discussing in greater detail with you in the closed session,” Kerry said.
Safeguards to keep military action limited? “We can talk about that in a closed session,” Dempsey said.
How would Russia and other Syrian allies respond to a U.S. strike? “We all agree that that would be best handled in a classified session,” Kerry said.
No, we don’t all agree.
Ann Telnaes animation: As Syria debate goes on, the familiar drumbeat of war. (Ann Telnaes/The Washington Post)
The administration’s case against Assad may well be airtight. Walter Pincus, The Post’s longtime intelligence correspondent, tells me he hasn’t heard the sort of doubts from the intelligence community that he heard during the run-up to the Iraq war. The problem is that the refusal to declassify evidence helps opponents such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin cast doubt on the intelligence. The administration is hiding behind the protection of “sources and methods,” but is any foe still unaware of the National Security Agency’s satellite and intercept capabilities?
Pincus argues for releasing the intercepts that describe the Syrian regime using the weapons and then ending the barrage, and the satellite imagery showing preparations for an attack and the firing of rockets from Assad-controlled territory. But instead of declassifying, administration officials are being ostentatious about their secrecy, as if protecting their club’s secret handshake.
“TOP SECRET/CLOSED,” said the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s notice for Wednesday’s hearing. “CLOSED,” said the Senate Armed Services Committee’s notice. In “open” testimony Tuesday and Wednesday, the officials encouraged lawmakers to save their questions for secret sessions.
Arming the Syrian opposition? That “would require a closed or classified hearing.” The broad effects of the military strike? “I would prefer to speak out in a classified setting.” Could Hezbollah have chemical weapons? “We need to talk about that in our classified session.” Would allies join an attack? It “would not be appropriate to speak about in an unclassified setting.” Could an attack make Assad use chemical weapons again? “I urge you to go to the classified briefing.”
At Wednesday’s hearing, Kerry said that “beyond a reasonable doubt, the evidence proves that the Assad regime prepared this attack.” He then dangled this: “In an appropriate setting, you will learn additional evidence which came to us even today.”
But isn’t it “appropriate” for the American public to see some hard evidence? During Tuesday’s Senate hearing, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) asked for the administration to “declassify a higher percentage of the information that we have so the American people and the international community can see it.”
Kerry said that the amount declassified is “unprecedented” and that what’s out there now is “sufficient.”
He may think so. But it’s not sufficient until the American public believes it.
Twitter: @Milbank
Read more from Dana Milbank’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.OKLAHOMA CITY – OKC Energy FC announced on Tuesday it had signed Wojciech Wojcik for the new season after the Polish forward had spent much of the 2016 season on loan. The contract is pending USL and U.S. Soccer Federation approval.
Wojcik, a 6-foot-4, 200-pound striker, came to Oklahoma City last season on loan from Indy Eleven. He appeared in 23 games and was tied for the team lead with four goals in the regular season. He also made two appearances as Energy FC reached the Western Conference Semifinals of the 2016 USL Cup Playoffs.
A product of the Chicago Fire Academy, Wojcik attended Bradley University where he was named Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year for his efforts during his senior season.
“He came to our club and did a hell of a job,” said Energy FC Head Coach Jimmy Nielsen on Wojcik’s 2016 season. “He’s strong and a big threat in the [penalty area]. He’s strong and powerful in the air. For a man of his size, he is also technically sound, particularly with the ball. Woj is a great guy to have around, he’s hungry and very competitive.”Purple Line rendering by BeyondDC via Flickr.
A Selection Committee for the Purple Line Art in Transit program has been formed to pick the winning proposals for the 10 Purple Line stations in Montgomery County.
The committee includes representatives from the Maryland Transit Administration, Purple Line Transit Constructors, the Montgomery County Arts and Humanities Council and community representatives. (Disclosure: the writer is one of those community representatives.)
A similar committee has been named for the stations in Prince George’s County.
MTA put out a national call for artists for the project in September 2014. More than 700 artists responded from around the country, including places such as Los Angeles, Minnesota and New York, as well as local artists from Takoma Park, Langley Park and Washington, D.C.
The committee narrowed the selection down to 95 potential participants; some later withdrew from consideration.
More than 85 artists were assigned stations along the route; three or four artists were assigned one of the stations to consider.
In December, the artists were invited to a public meeting with residents, who were asked to come and meet the artists, as well as share with them what they considered to be special about the communities surrounding each station.
Eighty-two artists submitted proposals, which are now being reviewed internally by the PLTC to ensure the submissions are compliant with the Request for Proposal’s requirements. The proposals will be posted on the web and shared with the Selection Committee for preliminary review.
In addition, a community meeting is scheduled for April 24, 2017 from 6 to 9 p.m. in the Montgomery Blair High School Cafeteria. Community members are invited to take a look at the artists’ submissions and provide feedback. The PLTC will share that feedback with the Selection Committee for review prior to the final selection meeting, which is expected in mid to late May.
The stations in the Silver Spring/Takoma Park area are Lyttonsville, Woodside/16th Street, Silver Spring Transit Center, Silver Spring Library, Dale Drive, Manchester Place, Long Branch and Piney Branch Road.
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See something around town? Tag your photos on Twitter & Instagram with #SourceShots.The reaction to the killing of two shoppers in a Swedish IKEA store on Monday by Eritrean asylum seekers will further inflame animosity towards migrants, head of Sweden's Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research told RT.
© REUTERS / Peter Kruger Ikea Stabbing Shocks Sweden: Two People Confirmed Dead
The murder of two Swedish shoppers in an IKEA store is expected to further inflame tensions between migrants and the general population, the director of Sweden's Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research [TFF] think tank Jan Oberg warned on Tuesday.
In an interview with the RT TV channel, Oberg said that there is a danger that the attack, which was committed by asylum seekers from Eritrea, will be used by anti-immigration campaigners to further their agenda.
Though "it would be stupid," to use the murders to make a point about immigration, Oberg said that nevertheless, the Swedish authorities expect such a reaction.
"People can use and misuse whatever they want to, because of the color of their skin. The two perpetrators have their roots in Eritrea, so that can be used, yes."
"Obviously the Swedish police think that it will be misused, because they have increased the guarding of and the security of the local refugee reception centers."
"They don't have any signals or indications, but to be on the safe side they have increased their presence at the places where refugees are gathered, or asylum seekers waiting for residence permit decisions."
In the light of statistics showing an increase in hate crime recorded in Sweden in recent years, Oberg was asked about the possibility of a revenge attack on migrants in the aftermath of the murders on Monday.
Statistics from Sweden's National Council for Crime Prevention show a 14 percent increase in reported hate crime in Sweden over the past year, from 5,508 incidents recorded by police in 2013, which rose to 6,270 cases in 2014. Seven out of ten incidents are believed to be racially motivated.
"Any specific reasons why this is happening?" Oberg was asked.
"There is a general animosity increasing in the Scandinavian countries, that has been going on for a long time," adding that at the moment, the relationship between the IKEA murders and race is not understood.
"We don’t know what the motives were. If it turns out that there was a kind of racial motive behind the killings of these two sad people, that will put us in another situation."
"Why in general it happens, there are thousands of reasons. There are a number of people coming, there is a fear in the Western world in general that we are losing our relative power."
"And so there are many reasons why the unintellectual, fast reaction to this is, we don’t want you to come here."
Jan Oberg interview with RT International on Swedish attack at IKEA And about the European… http://t.co/IUAMmVrlXS pic.twitter.com/SQJVJfa9JP — TFF Transnational… (@TFFworldaffairs) 12 августа 2015
Oberg, whose TFF think tank aims to promote reconciliation and conflict-mitigation, particularly in the conflict regions of the world such as the Middle East and the former Yugoslavia, was asked whether the migrant crisis in Europe, which is giving rise to greater social conflict, is being handled in an effective way:
"No, because in this case, as with the case of international terrorism, there is nobody really basing their policies on an analysis of why things happen."
"Behind almost every refugee stands an arms trader," said Oberg, quoting the former head of the Swedish Red Cross, Peter Nobel.
"Terrorism has grown enormously. The number of refugees has grown enormously. I think we are up to 72 million people now in the world, just a few years ago it was something like 20."
"Sweden and other countries are doing these things, we are running wars and that's what people run away from. If you look at those who are coming over the Mediterranean, there are people coming over from Syria and Libya and Somalia and other places, where we are bombing or using drones or occupying their territory."
© AFP 2018 / JONATHAN NACKSTRAND Former Defense Minister Mulls True Cost of Sweden's War in Afghanistan
Two asylum seekers were arrested on Monday after carrying out a deadly knife attack on two shoppers in the kitchenware section of an IKEA store in Vasteras, around 115 km west of the capital, Stockholm. The victims, a mother and son aged 55 and 28, died at the scene.
The two perpetrators were Eritrean asylum seekers aged 23 and 35, who were staying in government-provided accommodation in the area. The 35-year-old was taken to hospital with life threatening injuries after the attack. Police have not found evidence of a prior connection between the victims and their attackers.Second, Obama’s presidency unleashed changes that Washington doesn’t control. Many states have become less tolerant of poorly performing schools. Climate policy helped make clean energy increasingly cost-competitive, on its own.
Third, Senate Democrats still have the ability to filibuster some Republican wishes, including the reversal of financial regulation. “The fatalistic conclusion that Trump can erase Obama’s achievements is overstated — perhaps even completely false,” Chait writes.
The book is a brave one, because journalists are usually loath to call a politician successful, for fear of being branded naïve or partisan. We’re comfortable calling balls as balls, but prefer to criticize strikes as imperfect. (And all strikes, like all politicians, are indeed imperfect.) As a result, we too often give an overly negative view of current events only to wax nostalgic about those same events decades later.
In truth, Obama succeeded by taking a rigorous, evidence-based approach to government. He began trying to broker bipartisan deals and, when that failed, governed as a tough Democrat, with crucial help from Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Obama’s mistakes, like Syria, were serious, but no president yet has avoided serious errors.
Obama leaves office as the most successful Democrat since Franklin Roosevelt. His effect on the “trajectory of America,” to use his benchmark, was certainly smaller than Roosevelt’s, but is in the same league as Reagan’s. Obama did more while in office, while Reagan better protected his policy changes, thanks to Republican gains in state and congressional elections — and the victory of his chosen successor.
Obama’s glaring failure on that last count leaves his allies needing to fight, hard, to defend their successes, rather than to make further progress on problems that badly need it, like climate and inequality. But it’s a testament to the last eight years that progressives have so much to defend.
“Any large scale of reordering of power and resources in American life will inevitably face resistance, sometimes for decades,” Chait writes. It happened after Reconstruction, the New Deal and the civil rights movement. But by continuing to fight, through victory and setback, the advocates of a freer, more broadly prosperous country won many more than they lost.
When future historians look back on today, they’re likely to come to a similar conclusion. They are also likely to believe that Obama’s vision of America was far superior to Trump’s. After all, a vast majority of Americans born in the last few decades share Obama’s vision. And history is ultimately written by the young.What's New
A distant galaxy pierced another group of galaxies like a bullet, astronomers report, in a cosmic collision some 1.4 billion light-years away.
Observations from Europe's XMM-Newton X-ray space telescope reveal that the bullet galaxy blasted through a galaxy cluster called Abell 4067 at 814 miles (1,310 kilometers) per second.
That bullet weighs about 200 trillion times as much as Earth, report astronomers Gayoung Chon and Hans Böhringer of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany. Gassy debris trails from the collision, they write in an upcoming Astronomy & Astrophysics journal study.
The cosmic collision turned up in a survey of 900 distant galaxy clusters, so finding the merger "is a nice surprise," Chon says by email.
Why It Matters
When clusters of galaxies collide, scientists get an unusual glimpse into how these cosmic smash-ups unfold, including how much these distant galaxies actually weigh.
In 2008, observations of an even faster moving "bullet cluster" offered cosmologists proof that dark matter, a mysterious and unseen substance that makes up most of the total matter in the universe, rings most galaxies. While the bullet galaxy left a trail of hot gas, the unseen bulk of its mass—dark matter—continued on a separate trajectory.
Since the new bullet cluster is less massive and the merger slower, weighing its dark matter could be harder, Chon says.
View Images A cool, compact galaxy (white, center) pierces a cluster of galaxies called Abell 4067. Photograph by ESA, XMM-Newton, G. Chon
The Big Picture
The newly discovered bullet cluster should help answer questions about the mass of distant galaxies and how they behave when they smash together. (Of course, since light takes time to travel across galaxies, the smash-up at Abell 4067 actually happened 1.4 billion years ago, and we're just seeing it now.)
Our own Milky Way galaxy likely faces a galactic collision with the nearby Andromeda galaxy within four billion years, meaning that someday, these mergers will be more than a matter of academic interest. (See: "Milky Way Has 4 Billion Years to Live.")
What's Next
Closer observation of the "bullet" should help reveal how much gas surrounds the ancient, compact galaxy, the scientists suggest. And they hope to precisely image the shock wave spawned by the collision.
What's more, Chon says, "we have just been granted a seven-times-deeper XMM[-Newton] observation of this object, so we will have even more details on the merger physics."Like all data networks, the networks that connect servers in giant server farms, or servers and workstations in large organizations, are prone to congestion. When network traffic is heavy, packets of data can get backed up at network routers or dropped altogether.
Also like all data networks, big private networks have control algorithms for managing network traffic during periods of congestion. But because the routers that direct traffic in a server farm need to be superfast, the control algorithms are hardwired into the routers’ circuitry. That means that if someone develops a better algorithm, network operators have to wait for a new generation of hardware before they can take advantage of it.
Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and five other organizations hope to change that, with routers that are programmable but can still keep up with the blazing speeds of modern data networks. The researchers outline their system in a pair of papers being presented at the annual conference of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Data Communication.
“This work shows that you can achieve many flexible goals for managing traffic, while retaining the high performance of traditional routers,” says Hari Balakrishnan, the Fujitsu Professor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. “Previously, programmability was achievable, but nobody would use it in production, because it was a factor of 10 or even 100 slower.”
“You need to have the ability for researchers and engineers to try out thousands of ideas,” he adds. “With this platform, you become constrained not by hardware or technological limitations, but by your creativity. You can innovate much more rapidly.”
The first author on both papers is Anirudh Sivaraman, an MIT graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science, advised by both Balakrishnan and Mohammad Alizadeh, the TIBCO Career Development Assistant Professor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, who are coauthors on both papers. They’re joined by colleagues from MIT, the University of Washington, Barefoot Networks, Microsoft Research, Stanford University, and Cisco Systems.
Different strokes
Traffic management can get tricky because of the different types of data traveling over a network, and the different types of performance guarantees offered by different services. With Internet phone calls, for instance, delays are a nuisance, but the occasional dropped packet — which might translate to a missing word in a sentence — could be tolerable. With a large data file, on the other hand, a slight |
(and perhaps something to worry about for Henry Cavill's Superman when the Man of Steel battles it out with Batman on March 25th, 2016). What do you guys think? Share your thoughts in the usual place!He has since defended his stance and recently called it 'a suggestion'
Trump called to ban Muslims from entering the US in December last year
Angelina Jolie slammed Donald Trump's comments against Muslims on Monday - saying the billionaire's stance did not match her vision of America.
The actress and refugee envoy of the United Nations gave an impassioned plea for refugees at the BBC in London.
She closed her eyes and shook her head in disapproval when someone asked her what she thought of Trump's stance on Muslims, CNN reported.
'To me, America is built on people from around the world coming together for freedoms, especially freedom of religion. So it's hard to hear this is coming from someone who is pressing to be an American president,' Jolie, 40, said.
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Angelina Jolie slammed Donald Trump's comments against Muslims while addressing the refugee crisis at the BBC in London on Monday (pictured)
Trump said in December last year that Muslims should be banned from entering the United States.
His comments came one month after the terror bombings that killed 130 people in Paris, France.
The billionaire has since stood by his proposal, saying on MSNBC's Morning Joe earlier this month that he didn't care if it hurt him in the general election.
'I'm doing the right thing when I do this. And whether it's Muslim or whether it's something else, I mean, I have to do the right thing, and that's the way I've been guided,' he said.
Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal, who served as Saudia Arabia's ambassador to the US from 2005 to 2007, urged Americans not to vote for Trump earlier this month.
'For the life of me, I cannot believe that a country like the United States can afford to have someone as president who simply says, 'These people are not going to be allowed to come to the United States,''' Turki said during a foreign policy dinner in Washington, DC according to the Huffington Post.
Trump said on Friday that his proposed ban was a'suggestion' and that he remained 'flexible' on the issue - while insisting he wasn't softening his position.
'I'm not the president right now so anything I suggest is really a suggestion,' he told NBC.
'I'm not softening my stance at all but I'm always flexible on issues. I am totally flexible on very very many issues and I think you have to be that way.'
Trump (pictured last week in Washington, DC) said in December that Muslims should be banned from entering the US. He has since said he remained 'flexible' on the issue - while insisting he wasn't softening his stance
Jolie (pictured on Monday at the BBC) closed her eyes and shook her head disapprovingly when someone asked what she thought about Trump's views on Muslims
Jolie spoke for 17 minutes about the refugee crisis on Monday, expressing her concern that the support system is breaking down.
'Over 60million people are displaced today - more than any time in the last 70 years. That is one in every 122 people,' she said.
'This tells us something deeply worrying about the peace and security of our world. It says that for all other advances this type of human insecurity is growing faster than our ability to prevent or reverse it.'
The actress also praised a Polish schoolgirl who asked the actress a question on how to improve the integration of young immigrants.
Paulina, 12, moved to the UK with her family six years ago and now attends the Thomas Aveling School in Rochester.
She drew a smile from the Hollywood star.
'Well, that is a lovely question,' Jolie replied. 'I think I would say that the best thing you can do, especially at your age, is that school is hard regardless with fitting in, so the greatest thing is to be a real friend.'
Paulina, 12, a Polish schoolgirl who moved to the UK with her family six years ago, earned praise from Jolie by asking how to improve the integration of young immigrants
Jolie (pictured being interviewed by the BBC's Mishal Husain on Monday) spoke for 17 minutes about the refugee crisis on Monday, expressing her concern that the support system is breaking down
Jolie and the UN's special envoy for refugees accused European countries of neglecting their responsibilities to the humanitarian crisis triggered by the five-year civil war in Syria.
She took aim at politicians for 'preying on the fear' that uncontrolled migration can cause - and hinted that she wanted British voters to back staying in the European Union during a referendum in June.
The actress condemned European leaders for taking part in a 'race to the bottom' over their response to the refugee crisis engulfing the continent as she urged them to reject 'isolationism'.
She said concerns over uncontrolled migration had allowed a politics of fear to grow and countries were 'competing to be the toughest in the hope of protecting themselves whatever the cost or challenge to their neighbors'.
Her comments were immediately attacked by Eurosceptics, who hit out at Jolie for appearing to 'tell us how to vote in the referendum'.
Jolie said on Monday: 'After so many years of failed attempts by governments and leaders to do the right thing we are angry, we feel cheated and we feel confused.
'We are starting to think that maybe it is simply not possible to make a lasting difference.
'But the worst possible choice we could now make is to decide to step back from the world.
'The last time there was this number of refugees was after World War Two, when nations came together to forge the United Nations, the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
'I believe this is again that once-in-a-generation moment when nations have to pull together.
The actress (pictured at the BBC on Monday ) launched a blistering attack on the EU's response to the refugee crisis and condemned member states for taking part in a 'race to the bottom' over accepting migrants
She added: 'It would be naive to think that we can protect ourselves selectively, alone, from challenges in a globalized world, by pulling away from other countries or peoples.
'As with any global problem in the 21st century, uncoordinated national responses are not the answer. An unstable world is an unsafe world for all.
'There is no barrier high enough to protect from such disorder and desperation. If your neighbor's house is on fire you are not safe if you lock your doors.
'Isolationism is not strength. Fragmentation is not the answer. Strength lies in being unafraid: in working with others, and living up to our highest ideals.'
Urging EU leaders to work closer together to find a solution to the hundreds of thousands of refugees who have fled to the continent, Jolie said: 'I believe this is again that once-in-a-generation moment when nations have to pull together.
'How we respond will determine whether we create a more stable world, or face decades of far greater instability.'
Jolie appeared to criticize German Chancellor Angela Merkel for opening Germany's borders to Syrian refugees, saying the move only added to the EU's disorderly response to the humanitarian crisis.
Asked whether Ms Merkel's response to the crisis was pragmatic, the actress said: 'It was a beautiful, beautiful thing that said something to the world. But I do think we need to have a real order, and we need to be explaining how things are being done in a clear way.'
'It is also important that the process is clear so that people in the receiving country understand and have better confidence in the system.'
Jolie, the UN's envoy for refugees (pictured visiting a Syrian refugee camp) accused European countries of neglecting their responsibilities to the humanitarian crisis triggered by the five-year civil war in SyriaIn new collection Queer Brown Voices, artist and activist Luz Guerra describes what it means to “call someone out their name.” In the Lower East Side during the 1960s and 1970s, calling someone out their name was an insult and erasure of their experience encountering colonization. For example, calling someone who was Puerto Rican “Spanish,” overlooked that the Spanish invaded indigenous people on la isla, or that many Latina/os in La Loisada, New York City, came from Caribbean African diasporas. In her essay, Luz talks about the limitations of “Latina/o” and “LGBT,” two categories that filter identity through monolithic narratives.
Queer Brown Voices is filled with insights like these. Edited by activist Letitia Gomez and scholars Salvador Vidal-Ortiz and Uriel Quesada, the collection out this month from University of Texas Press ruptures the dominant views of LGBT activism in the United States and Puerto Rico. As each contributor notes, few historical accounts recognize the contributions of Latina/os in the struggle for LGBT equality. All too often, the histories of queer and trans people of color are whitewashed for mass appeal. Just this summer, the trailer for the new film Stonewall prompted thousands of people to sign a petition calling for a boycott of the film because its story of the Stonewall uprising in New York seems to portray one white man leading the protests, when in fact it was actually initiated by transgender women of color. Whitewashing erases the contributions and struggles of people of color, and it carries over into the focuses of mainstream activist groups. The largest LGBT-rights organizations in the country—like the Human Rights Coalition—have been criticized for focusing more on white, middle-class issues such as adoption rights and marriage equality, instead of issues like the disproportionate number of queer and trans people of color encountering state violence. In our pop culture and in our politics, people of color are placed at the fringes of grand narratives; their needs either absent or singular.
In the tradition of oral history and first-person narratives, such as the feminist classic This Bridge Called My Back, the editors of Queer Brown Voices sought to avoid Eurocentric methods of documenting history. Instead, they opt for a fragmented archive, rooted in the decolonization and feminist movements of the 1960s. Through this approach, Queer Brown Voices queers the way we view history; the stories of change are through nonlinear and subjective perspectives, rather than through a canonical retelling that aims to be “objective.” Best of all, the text is accessible to everyday readers—the collection doesn’t ascribe to scholarly jargon or overly complicated queer theory. Instead, it relies on autobiographical stories, each one exploring history from childhood, “coming out,” cultural reconnection, and finally, adulthood. The collection includes essays from several luminaries who have devoted their lives to working for the rights of people who are often overlooked or purposely shut out even within queer communities.
Gomez, Vidal-Ortiz, and Quesada are transparent about their methodology, explaining their approach to select, translate, transcribe, and organize the book’s sixteen voices. In the preface and introduction, they address the problematic language throughout the essays. For example, there are words translated from Spanish into English that come across as misogynistic or transphobic. These editorial decisions are problematic, though, since the majority of the narratives are told by cisgender Latina/os. There are many voices left out—with room for indigenous people, undocumented queer activists, and more transgender Latinas. This absence is in part because the book focuses on the establishment of local, regional, and national organizations which tie all of these activists within the same national network. However, Uriel Quesada addresses these issues in his conclusion. “We are in debt to the pioneers of the previous three decades, but also to the activists of the twenty-first century.”
Many of these pioneers are women of color, such as Luz Guerra, who helped establish major organizations such as the Austin Latina/o Lesbian and Gay Organization (ALLGO) and the National Latina/o Lesbian and Gay organization (LLEGÓ). Layers of oppression, within the “queer” and “brown” umbrellas, inspired them to work within local networks—and across international borders. Adela Vásquez (the only trans Latina writer in the collection) chronicles migrating from Cuba to San Francisco, arriving in the United States after the 1980 Mariel Boatlift. Seeing the lack of trans Latina representation in California’s HIV/AIDS movements, she decided to become an activist. In her essay, Laura Esquivel, considered La Madre of the LGBT movement, discusses growing up in Southern California’s juvenile justice system. She says, “I was highly gifted, which, in its own way, contributed to my feeling of not belonging anywhere. Not from South Pasadena, not from East L.A. Not Mexican, not white. Ni de aquí, ni de allá.”
In Queer Brown Voices, many of these women discuss existing within this borderland of identity, through various cultures and races—an experience Gloria Anzaldua describes as the “mestiza consciousness.” For many women, activism occurred beyond state borders. For example, Chicana activist Gloria A. Ramirez describes this in her essay “The Queer Roots of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center.” Motivated by the U.S. occupation of Central and South America, San Antonio’s Esperanza Center functioned as a hub to bring together Latina lesbians, many who were single mothers organizing resistance to U.S. imperialism in Operation Desert Storm and the invasion of Panama. Their teach-ins, art exhibitions, and cultural programs received disapproval from many white gay men and conservative right-wing groups alike. This account illuminates ways that white gay men have systematically worked to defund and shutdown queer women of color activists—stories of racism within queer communities that don’t often get told.
José Gutiérrez, founder of the Latina/o GLBT History Project, stresses the importance of Latina/o LGBT preservation, drawing inspiration from his encounter with Sylvia Rivera during the Stonewall riots. “Our Latina/o LGBT communities have been in the United States for years,” he concludes. “Even though, in some moments in time, we were not organized, it did not mean that we did not exist.” He thanks many of the “anonymous heroes” who were faded-out through history. Many of these heroes are documented today through the work of young people of color and people presently active in the movement.
As editor Quesada points out, Queer Brown Voices is a “pioneering step toward a more comprehensive and inclusive history of activism [and] we the editors cannot claim that the entire job is done.” And it’s true—this book should be one of many works documenting queer Latina/o histories. While the book gazes back against Eurocentrism and heteronormativity, more voices should be brought to the center and supersede gay/lesbian and Latina/o binaries. It is a major leap to disrupt and decolonize a history that is still being written.GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. -- Eighteen current and former female athletes have filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court claiming that Larry Nassar, the former USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University doctor, sexually abused them during medical exams.
The lawsuit is the latest in a series of court cases targeting Nassar. More than 65 women have filed lawsuits or police complaints of sexual assault against him, including former U.S. gymnastics national team members. He also faces criminal charges for sexual abuse and child pornography.
The accusers in the new lawsuit ranged in age from 9 to 29 years old at the time of the abuse, according to a civil complaint filed Tuesday morning in Michigan.
Nassar, 53, is perhaps best known for his work with the U.S. women's gymnastics team. He started working international competitions with America's elite gymnasts as a trainer in 1986 and as team doctor in 1996.
Nassar was dismissed by USA Gymnastics in the summer of 2015 after gymnasts told officials with the sport's governing body about his alleged behavior during medical exams, but he continued to treat patients in and around Lansing, Michigan, for more than a year thereafter even though his conduct was, at the time, under the scrutiny of the FBI.
The plaintiffs who filed suit Tuesday participated in a variety of sports, including gymnastics, swimming, figure skating, track and field, field hockey, basketball and soccer.
Some were treated at Nassar's campus office within the Michigan State sports medicine facility, and others were treated at Twistars Gym, a gymnastics training center near Lansing where Nassar also saw patients.
In addition to Nassar, Michigan State University, Twistars and USA Gymnastics are all named as defendants in the lawsuit, which says that all three institutions should have stopped Nassar's alleged behavior years before they finally severed ties with him.
"We intend to show and prove that the young women we represent were betrayed not only by a doctor that used his reputation and position of trust to commit sexual abuse and assaults upon their bodies for his own gratification," says Stephen Drew, one of the plaintiffs' attorneys, "but that the institutions and those in them with a responsibility to protect those children and young women failed to do so."
Nassar and Twistars could not be reached immediately for comment. In the past, Nassar has denied claims of abuse, saying that he was performing a standard medical procedure.
In a statement, Michigan State spokesman Jason Cody said, "While we cannot comment specifically on pending or ongoing litigation, we are deeply disturbed by the state and federal criminal charges against Larry Nassar, and our hearts go out to those directly affected. The criminal investigation into Larry Nassar is a top priority for MSU Police. Detectives are vigorously reviewing all complaints and working through them with the state Attorney General's office and federal U.S. Attorney's Office."
According to the statement, Michigan State began an internal review of Nassar's work for the university in September. It cited one 2014 complaint that "was investigated by MSU Police and our Title IX office," but beyond that, the statement said, "To date, MSU's review has discovered no evidence that any individuals came forward to MSU with complaints about Nassar before Aug. 29, 2016."
USA Gymnastics also issued a statement: "USA Gymnastics finds the allegations against Dr. Nassar very disturbing. When we first learned of athlete concerns regarding Dr. Nassar in the summer of 2015, we immediately notified the FBI and relieved him of any further assignments. USA Gymnastics has fully cooperated with the FBI in its investigation. We find it appalling that anyone would exploit a young athlete or child in this manner, and we are grateful to the athletes who have come forward."
The alleged abuse dates back as far as 1996, according to the lawsuit. The plaintiffs all make highly similar claims, saying that Nassar, "under the guise of treatment," inserted his ungloved fingers into their vaginas and/or rectums and, in some cases, groped their breasts.
Some of the victims, minors at the time, had gone to see Nassar for injuries to their hamstrings and elbows.
Rachael Denhollander, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit and the only one named, alleges that Nassar sexually abused her during a medical exam in 2000, when Denhollander was a 15-year-old club-level gymnast.
"On approximately five separate occasions, at appointments at his office at MSU, Defendant Nassar digitally penetrated Plaintiff Denhollander's vagina and anus with his finger and thumb without prior notice and without gloves or lubricant under the guise of performing 'treatment,'" the lawsuit states.
Denhollander didn't report Nassar to Michigan State University Police until August 2016. Her police report, first made public by The Indianapolis Star, led to dozens of accusations from other women, many of them athletes. More than 60 other women have since filed similar complaints against Nassar with Michigan State University Police.
Warning signs about Nassar's behavior during medical exams were raised years earlier.
Last month, Tiffany Lopez, a former Spartans softball player, filed a lawsuit against Nassar in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
In 1997, Lopez, known then by her maiden name, Tiffany Thomas, was a softball player on full scholarship, a freshman who helped lead the Spartans to the NCAA regional tournament for only the second time in school history. After she developed chronic lower-back pain in 1998, university athletic trainers sent her to see Dr. Nassar.
Lopez alleges that Nassar sexually abused her during medical exams over a period of three years.
When she grew disturbed by his methods and complained to the training staff, Lopez says she was told that Nassar was a world-renowned doctor and that his treatments, which he called "inter-vaginal adjustments," were legitimate practice.
Lopez's lawsuit is among a mounting list of civil and criminal complaints against Nassar:
In early September, a former gymnast on the U.S. women's national team, a 2000 Olympic medalist, sued Nassar and the sport's governing body, USA Gymnastics, claiming that Nassar assaulted her when she traveled for competitions. Nassar penetrated the plaintiff in her sleeping quarters while she wasn't supervised by a chaperone, according to the lawsuit. During one exam, he allegedly talked about oral sex.
In late October, a second former gymnast with the U.S. women's national team filed suit against Nassar, claiming that he sexually assaulted her during medical exams and that the legendary former coaches, Bela and Marta Karolyi, failed to protect her and engaged in their own pattern of physical and emotional abuse. The suit also claims that top USA Gymnastics officials had "wide-ranging knowledge" of the abuse but for years "concealed and ignored" it.
Last month Nassar was charged with three counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct with a person under 13. The charges, announced by Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, do not involve an athlete but rather a girl Nassar allegedly sexually assaulted in his home in Holt, Michigan, between 1998 and 2005.
Also last month, Nassar was arrested on two counts of possessing and receiving child pornography. According to U.S. Attorney Patrick Miles, Nassar had 37,000 images on his computer, including images of a girl younger than 12.
Nassar has remained in jail since his arrest last month on child pornography charges.
John Barr is a reporter for ESPN's Enterprise Unit. He can be reached at John.A.Barr@espn.com. Follow him @JohnBarrESPN. Nicole Noren is a producer in ESPN's Enterprise Unit. She can be reached at Nicole.K.Noren@espn.com.The Canadair CL-215 (Scooper) was the first model in a series of firefighting flying boat amphibious aircraft built by Canadair and later Bombardier. The CL-215 is a twin-engine, high-wing aircraft designed to operate well at low speeds and in high gust-loading environments, as are found over forest fires.
Design and development [ edit ]
The "bomb door" from which the water is dropped
The CL-215 can be traced back to two early projects by Canadair, the CL-43 and CL-204. The CL-43 was conceived as a logistics aircraft and was based on the design of the Canadian Vickers-built 369 Canso (a variant of the Consolidated PBY Catalina).[1] Arising from an earlier 1960s research study at the company, the original concept was for a twin-engined floatplane transport, that was altered into a "firefighter" as a result of a request by forestry officials in the Quebec Service Aérien (Quebec Government Air Service) for a more effective way of delivering water to forest fires. The 1962 preliminary design, the CL-204, was a purpose-designed water bomber that evolved into an amphibian flying boat configuration, powered by two shoulder-mounted 2,100 hp (1,566 kW) Pratt & Whitney R-2800 piston engines. The definitive design known as the CL-215 received a program go-ahead in February 1966 with its maiden flight on 23 October 1967.[2] The first delivery was to the French civil protection agency (Sécurité Civile, then known as Protection Civile) in June 1969. Production of CL-215s progressed through five series ending in 1990.
Variants [ edit ]
Operators [ edit ]
Canadair CL-215 in Canadian civil service
Water tanks with fire suppressant tank at the rear. At the top of the tanks are funnels that spill excess water collected during replenishment operations out of the side of the aircraft.
Over a period of 21 years beginning in 1969, 125 of these aircraft were built and sold to customers in 11 countries.
In 2018, there were 165 in-service CL-215 and CL-415s in 11 countries.[7]
As of January 2016 there were 59 CL215 registered with Transport Canada.[8]
Greece
Hellenic Air Force: 11 CL-215s as of December 2016.[10]
Spanish Air Force, 43 Grupo [12] - 14 as of December 2016. [13]
- 14 as of December 2016. Ministry of Environment (INAER): five Ex-Spanish Air Force CL-215Ts[14]
Royal Thai Navy: one[15] of the two CL-215s delivered in 1978 is used for search and rescue/patrol.[16]
Gokcen Aviation - Turkish Aeronautical Association: nine CL-215s and the current contractor for the Turkish Ministry of Forestry [17]
Former operators [ edit ]
885th Firefighting Squadron of the Croatian Air Force and Air Defence operated CL-215s from 1991 to 2003. They have been replaced by CL-415s.[19]
Sécurité Civile: 15 aircraft operated from June 1969 to 1996, now all replaced with 12 CL-415s.[20]
CVG Ferrominera Orinoco: two CL-215s, one crashed on 1989, the other one has been parked ever since[22]
Yugoslav Air Force: five CL-215s in service with the 676th Fire Fighting Squadron from 1981, until four sold to Greece in 1995.[23]
Accidents and incidents [ edit ]
CL-215s have been involved in 30 accidents, 19 fatal.[24]
Aircraft on display [ edit ]
Specifications (CL-215) [ edit ]
A turboprop-powered CL-215T of the Spanish Air Force
CL-215s belonging to the Canadian province of Alberta
Data from Jane's All the World's Aircraft 1984–85[27]
General characteristics
Crew: 2
2 Capacity: Up to 26 forward facing seats for passenger transport
Up to 26 forward facing seats for passenger transport Length: 19.82 m (65 ft 0 in)
19.82 m (65 ft 0 in) Wingspan: 28.6 m (93 ft 10 in)
28.6 m (93 ft 10 in) Height: 8.92 m (29 ft 3 in)
8.92 m (29 ft 3 in) Wing area: 100.33 m 2 (1,079.9 sq ft)
100.33 m (1,079.9 sq ft) Aspect ratio: 8.15
8.15 Empty weight: 12,160 kg (26,808 lb)
12,160 kg (26,808 lb) Max takeoff weight: 19,731 kg (43,499 lb) on land, 17,100 kg (37,700 lb) on water
19,731 kg (43,499 lb) on land, 17,100 kg (37,700 lb) on water Max capacity for water/retardant: 1,300 US gallons (4,900 L)
1,300 US gallons (4,900 L) Fuel capacity: 5,910 l (1,561.3 US gal; 1,300.0 imp gal) in two fuel tanks, of eight cells each, in the wings
5,910 l (1,561.3 US gal; 1,300.0 imp gal) in two fuel tanks, of eight cells each, in the wings Powerplant: 2 × Pratt & Whitney R-2800-83AM 18-cyl air-cooled radial piston engines, 1,566 kW (2,100 hp) each
2 × Pratt & Whitney R-2800-83AM 18-cyl air-cooled radial piston engines, 1,566 kW (2,100 hp) each Propellers: 3-bladed Hamilton Standard Hydromatic constant-speed fully feathering propeller
Performance
Cruise speed: 291 km/h (181 mph; 157 kn) at 18,595 kg (40,995 lb) and 3,050 m (10,010 ft)
291 km/h (181 mph; 157 kn) at 18,595 kg (40,995 lb) and 3,050 m (10,010 ft) Stall speed: 123 km/h (76 mph; 66 kn) 25° flap power off at 15,603 kg (34,399 lb)
123 km/h (76 mph; 66 kn) 25° flap power off at 15,603 kg (34,399 lb) Range: 2,094 km (1,301 mi; 1,131 nmi) with 1,587 kg (3,499 lb) payload at long-range cruise power
2,094 km (1,301 mi; 1,131 nmi) with 1,587 kg (3,499 lb) payload at long-range cruise power Rate of climb: 5.0833 m/s (1,000.65 ft/min)
Avionics
Dual VHF and VHF/FM comms,
VOR/ILS receivers
ADF
Marker Beacon Rx
Transponder
See also [ edit ]
Related development
Aircraft of comparable role, configuration and era
References [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]This article is from the archive of our partner.
The Republican right/far-right civil war is the guiding narrative for the party in 2014. So it's fitting that the first big skirmish of the year — Arizona's "religious freedom" bill — should have been part of that bigger war. In this case, the establishment won.
On Wednesday night, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed her state's version of the legislation, which would have allowed businesses to refuse services to gay couples on religious grounds. Similar legislation has cropped up in other red states, including Kansas, South Dakota, Idaho, and Mississippi, and even in more-moderate Ohio. As Brewer considered whether or not to kill the bill, Republicans of all stripes weighed in, including a number of prominent party leaders. Both of Arizona's senators, Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich all got on Twitter to offer their advice: kill it. And so it was killed.
As The New York Times reports, those leaders were speaking partly on behalf of the constituency most freaked out at the prospect of the bill becoming law: businesses. A number of local and national companies expressed concern about its passage, including the Super Bowl committee. But the politicians were also hoping to hold off another front in the war splitting the party. The Times:
The decision by members of the Republican establishment to join gay activists in opposing the bill reflected the alarm the Arizona battle stirred among party leaders, who worried about identifying their party with polarizing social issues at a time when Republicans see the prospect of big gains in Congressional elections on economic issues.
There's a lot in that paragraph. Part of the concern expressed in it goes back to the 2010 and 2012 elections, in which a surging Tea Party and a complacent establishment resulted in extreme candidates running for — and losing — Senate seats that the Republicans could have picked up. The broader civil war, though, broke out in the wake of the government shutdown, pitting the pro-business Republican right against the my-way-or-the-highway extreme right. The shutdown's tension focused on the debt ceiling, in which conservatives threatened to allow the government to default on its debt in the mistaken belief that it would slow government spending. That was the point at which the establishment began to fight back.EUR/RUB - Euro Russian Ruble Moscow Symbol Exchange Currency EURRUBFIX= Moscow RUB Real-time EURRUBFIX=RTS Moscow RUB Real-time EUR/RUB Real-time FX RUB Real-time EURTSc1 Moscow RUB Delayed Add to/Remove from a Portfolio Add to Portfolio
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Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, Democrat of Ohio, said today that he plans to support the health care bill when it comes up for a vote this week. He becomes the first Democrat to publicly disclose his intention to switch from a no to a yes vote on the legislation.
INTERACTIVE GRAPHIC Democrats to Watch on the Health Care Vote A look at the 40 House Democrats who may decide the fate of the health care bill.
“I’ve decided to cast a vote in favor of the legislation,” Mr. Kucinich said at a morning news conference in the Capitol. “If my vote is to be counted, let it count now for passage of the bill, hopefully in the direction of comprehensive health care reform.”
Mr. Kucinich said he was “quite aware of the historic fight” underway and decided to drop his opposition that the bill did not go far enough. He said, “I believe health care is a civil right.”
In an interview five days ago, Mr. Kucinich said he could not support the legislation and dismissed suggestions that his vote would derail the Democratic health care agenda. But since then, the congressman has come under extraordinary pressure from groups across the Democratic spectrum, including Moveon.org, which encouraged him to support the bill.
He said he still did not think the legislation went far enough — he has long advocated a single-payer system — but said his objections should not stand in the way of the bill.
“In the past week it’s become clear that the vote on the final health bill will be very close,” Mr. Kucinich said. “I take this vote with the utmost seriousness. I’m quite aware of the historic fight, which has lasted the last century.”
He added: “The president’s visit to my district on Monday underscores the urgency of this vote.”
In a private conversation aboard Air Force One, en route to Ohio on Monday, President Obama pressed Mr. Kucinich for his support for the bill. The White House did not know what the congressman had decided until earlier today, when his aides advised administration officials and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of his plans.
While supporting the Senate bill, Mr. Kucinich said he did not like the procedure that might be used to pass it without an up-or-down vote in the House.
“I don’t like much of anything about this process,’’ Mr. Kucinich said.
Explaining factors he |
fill a similar role; in return, Sayaplayer gets the freedom to play a more individualistic style, while still being an important cog within the well-oiled machine that is Meta Athena.
As his brief stints with Roadhog haven’t been terribly successful he’s been sticking to hitscan DPS heroes; most notably, he is a highly effective Widowmaker player, even though his raw skill isn’t at the level of someone like Taimou.
Most played heroes: Tracer, McCree, Soldier 76, Widowmaker
Stitch* – throughout the season Stitch has slowly shown himself to be the second best thing about RunAway. Statistically one of the best in the tournament and more versatile than most, he’s shown a level of mastery over Soldier 76, McCree, Zarya and Roadhog. A bewildering aspect of his play has been how often he dies on Tracer – the hero he’s played the most.
Nevertheless, his current level could easily see him as the second or third best player for a championship winning team in future. Unfortunately, at least for the immediate future RunAway doesn’t look like it will be the team in question — at least on paper — considering how the team stacks up against the rest of the field.
Most played heroes: Tracer, Soldier 76, McCree, Roadhog, Zarya, Widowmaker
the Benji tier:
Haksal* – the previous season’s up-and-coming great Genji has maintained a similar profile: astonishing at landing shuriken no matter the range, great at skirmishing and stomping on lesser teams, yet for the most part unable to transition the solo hard-carry performances against teams of similar or higher level. The Ro8 matches saw him break a bit away from that pattern, but not enough to get into the A tier.
Most played heroes: Genji, Zarya, D.va, Mei
WhoRU – as the focal point of new-look Lunatic-Hai, the young Genji specialist has been effective, but similarly to EscA last season, very much inefficient with the resources he’s been getting. Overall the author ranks Lunatic-Hai and RunAway’s Genji specialists at a very similar level, but the main reason for ranking WhoRU below Haksal is his mechanical inferiority, even though he plays in a more reliable manner than the latter.
Most played heroes: Genji, Roadhog, Pharah
C tier:
EscA – comparing his level from before WhoRU was recruited to now shows how much impact can being the focal point have on one’s performances. Whereas previously he was a relatively effective player with somewhat inconsistent aim, not getting the space and attention has turned him into one of the worst mechanical players among the elite teams. A redeeming quality to his play however, has been the much improved positioning and smart usage of abilities, most notably Mei’s Ice Wall.
Most played heroes: Soldier 76, Tracer, Mei, McCree, Widowmaker
Overview:
S: ryujehong, tobi, KAISER, Fl0w3r, Libero*
A: Luna, Kris, Hoon, janus, zunba, Saebyeolbe, Sayaplayer, Stitch*
B: NUS, Gambler, Miro, ChangSik, Bumper, Haksal*, WhoRU
C: KoX, Runner, Mek0, EscA
*flex player
Do you agree or disagree with the rankings? Who are your best players for each role? Let us know at @RadoNonfire and @WinstonsLab on twitter!
Photo credits: OGN
About the author:
Hello readers! I go by the ID RadoN and probably similarly to many of you, I’ve been playing video games for years. My introduction to esports happened in 2009 and ever since, I’ve been following different titles within the industry. Other games I currently follow are CS:GO, LoL, QL with the occasional SFV and DOTA2. If you wish to provide feedback, support and follow future content, or simply know more about my thoughts on gaming and esports, follow me at @RadoNonfire on twitter.Tech staffers at the State Department temporarily disabled crucial security features on Hillary Clinton’s private email server in 2010 — leaving a trove of sensitive information vulnerable to hackers.
Anti-virus software was turned off after Clinton and aide Huma Adebin experienced problems sending emails, it was revealed Wednesday in documents released under court order to Judicial Watch, the conservative advocacy group suing the State Department for access to public records from Clinton’s tenure as secretary.
State staffers were desperate to resolve the problem, according to their own emails to each other.
“This should trump all other activities,” a senior technical official, Ken LaVolpe, told IT employees in a Dec. 17, 2010, email.
Another senior State official, Thomas W. Lawrence, emailed days later that Abedin, deputy chief of staff, personally asked for repair updates.
Abedin and Clinton, who both used the private server, had complained that emails each sent to State staffers were not reliably received.
After IT staffers turned off some security features, Lawrence cautioned in an email, “We view this as a Band-Aid and fear it’s not 100 percent fully effective.”
Clinton has repeatedly denied there is any evidence her private email server was ever breached.
Weeks after the technical crisis, on Jan. 9, 2011, an IT worker was forced to shut down Clinton’s server because he believed “someone was trying to hack us.”
Later that day, he wrote, “We were attacked again so I shut it down for a few min.”
It was one of several occasions when Clinton’s private server was down, according to the documents.
With APHere’s a challenge for even the most gifted scriptwriter—suddenly having to break both the legs of your lead character.
That’s the prospect facing the writing team of the CBS show “Madam Secretary,” after leading man Tim Daly was badly injured in a freak skiing accident at Sundance this week.
Daly, who plays the Secretary of State's husband on the show, now in its third season, broke both legs in the accident and is scheduled to have surgery on Wednesday, according to Variety.
The team behind the show has been told that the actor is expected to need between six and eight weeks to fully recover.
However, as befits the scion of a great acting family—Tim’s father, James, co-starred in the 1970s series “Medical Center,” his mother, Hope, was a stage actress and his sister Tyne Daly was Lacey in “Cagney and Lacey”—it appears the show will go on.
Variety reports that “Madam Secretary” producers and writing staff are working out how to rewrite forthcoming episodes to incorporate Daly’s broken legs.
Variety says that Daly, who found fame playing Billy in the original slacker movie Diner, will continue to appear in every episode of the show, alongside Tea Leoni who plays the Secretary of State.
One source close to the production told Variety that the show may be far enough along in its shooting schedule that few changes could be needed.
Daly has said that he loves his role in “Madam Secretary” because his character is not a one-dimensional male goofball.
“I have guys come up to me all the time and say, ‘Thank God you are playing a competent man. Thank you for being someone who’s, you know, strong and can fix stuff where the house doesn’t burn down if his wife goes away,” he said.
Daly is known for his political activism and was seen in Washington at the weekend, protesting Donald Trump’s election as part of the Women’s March. He previously served as president of the Creative Coalition, a non-profit focused on First Amendment rights and arts advocacy.(UPTOWN CHARLOTTE, NC) - Christian Walker singled home Julio Borbon in the top of the 15th inning and led the Norfolk Tides to a 4-3 win in game three of their four-game series against the Charlotte Knights at BB&T Ballpark in Uptown Charlotte on Saturday. With the win, the Tides jumped back into first place in the International League South Division -- a half-game ahead of the Knights.
The Knights, who scored a run in each of the first three innings, had a 3-2 lead as they headed to the ninth inning. With a chance to move to 1.5 games ahead of the Tides in the division, Charlotte manager Joel Skinner handed the ball to steady reliever Zach Phillips, who had his troubles. Phillips allowed back-to-back singles to Dariel Alvarez and Steve Clevenger, which put the tying run on third base for the Tides. Left fielder Sean Halton then came through with a sacrifice fly RBI to tie the game at 3-3.
In the bottom of the ninth inning, the Knights had a chance for their second walk-off win in as many days, but couldn't score a run against a tough Norfolk bullpen. In fact, Norfolk's 'pen combined to throw 8.1 scoreless innings on Saturday.
The game remained tied all the way until the 15th inning, which was only Charlotte's second 15-inning affair since June 18, 2005.
In the top of the 15th, the Tides began a rally against two Charlotte relievers. First, Henry Urrutia drew a leadoff walk against Charlotte's Jarrett Casey (8-2, 4.73). Norfolk manager Ron Johnson then called on the speedy Borbon to pinch-run for Urrutia. That proved to be a wise decision.
With Borbon on first base, Casey struck-out Rey Navarro for the first out of the inning. Charlotte then went to the bullpen and called on Blake Smith to get out of a tough spot. Walker then stepped to the plate to face Smith and quickly had a runner in scoring position when Borbon stole second base. Walker then ripped a 2-2 offering from Smith through the middle of the diamond. Borbon came around to score what proved to be the winning run.
Norfolk reliever Pedro Beato, who closed the game on Thursday and lost the game on Friday, shut the door in the 15th for his ninth save of the season. Norfolk reliever Andy Oliver (2-1, 3.60) earned the win.
Micah Johnson led the way for the Knights at the plate. Playing in his 55th game of the season with the Knights, Johnson ripped two hits including his sixth home run of the year. He finished the night 2-for-6 with two runs scored, one RBI, one stolen base, and the home run. Leury Garcia and Tyler Colvin also added two hits each on the evening.
Hector Noesi started for the Knights and was sharp over five innings. The Dominican native made his first start of the season with the Knights and gave up just one run on one hit. Terance Marin was one of five relievers who came on to pitch in relief of Noesi on Saturday. Marin allowed one unearned run on two hits over three innings. Onelki Garcia allowed just three hits over three scoreless innings. Garcia struck-out five batters.
The Knights welcomed 10,258 fans to the ballpark -- the club's third consecutive sell-out of the homestand and 24th during the 2015 regular season. The game lasted 4:28 minutes on Saturday -- the longest of the season for the Knights.
The two teams will conclude their four-game series from BB&T Ballpark on Sunday with a 5:05 p.m. game. RHP Shawn Haviland (4-5, 4.09) gets the start for the Knights against Norfolk RHP Zach Davies (3-5, 2.70). Gates open at 4:00 p.m. and 1960 World Series MVP Bobby Richardson will be on hand to meet fans and sign autographs.Major League Soccer's Week 11 was as unpredictable as they come, as we saw the defending champions trounced by an expansion side, a team get their first win in grand fashion, and two of the league's most exciting clubs play to a scoreless draw.
In Orlando, after a midweek loss to D.C., the Lions came out ready to strike against the LA Galaxy. Kaká led the charge, assisting on one goal and scoring another as Orlando City beat LA 4-0 for the first home win of their MLS existence.
North of the border, the Montreal Impact go their first MLS win of 2015 in style, routing RSL 4-1 behind sterling performances from Andres Romero and Calum Mallace, among others.
Read on to find out who else made the Team of the Week:
GK: Chris Konopka (Toronto FC) – Made seven saves, several of them breathtaking, to keep TFC in a game in which they were dominated for significant periods.
D: London Woodberry (New England Revolution) – He set up Juan Agudelo’s goal and put in hard work both on and off the ball along the Revs’ right flank as they drew TFC 1-1.
D: Walker Zimmerman (FC Dallas) – Linked up well with Matt Hedges in the back, and played a steady, assured game to preserve a clean sheet against the Red Bulls.
D: Jordan Stewart (San Jose Earthquakes) – Kept Columbus’ wily attack at bay early, and bombed upfield to set up the Quakes’ winning goal in the second half as they finished off Crew SC 2-0.
M: Andres Romero (Montreal Impact) – Showed the form that made him a star during the Impact's CCL run, scoring two goals in Montreal's 4-1 romp over RSL.
M: Kaká (Orlando City SC) – Was mostly anonymous in Orlando City's midweek game but was assertive, aggressive and wildly effective in Sunday's match. He started the play for Orlando’s first goal, assisted on the second and drew/converted the PK for the third. It was perhaps the best game of the Brazilian’s MLS career thus far.
M: Calum Mallace (Montreal Impact) –Controlled the midfield against a disorganized RSL side, completing over 87 percent of his passes and registering two chances created.
M: Shea Salinas (San Jose Earthquakes) – Seems to be thriving in Dom Kinnear’s system, with his skill, ability to cut inside and defensive work in midfield resulting in a strong performance against Columbus.
F: Will Bruin (Houston Dynamo) – Was a beast up top for Owen Coyle's side, scoring twice in the Dynamo's 3-1 win against Portland.
F: Chad Barrett (Seattle Sounders) – No Obafemi, no problem, as Barrett took his chances well, and scored his first brace in league play in five years as the Sounders beat the Whitecaps 2-0.
F: Cyle Larin (Orlando City SC) –Was mostly excellent in Sunday's rout of LA. Great movement, solid possession play and a cool finish on his goal. Also provided a goal in Orlando City's midweek loss to United.
Coach: Sigi Schmid (Seattle Sounders) – Showed up to Vancouver without one of his top two players and saw his team snuff out their rivals dangerous attack with relative ease.
Bench: Bill Hamid (D.C. United), DaMarcus Beasley (Houston Dynamo), Maurice Edu (Philadelphia Union), Felipe (New York Red Bulls), Gonzalo Pineda (Seattle Sounders), Brek Shea (Orlando City SC), David Villa (New York City FC)Share. Extra fighters coming too. Extra fighters coming too.
Nintendo has announced Pokken Tournament is officially coming to Wii U in Spring 2016.
The announcement was made at a presentation during this year's Pokemon World Championships, which is taking place in Boston.
Exit Theatre Mode
During the course of the presentation, a new fighter was revealed - Pikachu Libre. No comment was made regarding the rumours the game will be getting Amiibo support.
Exit Theatre Mode
For those not in the know, Pokken Tournament is an arcade-based Pokemon fighter from Bandai Namco previously only available in Japan.
Back in July, both Charizard and Weavile were announced, rounding out the game's nine-character lineup, which also features Gardevoir, Suicune, and Pikachu.
Luke Karmali is IGN's UK News Editor. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on Twitter.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
Katie Hopkins has provoked fury on social media after retweeting praise for her views on racism from a neo-Nazi Twitter account.
The loudmouth columnist had been sharing a recording of her show on LBC in which a caller called Joseph told her she came across as racist.
It featured her telling him: “I genuinely believe 'racist' as a word has been used so much.
“I'm sorry for the word racist in a way. I love language.
"It's become used so much, it's like a regular word now, it's lost all meaning to me.”
After the show ended she tweeted the clip, writing: "Call me racist. I don't care. I will stand up for white women being raped because you're scared to offend Muslims."
She later retweeted a message praising her from an account called AntiJuden SS, which featured a Nazi swastika on its avatar.
The tweet read: “Now that is the way it should be told.”
Horrified followers slammed her on Twitter.
Graham Crewe wrote: “You want to retweet from someone with THAT symbol as their avatar?!? #crazierthanithought”
And another wrote: “Joining hands with Nazis.
"Probably the best way to ruin all your good work to date. Very disappointed.”
One fan told her: “Respected your point of view until that Nazi retweet.”
The presenter later deleted the retweet, saying: "To be fair, I didn't look at the Twitter handle. I have pulled the retweet."The forthcoming election of a new leader of the World Health Organization (WHO) has focused attention on the future direction of the United Nations’ public-health agency. Supporters like to repurpose Voltaire’s famous line about God and argue that if the WHO didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent it. But the organization is far from being omnipotent and all-powerful. In fact, it would benefit from trying to be a little less of both.
Along with an annual salary of just under US$240,000 and a high-profile role as the globe’s doctor-on-call, the new director-general will inherit staff who are being pulled in too many directions at once and whose employer is no longer as central to global health as it once was. The WHO member states are in large part to blame.
In 1990, the WHO received $579 million in dues from its members, but this core budget has fallen to around $465 million this year. That’s less than the budget of many public-health agencies or large hospitals in rich countries. In 1990, the WHO and other UN agencies received more than half of the $8.5 billion available for global-health funding, and so had primacy. That funding has since ballooned to almost $40 billion. There is a plethora of new players with much greater financial clout, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. Together, these new funders have revolutionized health in the world’s poorest countries. The launch earlier this month of a $1-billion initiative to preemptively research, develop and test vaccines against potential epidemic threats is a good example of what can be achieved by coordinating funding and efforts.
The choice of a successor to director-general Margaret Chan from the shortlisted nominees announced last week — Pakistan’s Sania Nishtar, the United Kingdom’s David Nabarro and Ethiopia’s Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus — is an important decision. Strong political leadership and foresight are needed to turn around the troubled agency, the reputation of which was tarnished by its initial slow response to the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa. But no one should be under any illusions that a new head will be enough to trigger substantive change when he or she takes office in July.
That must begin with a realistic assessment of what the WHO is and is not — and what it can and cannot be reasonably expected to do. One problem is that the WHO has become dangerously dependent on voluntary contributions, which now make up more than 80% of its overall budget. Most of this money comes with strings attached by the funders to their own priorities, making it next to impossible for the WHO to have much of a say in its own agenda. As a result, the WHO’s programmes have proliferated but thinned.
Making matters worse, the agency is lumbered with a cumbersome and expensive organizational structure comprising a headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, and six semi-autonomous regional offices. This has resulted in a complex, bureaucratic and ineffective management structure. It is a body that is ripe for root-and-branch reform. The upheaval is worth it because the WHO — at its best — is worth it.
Speak to researchers who work there and, apart from frustration with the often-stifling bureaucracy, the message that emerges is that when the WHO focuses and brings good people to the table, it has a unique and valuable part to play. This ranges from advancing agendas on mental health and getting its members to sign up to a tobacco-control treaty, to expediting clinical trials of an Ebola vaccine on the ground during the trying conditions of the West African epidemic.
The WHO’s coordinating role in developing the Ebola vaccine also highlights one of its unique benefits — no other body has the convening power of this intergovernmental agency, which can rapidly bring together scientists, industry, regulators and national public-health officials when needed.
To respond to crises, the WHO has also launched an emergency programme with a dedicated budget, workforce and command-and-control structure — although it remains to be seen how much funding it will attract and how effective it will be. But the WHO is not a global firefighter, and cannot be expected to be. Rather, it is a facilitator for more-operational organizations — key players such as the medical humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (also known as Doctors Without Borders) and national public-health authorities.
Tabletop exercises that simulate ways of tackling epidemics and pandemics show that the world remains woefully unprepared for such events. Ultimately, an effective frontline response depends on having functional public-health systems (which are still lacking in many places), preparing contingency plans so that interconnected global supply chains do not break down and planning for large outbreaks in cities, which are at increased risk as a result of rampant urbanization. The WHO has a crucial role in these and many other areas of public health as a facilitator and provider of sound scientific expertise. But it is ultimately down to the countries of the world to do the heavy lifting.March 14, 2016
Putin: Withdrawal Of Russian Forces From Syria Starting March 15
This is an extremely interesting and likely very smart move. Putin again catches everyone off guard.
TASS reports:
Putin orders to begin withdrawal of Russian forces from Syria from March 15
March 14, 20:40 UTC+3 The Russian leader hopes the withdrawal of Russian troops will become a good motivation for launching negotiations between political forces in the country MOSCOW, March 14. /TASS/. Putin orders Russian defense minister to begin withdrawal of Russian forces from Syria from March 15. The Russian president said he hopes the start of the withdrawal of Russian troops will become a good motivation for launching negotiations between political forces of that country and instructed the foreign minister to intensify Russia’s participation in organization of peace process in Syria.
Via other sources Putin said: The armed forces achieved their goals in Syria. The two Air Force and Naval bases in Syria will stay and operate normally. The move was in agreement with the Syrian government.
I believe that, for this to have happened, there must be a deal in place with the U.S. to wind up the Syria situation. What did Putin get in return?
And what units will actually pull out? Three military cooks departing while civilians take up their jobs?
The tide of the war on Syria has changed. There is no longer a danger that Assad will lose the fight.
There were some Russian artillery and special forces units taking part in the ground operations in north Latakia. Latakia is now mostly cleaned up and the Russian bases there are no longer in danger. (The S-400 air defense will of course stay.) Will these troops now be pulled out?
Or is this, as announced, an "incentive" to put some urgency on progress in the Geneva negotiations? (An "incentive" that can be taken back should it not have the intended results.)
One can also think of this as a message to the U.S. to get serious: "Don't take our help in fighting ISIS for granted. We can simply secure Assad and leave. Then you alone will have to clean up the Jihadi mess you created."
Posted by b on March 14, 2016 at 01:56 PM | Permalink
Comments
next page »Donald Trump has moved into the lead over Hillary Clinton, 44% to 43% with two days left before Election Day, according to the latest IBD/TIPP presidential tracking poll. And the number of states in play is expanding.
The GOP and Democratic nominees had been tied for the prior four days. Libertarian Party pick Gary Johnson is at 5% while the Green Party's Jill Stein is at 2%.
The readings for all candidates are the same in the unrounded IBD/TIPP poll data. A day earlier, Clinton led by 0.5 point.
In a head-to-head matchup excluding third-party candidates, Clinton is ahead by 1.5 points, 45.3% to 43.8%, but that's down from 2.6 points a day earlier.
The poll of 903 likely voters from Nov. 2-5 reflects a weighted response of 309 Democrats, 289 Republicans and 247 independent and "other" voters. It has a margin of error of +/-3.3 percentage points.
The Real Clear Politics average of nine recent national polls as of early Sunday morning has Clinton up by 2.1 points in a four-way race. But it was 7.1 points as recently as Oct. 17.
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Clinton had appeared on her way to victory until FBI Director James Comey disclosed on Oct. 28 that his agency was reopening its criminal investigation regarding Clinton's use of a private email server while secretary of state.
UPDATE: Comey told lawmakers Sunday that after reviewing the new emails, he still is not recommending criminal charges vs. Clinton.
"Based on our review, we have not changed our conclusions that we expressed in July," he wrote.
It's unclear how this new disclosure will affect the race so close to Election Day, especially with so much early voting.
As national polls have tightened, Trump has closed the gap in several key states.
Fresh surveys in states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Hampshire and Colorado suggest that they may be in reach for the GOP nominee. Meanwhile, Real Clear Politics labels traditionally Republican states Arizona and Georgia as tossups.
Veteran election watcher Charlie Cook has backed away from his prediction less than two weeks ago that the race is "over."
"The race is in a different place than 8 or 9 days ago when there was virtually no path for Trump," the publisher of the Cook Political Report told The Hill on Saturday. "So yes, like everyone else, we've revised our assessment."
Trump has multiple paths to winning the White House. But he does need to win most of the battleground states, whereas Clinton only needs a few.
Cross-Country Campaigning
Both candidates are making multi-state stops daily to drive up turnout. Trump was in Florida, Nevada and Colorado Saturday, while Clinton made stops in Florida and Pennsylvania.
Early voting is heavier than ever in many states. Latino turnout appears to have been very strong so far in Nevada, prompting longtime local political reporter Jon Ralston to say that dooms Trump's chances in the Silver State. The RCP poll average shows Trump ahead by 2 points in Nevada.
In Reno Saturday evening, Secret Service agents rushed Trump off stage when a crowd thought a man holding a "Republicans Against Trump" sign had a gun. Secret Service found no firearm.
As for Clinton, heavy rain cut short a morning speech in Florida.
"My friends, you are a hearty bunch standing out here in the rain. I don't think I need to tell you all of the wrong things about Donald Trump," she said.
That evening she held an event in Philadelphia, where Katy Perry sang on her behalf. That followed a Friday night stop in Cleveland where music power couple Jay-Z and Beyoncé performed.
Trump said in Colorado Saturday night that such celebrity events are "demeaning to the political process."
Clinton will be back in Philadelphia for an election eve rally with President Obama and his wife Michelle.
That could mark some concern in the Clinton camp about Pennsylvania. But it's also one of the battleground states that doesn't have much early voting.
Michigan is another such state. Trump will campaign there Monday. Clinton and Obama will hold rallies in Michigan that day too. Ex-President Bill Clinton will stump there Sunday.
The Clinton campaign and allied groups have more money and organization to help get out the vote, while Trump is relying on his own star power and supporters' greater enthusiasm for their candidate.
Independents Favor Trump
Trump needs to win swing voters by a wide margin to sweep to victory. In the latest IBD/TIPP poll, he leads independents by 9 points, 40%-31%.
Notably, Johnson gets 12% of this key group and Stein 5%. Will independents actually pull the lever for third-party candidates, especially in tossup states where the outcome is in doubt?
Meanwhile, Trump leads among men 50%-38%, while Clinton leads among women, 48%-38%. She dominates with single women, 59%-25%, but married women favor Trump, 49%-38%.
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Hillary Clinton Email Scandal Explained
Clinton Foundation ScandalGiven all the rampant gadget patenting that goes on in the computer industry, it's peculiar that computers themselves never got patented. But it wasn't for lack of trying. Here's the twisted tale of one of the longest patent battles in recent history.
When we think of the computer's inventor, we most often probably think of Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace's Difference and Analytical Engines, or even the ancient Antikythera. Yet there is little or no direct connection between those early calculating machines and the antecedents of the modern computer developed in the 1940s.
Historian I.B. Cohen identifies three types of devices that converged in the first general-purpose computers: "early calculating machines, statistical machines, and logical automata." The first of the general purpose machines is assumed, by most people, to be the ENIAC.
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ENIAC with programmers Glen Beck and Becky Snyder
The ENIAC, for "Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer" was constructed at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Engineering, under a contract from the U.S. Army, signed in 1943.
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During and immediately after the war, the Army requested additional machines and the EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) was begun, also at the Moore School, based on a "logical design" (pdf) by John von Neumann. Within this design was the idea for the stored program. Von Neumann "suggested that the instructions for the computer—always before entered on punched paper tape, or by plugboards—could be stored in the computer's electronic memory and treated in exactly the same manner as numerical data."
John von Neumann with the Institute for Advanced Study Computer
Developed for calculating artillery firing tables, the ENIAC was, almost incidentally, the first general-purpose automatic computer, and was used in the 1940s for weather prediction, atomic energy calculations, cosmic ray studies, thermal ignition, random-number studies, and wind-tunnel design. With the addition of the capacity to store programs, a capacity articulated by von Neumann, and the utilization of binary logic rather than decimal, the computer "architecture" attributed to von Neumann was widely disseminated in the late 1940s and reproduced in different iterations by institutions and corporations. This dissemination produced the familiar acronymed machines associated with this first generation of modern computers: ENIAC, EDVAC, EDSAC, ILLIAC, MANIAC, and UNIVAC.
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The Longest Patent Trial in History
After the war, J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly, who had supervised the ENIAC's construction, applied for a patent and formed their own computer company. Filed in 1947, the patent was not granted until 1964. Bell Labs, among others, challenged Eckert and Mauchly, whose company had been acquired by Sperry Rand after barely escaping bankruptcy due to intense competition from other early computer companies, especially IBM.
Sperry Rand, meanwhile, began pressuring competitors to license the ENIAC design at a fee of 1.5% of sale, or be charged with violation of the patent. IBM settled with Sperry Rand for $10 million, but Honeywell and others sued.
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After what was the longest trial in the federal court to date, beginning in 1967 and concluding in 1973, during which 77 witnesses testified, and in which almost 33,000 objects were entered into evidence, including Charles Babbage's autobiography, Judge Earl Larson invalidated Eckert and Mauchly's patent on four grounds:
First, that the patent had been filed more than a year after the machine had been put to use. Second, that von Neumann's "First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC" constituted prior publication. Third, that Eckert and Mauchly's attorneys had engaged in misconduct by deliberately delaying the patenting process, hoping to put off the day the patent took effect and thus increasing its financial value to Sperry Rand. And fourth, and most damaging of all, that Eckert and Mauchly "did not themselves first invent the automatic electronic digital computer, but instead derived that subject matter from one Dr. John Vincent Atanasoff."
Mauchly had, Larson concluded, adopted some ideas from the ABC, the Atanasoff-Berry Computer, which Mauchly had viewed on a trip to Iowa State University in 1941.
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The ABC (a title which was designated as part of the judicial proceedings, which the device had not had before) was electronic, although a special-purpose device with unreliable operation, and not automatic. It was also not "Turing complete." It was reconstruced in the courtroom as part of the proceedings, a presentation which might have served to convince Judge Larson of its priority, as he was not, himself, familiar with computers.
The ABC
Furthermore, at the time of the trial, Atanasoff had long since given up his efforts to construct a computer, leaving Iowa State for work with the Navy during World War II. It was only during the preparation for Honeywell v. Sperry Rand that lawyers contacted Atanasoff and requested he reconstruct his computer.
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Recognizing Atanasoff
So while the consensus tends to be that Eckert and Mauchly, along with von Neumann, were responsible for the genesis of modern computing, Atanasoff maintains a few enthusiastic proponents. John Burks, who worked on the ENIAC, and his wife Alice Rowe Burks, who was a "computer" (when that term meant a human, often female, person performing calculations) in the early 1940s, have argued passionately for Atanasoff's recognition, and they have enlisted Gödel, Escher, Bach author Douglas Hoftadter. Novelist Jane Smiley is also an Atanasoff partisan and has written a biography, The Man Who Invented the Computer.
In fact, most accounts agree that the ENIAC and its successor the EDVAC are the first modern computers, that they combined the capacity to store programs with general purpose use and digital technology for the first time. This combination represents the modern epoch of the computer. And as little as Atanasoff is known, Eckert and Mauchly also receive very little recognition. The ones who history remembers have tended to be those responsible for the theory: Alan Turing and John von Neumann are the most significant innovators of the modern computer, while Babbage and Lovelace remain its grandparents. The modern computer, the ENIAC demonstrates, is the product of several inventions and ideas, which were circulating widely among scientists during and after WWII.
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A consequence of the trial is that the computer began and remained a device within the public domain. Because the von Neumann architecture had been widely disseminated so early, the seeds of modern computer design were planted all over, on both sides of the Atlantic.
So, finally, nobody owns the intellectual property of the computer.
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Further Reading:
A Computer Perspective
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Who Invented the Computer?
The Man Who Invented the ComputerAs automakers augment the reciprocating piston engine with hybrid systems and improved accessories, independent inventors are busily working to make huge improvements to the basic efficiency of the internal combustion engine. Novel designs are popping up at engineering expos everywhere, and the newest comes from Bloomfield, Conn.-based LiquidPiston. Its X1 engine is a simple machine with just three moving parts and thirteen major components, but it aims to raise thermal efficiency from the 20 percent of a normal gas engine to more than 50 percent, with drastic reductions in weight and size. How? By wasting much less energy during the course of an combustion cycle.
Up to 80 percent of the energy in fossil fuels is thrown away normal engines through the heat and pressure of exhaust, or dumped to the atmosphere through the radiator. LiquidPiston's design attempt to capture all of that waste within a tiny package. "We stretched the performance curves in every direction to get much higher efficiency," said Alec Shkolnik, President and CEO of LiquidPiston, "We took the best parts of many different thermal cycles and combined them." The design is theoretically capable of 75 percent thermal efficiency, but the group is targeting 57 percent in real world applications, still a huge jump.
The basic idea is similar to a Wankel rotary, but turned on its head. Where the rotor holds the seals in a normal Wankel, the housing does that job in the X1 engine. This allows significant reduction in oil consumption |
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9/11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer said "We were extremely frustrated with the false statements we were getting"
Former 9/11 Commissioner Max Cleland resigned from the Commission, stating: "It is a national scandal"; "This investigation is now compromised"; and "One of these days we will have to get the full story because the 9-11 issue is so important to America. But this White House wants to cover it up".
9/11 Commissioner John Lehman said that “We purposely put together a staff that had – in a way - conflicts of interest".
The Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (John Farmer) who led the 9/11 staff's inquiry, said "I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described.... The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years.... This is not spin. This is not true."
CONGRESS
According to the Co-Chair of the Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 and former Head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham, a U.S. government informant was the landlord to two of the hijackers for over a year (but the White House refused to let the 9/11 inquiry interview him).
Current U.S. Senator (Patrick Leahy) states "The two questions that the congress will not ask... is why did 9/11 happen on George Bush's watch when he had clear warnings that it was going to happen? Why did they allow it to happen?"
Current Republican Congressman (Ron Paul) states that "we see the [9/11] investigations that have been done so far as more or less cover-up and no real explanation of what went on"
Current Democratic Congressman (Dennis Kucinich) hints that we aren't being told the truth about 9/11
Former Democratic Senator (Mike Gravel) states that he supports a new 9/11 investigation and that we don't know the truth about 9/11
Former U.S. Democratic Congressman (Dan Hamburg) says that the U.S. government "assisted" in the 9/11 attacks, stating that "I think there was a lot of help from the inside"
Former U.S. Republican Congressman and senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, and who served six years as the Chairman of the Military Research and Development Subcommittee (Curt Weldon) has shown that the U.S. tracked hijackers before 9/11, is open to hearing information about explosives in the Twin Towers, and is open to the possibility that 9/11 was an inside job
MILITARY LEADERS
Bronze Star, Silver Star, and Purple Heart (General Wesley Clark)
"I am 100% convinced that the attacks of September 11, 2001 were planned, organized, and committed by treasonous perpetrators that have infiltrated the highest levels of our government....
Those of us in the military took an oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic". Just because we have retired does not make that oath invalid, so it is not just our responsibility, it is our duty to expose the real perpetrators of 9/11 and bring them to justice, no matter how hard it is, how long it takes, or how much we have to suffer to do it.
We owe it to those who have gone before us who executed that same oath, and who are doing the same thing in Iraq and Afghanistan right now. Those of us who joined the military and faithfully executed orders that were given us had to trust our leaders. The violation and abuse of that trust is not only heinous, but ultimately the most accurate definition of treason!"
"This isn't about party, it isn't about Bush Bashing. It's about our country, our constitution, and our future....
Your countrymen have been murdered and the more you delve into it the more it looks as though they were murdered by our government, who used it as an excuse to murder other people thousands of miles away.
If you ridicule others who have sincere doubts and who know factual information that directly contradicts the official report and who want explanations from those who hold the keys to our government, and have motive, means, and opportunity to pull off a 9/11, but you are too lazy or fearful, or... to check into the facts yourself, what does that make you?....
Are you afraid that you will learn the truth and you can't handle it?..."
INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONALS
SCIENTISTS
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan (Col. Ronald D. Ray) said that the official story of 9/11 is "the dog that doesn't hunt" Director of the U.S. "Star Wars" space defense program in both Republican and Democratic administrations, who was a senior air force colonel who flew 101 combat missions (Col. Robert Bowman) stated that 9/11 was an inside job. He also said:U.S. Army Air Defense Officer and NORAD Tac Director, decorated with the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star and the Soldiers Medal (Capt. Daniel Davis) stated:President of the U.S. Air Force Accident Investigation Board, who also served as Pentagon Weapons Requirement Officer and as a member of the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review, and who was awarded Distinguished Flying Crosses for Heroism, four Air Medals, four Meritorious Service Medals, and nine Aerial Achievement Medals (Lt. Col. Jeff Latas) is a member of a group which doubts the government's version of 9/11 U.S. General, Commanding General of U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe, decorated with thesaid "We've never finished the investigation of 9/11 and whether the administration actually misused the intelligence information it had. The evidence seems pretty clear to me. I've seen that for a long time." Air Force Colonel and key Pentagon official (Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski) finds various aspects of 9/11 suspicious Lieutenant colonel, 24-year Air Force career, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs at the Defense Language Institute (Lt. Colonel Steve Butler) said "Of course Bush knew about the impending attacks on America. He did nothing to warn the American people because he needed this war on terrorism." Two-Star general (Major General Albert Stubbelbine) questions the attack on the Pentagon U.S. Air Force fighter pilot, former instructor at the USAF Fighter Weapons School and NATO’s Tactical Leadership Program, with a 20-year Air Force career (Lt. Colonel Guy S. Razer) said the following U.S. Marine Corps lieutenant colonel, a fighter pilot with over 300 combat missions flown and a 21-year Marine Corps career (Lt. Colonel Shelton F. Lankford) believes that 9/11 was an inside job, and said U.S. Navy 'Top Gun' pilot (Commander Ralph Kolstad) who questions the official account of 9/11 and is calling for a new investigation, says "When one starts using his own mind, and not what one was told, there is very little to believe in the official story" The Group Director on matters of national security in the U.S. Government Accountability Office said that President Bush did not respond to unprecedented warnings of the 9/11 disaster and conducted a massive cover-up instead of accepting responsibility Additionally, numerous military leaders from allied governments have questioned 9/11, such as: Canadian Minister of Defense, the top military leader of Canada (Paul Hellyer) Assistant German Defense Minister (Andreas Von Bulow) Commander-in-chief of the Russian Navy (Anatoli Kornukov) Chief of staff of the Russian armed forces (General Leonid Ivashov)Former military analyst and famed whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg recently said that the case of a certain 9/11 whistleblower is " far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers ". He also said that the government is ordering the media to cover up her allegations about 9/11. And he said that some of the claims concerning government involvement in 9/11 are credible, that "very serious questions have been raised about what they [U.S. government officials] knew beforehand and how much involvement there might have been", that engineering 9/11 would not be humanly or psychologically beyond the scope of the current administration, and that there's enough evidence to justify a new, "hard-hitting" investigation into 9/11 with subpoenas and testimony taken under oath. A 27-year CIA veteran, who chaired National Intelligence Estimates and personally delivered intelligence briefings to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, their Vice Presidents, Secretaries of State, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and many other senior government officials (Raymond McGovern) said “ I think at simplest terms, there’s a cover-up. The 9/11 Report is a joke”, and is open to the possibility that 9/11 was an inside job A 29-year CIA veteran, former National Intelligence Officer (NIO) and former Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis (William Bill Christison) said “ I now think there is persuasive evidence that the events of September did not unfold as the Bush administration and the 9/11 Commission would have us believe.... All three [buildings that were destroyed in the World Trade Center] were most probably destroyed by controlled demolition charges placed in the buildings before 9/11. " (and see this ). 20-year Marine Corps infantry and intelligence officer, the second-ranking civilian in U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence, and former CIA clandestine services case officer (David Steele) stated that "9/11 was at a minimum allowed to happen as a pretext for war", and it was probably an inside job (see Customer Review dated October 7, 2006).A decorated 20-year CIA veteran, who Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh called "perhaps the best on-the-ground field officer in the Middle East”, and whose astounding career formed the script for the Academy Award winning motion picture Syriana (Robert Baer) said that "the evidence points at" 9/11 having had aspects of being an inside job The Division Chief of the CIA’s Office of Soviet Affairs, who served as Senior Analyst from 1966 - 1990. He also served as Professor of International Security at the National War College from 1986 - 2004 (Melvin Goodman) said " The final [9/11 Commission] report is ultimately a coverup."Professor of History and International Relations, University of Maryland. Former Executive Assistant to the Director of the National Security Agency, former military attaché in China, with a 21-year career in U.S. Army Intelligence (Major John M. Newman, PhD, U.S. Army) questions the government's version of the events of 9/11. The head of all U.S. intelligence, the Director of National Intelligence (Mike McConnel) said "9/11 should have and could have been prevented" A number of intelligence officials, including a CIA Operations Officer who co-chaired a CIA multi-agency task force coordinating intelligence efforts among many intelligence and law enforcement agencies (Lynne Larkin) sent a joint letter to Congress expressing their concerns about “serious shortcomings,” “omissions,” and “major flaws” in the 9/11 Commission Report and offering their services for a new investigation (they were ignored).A prominent physicist with 33 years of service for the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC (Dr. David L. Griscom) said that the official theory for why the Twin Towers and world trade center building 7 collapsed "does not match the available facts" and supports the theory that the buildings were brought down by controlled demolition
A world-renowned scientist, recipient of the National Medal of Science, America's highest honor for scientific achievement (Dr. Lynn Margulis) said:
The former head of the Fire Science Division of the government agency which claims that the World Trade Centers collapsed due to fire (the National Institute of Standards and Technology), who is one of the world’s leading fire science researchers and safety engineers, a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering (Dr. James Quintiere), called for an independent review of the World Trade Center Twin Tower collapse investigation. "I wish that there would be a peer review of this," he said, referring to the NIST investigation. "I think all the records that NIST has assembled should be archived. I would really like to see someone else take a look at what they've done; both structurally and from a fire point of view.... I think the official conclusion that NIST arrived at is questionable."
The principal electrical engineer for the entire World Trade Center complex, who was "very familiar with the structures and [the Twin Towers'] conceptual design parameters" (Richard F. Humenn), stated that "the mass and strength of the structure should have survived the localized damage caused by the planes and burning jet fuel.... the fuel and planes alone did not bring the Towers down."
Former Director for Research, Director for Aeronautical Projects, and Flight Research Program Manager for NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, who holds masters degrees in both physics and engineering (Dwain A. Deets) says:
A prominent physicist, former U.S. professor of physics from a top university, and a former principal investigator for the U.S. Department of Energy, Division of Advanced Energy Projects (Dr. Steven E. Jones) stated that the world trade centers were brought down by controlled demolition
A U.S. physics professor who teaches at several universities (Dr. Crockett Grabbe) believes that the World Trade Centers were brought down by controlled demolition
An expert on demolition (Bent Lund) said that the trade centers were brought down with explosives (in Danish)
A Dutch demolition expert (Danny Jowenko) stated that WTC 7 was imploded A safety engineer and accident analyst for the Finnish National Safety Technology Authority (Dr. Heikki Kurttila) stated regarding WTC 7 that "The great speed of the collapse and the low value of the resistance factor strongly suggest controlled demolition."
A 13-year professor of metallurgical engineering at a U.S. university, with a PhD in materials engineering, a former Congressional Office of Technology Assessment Senior Staff Member (Dr. Joel S. Hirschhorn), is calling for a new investigation of 9/11
A Danish professor of chemistry (Dr. Niels Harrit) said, in a mainstream Danish newspaper, "WTC7 collapsed exactly like a house of cards. If the fires or damage in one corner had played a decisive role, the building would have fallen in that direction. You don't have to be a woodcutter to grasp this" (translated)
A former guidance systems engineer for Polaris and Trident missiles and professor emeritus, mathematics and computer science at a university concluded (Dr. Bruce R. Henry) that the Twin Towers "were brought down by planted explosives."
A mechanical engineer with 20 years experience as a Fire Protection Engineer for the U.S. Departments of Energy, Defense, and Veterans Affairs, who is a contributing Subject Matter Expert to the U.S. Department of Energy Fire Protection Engineering Functional Area Qualification Standard for Nuclear Facilities, a board member of the Northern California - Nevada Chapter of the Society of Fire Protection Engineers, currently serving as Fire Protection Engineer for the city of San Jose, California, the 10th largest city in the United States (Edward S. Munyak) believes that the World Trade Center was destroyed by controlled demolition.
The former Chief of the Strategic and Emergency Planning Branch, U.S. Department of Energy, and former Director of the Office of Engineering at the Public Service Commission in Washington, D.C., who is a mechanical engineer (Enver Masud), does not believe the official story, and believes that there is a prima facie case for controlled demolition of the World Trade Center.
STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS AND ARCHITECTS
A professor of mathematics (Gary Welz) said "The official explanation that I've heard doesn't make sense because it doesn't explain why I heard and felt an explosion before the South Tower fell and why the concrete was pulverized"
A prominent engineer with 55 years experience, in charge of the design of hundreds of major building projects including high rise offices, former member of the California Seismic Safety Commission and former member of the National Institute of Sciences Building Safety Council (Marx Ayres) believes that the World Trade Centers were brought down by controlled demolition (see also this)
Two professors of structural engineering at a prestigious Swiss university (Dr. Joerg Schneider and Dr. Hugo Bachmann) said that, on 9/11, World Trade Center 7 was brought down by controlled demolition (translation here)
LEGAL SCHOLARS
Former Federal Prosecutor, Office of Special Investigations, U.S. Department of Justice under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan; former U.S. Army Intelligence officer, and currently a widely-sought media commentator on terrorism and intelligence services (
John Loftus
Former Inspector General, U.S. Department of Transportation; former Professor of Aviation, Dept. of Aerospace Engineering and Aviation and Professor of Public Policy, Ohio State University (
Mary Schiavo
Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois, Champaign; a leading practitioner and advocate of international law; responsible for drafting the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, the American implementing legislation for the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention; served on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International (1988-1992), and represented Bosnia- Herzegovina at the World Court, with a Doctor of Law Magna Cum Laude as well as a Ph.D. in Political Science, both from Harvard University (Dr.
Francis Boyle
Former prosecutor in the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section of the U.S. Justice Department and a key member of Attorney General Bobby Kennedy’s anti-corruption task force; former assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois (
J. Terrence "Terry" Brunner
Professor Emeritus, International Law, Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University; in 2001 served on the three-person UN Commission on Human Rights for the Palestine Territories, and previously, on the Independent International Commission on Kosovo (
Richard Falk
questions the government's version of 9/11.
Bessie Dutton Murray Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Director, Center for Human Rights, University of Iowa; Fellow, World Academy of Art and Science. Honorary Editor, Board of Editors, American Journal of International Law ( Bessie Dutton Murray Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Director, Center for Human Rights, University of Iowa; Fellow, World Academy of Art and Science. Honorary Editor, Board of Editors, American Journal of International Law (
Burns H. Weston
questions the government's version of 9/11.
Former president of the National Lawyers Guild ( Former president of the National Lawyers Guild (
C. Peter Erlinder
Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Troy University; associate General Counsel, National Association of Federal Agents; Retired Agent in Charge, Internal Affairs, U.S. Customs, responsible for the internal integrity and security for areas encompassing nine states and two foreign locations; former Federal Sky Marshall; 27-year U.S. Customs career ( ), who signed a petition calling for a real investigation into 9/11. And see petition Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Troy University; associate General Counsel, National Association of Federal Agents; Retired Agent in Charge, Internal Affairs, U.S. Customs, responsible for the internal integrity and security for areas encompassing nine states and two foreign locations; former Federal Sky Marshall; 27-year U.S. Customs career (
Mark Conrad
Professor of Law, University of Freiburg; former Minister of Justice of West Germany (
Horst Ehmke
questions the government's version of 9/11.
Director of Academic Programs, Institute for Policy and Economic Development, University of Texas, El Paso, specializing in executive branch secrecy policy, governmental abuse, and law and bureaucracy; former U.S. Army Signals Intelligence officer; author of several books on law and political theory (Dr. Director of Academic Programs, Institute for Policy and Economic Development, University of Texas, El Paso, specializing in executive branch secrecy policy, governmental abuse, and law and bureaucracy; former U.S. Army Signals Intelligence officer; author of several books on law and political theory (Dr.
William G. Weaver
questions the government's version of 9/11.
Famed trial attorney ( Famed trial attorney (
Gerry Spence
FAMILY MEMBERS AND HEROIC FIRST RESPONDERS
PSYCHIATRISTS AND PSYCHOLOGISTS
THOUSANDS OF OTHERS
Former FBI agent (Robert Wright) says "The FBI, rather than trying to prevent a terrorist attack, was merely gathering intelligence so they would know who to arrest when a terrorist attack occurred."
Former FBI translator, who the Department of Justice's Inspector General and several senators have called extremely credible (free subscription required) (Sibel Edmonds), said "If they were to do real investigations we would see several significant high level criminal prosecutions in this country. And that is something that they are not going to let out. And, believe me; they will do everything to cover this up". She also is leaning towards the conclusion that 9/11 was an inside job. Some of her allegations have been confirmed in the British pressImage copyright Getty Images Image caption Football is growing in popularity as a youth sport in the United States
A group of young American footballers and their parents have sued Fifa and US football groups over the risks from concussions.
The California class-action lawsuit accuses the sport's governing bodies of acting "carelessly and negligently" and failing to protect young players.
The filing also calls for new safety rules, including limiting the number of headers for young players,
The US collegiate sports authority settled a similar suit last month.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) agreed to toughen rules over how long players have to rest after a head injury, and to create a multi-million dollar fund to test athletes for brain trauma.
The Fifa suit, filed by two former youth football players and parents of current young players, does not seek monetary damages, but calls for a medical monitoring programme for those who played football as children and young adults and may have suffered concussions.
The filing argues "there is an epidemic of concussion injuries in soccer at all levels around the world" and that "Fifa presides over this epidemic and is one of its primary causes" through its ability to set the rules of the game.
The US Soccer Federation, US Youth Soccer Associations and several other football groups are also named as defendants.
A Fifa spokeswoman told US media they had no comment as they had not yet seen the lawsuit.
The spokeswoman, Delia Fischer, told the Bloomberg website the association has assigned a "high priority" to prevention and treatment of head injuries, and has "clear recommendations" for team doctors.
The lawsuit particularly focuses on heading, citing research that the practice is more damaging for young people because their neck muscles are weaker and cannot slow the impact of the ball on the head.
Among the changes sought are limiting the number of times a player under 17 can head the ball and allowing temporary substitutions in professional leagues if a player has received a head injury.For as long as I've known them, I've been amazed at how passionately Jon and Aimee Murphy loved each other. They looked after each other and their family the way thoroughly good people do.
Jon was a first rate protector. When I started dating his step daughter, he let me know in no uncertain terms that his eyes were on me, and I was a better man for it. When someone tried to break into his house when his family was home a while back, he sprang into action with little regard for his own safety and saved the day. He worked as hard and selflessly as anyone I've ever met, and he did it all for his family.
This weekend, Jon and his wife Aimee used their rare day off to go to the mall together and get their wedding rings cleaned. While they were there, two horrible people decided to rob the store and threaten the safety of Jon's wife and everyone else. Jon, the protector, lost his life making sure nobody else did.
Jon loved Harleys, the Marine Corps (he was a huge supporter to the point of having a patriotic tribute to the Corps in a glass case in his living room, but wasn't able to serve himself), and being a good man, but over everything else I believe he loved his wife and family. Like Jon, Aimee and the rest of Jon's family are strong. But, they could use all the love and support they can get right now. Any form of support would be appreciated.
Thanks for reading,
Chris
Funeral and Visitation Information
Schertz Funeral Home and Chapel
2217 FM3009, Schertz, TX 78154
Public Visitations
5pm to 9pm on Saturday the 28th
10am to 1pm on Sunday the 29th
Funeral Service for Family and Close Friends
1pm on Sunday the 29th in the Schertz Funeral Chapel
Share now to help this campaign Share Tweet 20k shares on Facebook shares on FacebookCreative Writing, "The Train" a guest Jun 17th, 2012 59 Never a guest59Never
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rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 10.07 KB I want you to see what I've seen. First, pack up everything you own, and place it somewhere safe. Find your tooth brush, and a change of clothes. Bid a fond farewell to your money, and wave goodbye to the tech. It may be wise to pack some snacks. Now, go find a mostly empty railroad station, at that magical time when night blurs into day, and all the night owls have gone home, and the early birds are not awake yet. Find that lonely rail station, with the saxophonist, playing music for no one but himself. Walk to the ticket terminal, and ask for a ticket past the city, out through the country, past the country where the sky touches the earth, long over the hill where the grass is always greener and the streets are paved with gold. No one will hear you. Why should they? They've all gone home. But someone will, and when you look down, there will be one ticket, long and white, with a note on it, "Free of charge for anyone who wishes to find their home." And with that you hear the whistle of an oncoming train, and all the departure charts read, "Anywhere: Now." This leaves you no choice does it? Board the nearest train, and find your seat. You know this train, somehow, you've been here before, but never in this life. No one else is here, but your seat is the only one that you feel you should sit in. As you sit down, you feel the train begin to move, slowly at first, in the way that only a train can do, then faster. As the world begins to blur by the windows, you see the street lights grow less and less, until the only lights are the little lights in the windows of houses, and the sky takes up most of the world. Like a living iron giant, the train shudders, then begins to ascend. The sky will grow nearer, and a silence will fall on your car. It is now that you should crane your neck, arch to see in front of you, for far off there is a light, growing brighter. Suddenly, with all the subtlety of a mouse, the air is filled with light, below you -- if you could see it -- are little holes, leaks where this star light leaks through. No, this isn't heaven, to give it such a name would cast shame upon it, no, it is.... Well, some have called it the void between the worlds, others have named it purgatory, but this expanse of white would best be called The Backstage, for it is here that your journey will begin. It is here where you are -- were? maybe, there is no time here -- given the first question. That question is simply, "Who am I?" It is age old, and the answers have ranged from single letters, monosylabilic grunts in the face of literature, all the way to papers written on the subject. No, there is no answer provided here, just simply the three words, written, as if in stone, on the very air in front of the train. The train moves on. Up ahead you spot darkness, a tunnel, leading where? Who knows? Well, you are beyond caring where you go, for question has dominated your mind. That is when you see the world through the tunnel. Your first thought would have to be, "Green, no, red? Is it autumn? Then why is the grass so green? And what's that ahead? Gold? No, can't be." Nobody can be seen, but there it is, in all its glory, a golden road, stretching from one awe inspiring corner of the horizon to the next. With all the speed of a passing comet, you fly by. In case you were wondering, your next question is not here, nonetheless, a question begins to occur to you, "What is significant?" In this far off land of unquestionable wealth, is it really better? Is this land far better than your own, even with no one to see it? Another tunnel, your time in that space was much less, or maybe time is becoming irrelevant, being tossed aside by your pursuit of exploration. That is when you site this new world. It is a barren desert, ruins of a bygone civilization, a toppled tower lies directly in front of you, past it, you see red flickering fields. A thousand, no, a million dandelions, each set aflame, showing no sign of going out, stand in this lifeless place, spelling out your next question, a single word, yet as infinitely important as it's thousand word counterparts, "Why?" "Meditate on that," comes a voice from everywhere at once, "You may begin to wonder why you are here, that is normal, that is in fact, rather good." A question begins to occur to you again, and mere seconds after it formulates, the voice returns, "No, of course I am not God. What a funny concept, I suppose you are still learning after all." You move on. Blackness. A contrast to the last three worlds. Then suddenly, in this truly endless void, the train comes to a slow, grinding, and total halt. It is evident, by the sheer oppression of the silence, that it will never move again. The voice comes back. "Well, what are you waiting for? Come on, it's alright, come take a look." Looking out the window, you spot a little path, running up to a point on the train, further up. You stand, it feels like it has been years since you have moved, and the feeling of life in your limbs again is a glorious freedom. The path seems almost welcoming when you get to it, a little line of grass, stretching off into nowhere. "Good, good, now, come find me." What is this voice? A sadist? Have you followed the instructions of a book you read, only to be taken in by a sadistic serial killer? "No, it's alright, come with me." The voice seems much closer now, as if the person saying it was right behind you. "You won't see me, but it's alright, you're safe here." For some odd reason you trust this voice, the familiarity, timbre, and even the word choice is very familiar. You walk on. It seems like many years have passed, or no time at all, it's all become faded really. Everything seems... incorrect, there's the train, far off in the distance, and in front of you nothing.... Wait, what's that? It's a house? Here? And, oh good, it looks normal, at last. You walk in. You know this place, like the train it bears familiarity of an unknown sort, like the train, it seems you come here all the time, but have never fully seen its glory. It is now that many questions, mundane and simple, have been formulated, and, coincidentally, it is now that you see the mirror. Tall and regal, it stands before you, out of place in this small house, calling you over, as if you want to check the passage of time upon your own visage. It is there that you found me. "Hello," I said jauntily, "Welcome to your house, have you anything to say?" It's been years since you spoke, but your mind still remembers how, somewhere, ideas bubble up, formulating words, then sentences. "Oh good, I wasn't sure if you would be able to talk here, it has been a while hasn't it?" More questions fall out, and to my credit, I did try to answer them. "No, well, yes, time does work oddly here, you've been here for years." "Well, not exactly, you certainly haven't aged much, which is good, the last one that was brought here had a bit of a dodgy heart.... I did what I could, but well.... Anyway!" "Of course there have been others, but they've all been you, to a point. Let me show you." My face changed, flashing through the thousands that I had brought here. "Yes, I understand that you are you, and that you are unique, and that there will be no one else like you. But I want you understand that in a way, they were you, as much as that seat on the train was yours, those people each influenced your life in a way that no one else could, and in doing so, they influence mine. I see realization begin to set it, that's good, very good in fact." "What's that? Subconscious? Yes, that is a way of saying it, but think of this as a wakeup call from the inside. I've seen the way you act, you live -- well yes -- we act, we live, but to be fair, I'm stuck in here. You're losing your touch. Your work has begun to fail, and in truth, we both know everything that happens. Yes. Even that little twitch, your eyes, shifting upward... then back down, if you had been watching your reflection you would have seen me do the same. " You stood back, looking at the walls, the mirror, and at long last noticing the carvings in the walls. The carvings that you yourself left here, a relic of every journey to this place. To describe them in one word I would use the phrase horrible, and in two, you would have to say indescribably beautiful. The oldest that remains recognizable is horribly worn, unrecognizable. The more legible, though covered in the grime of three thousand years, depict a lone man, clad in a robe of unknown cloth, wandering through hills before sitting, at last, at the foot of a huge tree. In another a figure is nailed upon an ancient torture device of barbaric death, as a ray of light falls upon his brow. A turban graces the forehead of another, while a feathered snake reaches out with its tongue to devour a figure enrobed in the gold of a king. The newest is that of a person, traveling through unknown dimensions and directions on a black train, and after that, a blank space. "Ah, you've seen them. The records. Every one you see before you is a record of some man or woman's journey to this place within their mind, some have called them gods, others simply prophets, because even though anyone can reach it, not everyone seeks the path they believe they do. But please, let me continue my story, it shall not be much longer. All I want to say, and granted it is a small bit of reassurance given the circumstances, is that you are not alone in this. You may sit upon the last cliff on the edge of sanity, driven mad by this awful turn of circumstance, but always remember the ticket, your journey, and lastly this place beyond the walls of fear and anger. And I shall always be here to talk to. Even if at times it feels like you speak to no one, know that I exist, know that I remain here, within you, as you stand within this house." It was then that I told you to open your eyes. And though your life continued, and though you remained physically unchanged, as if only a moment had passed, and the saxophonist was still playing, something had changed, as it always does. But the moment played on and on in your mind, and life went on.
RAW Paste Data
I want you to see what I've seen. First, pack up everything you own, and place it somewhere safe. Find your tooth brush, and a change of clothes. Bid a fond farewell to your money, and wave goodbye to the tech. It may be wise to pack some snacks. Now, go find a mostly empty railroad station, at that magical time when night blurs into day, and all the night owls have gone home, and the early birds are not awake yet. Find that lonely rail station, with the saxophonist, playing music for no one but himself. Walk to the ticket terminal, and ask for a ticket past the city, out through the country, past the country where the sky touches the earth, long over the hill where the grass is always greener and the streets are paved with gold. No one will hear you. Why should they? They've all gone home. But someone will, and when you look down, there will be one ticket, long and white, with a note on it, "Free of charge for anyone who wishes to find their home." And with that you hear the whistle of an oncoming train, and all the departure charts read, "Anywhere: Now." This leaves you no choice does it? Board the nearest train, and find your seat. You know this train, somehow, you've been here before, but never in this life. No one else is here, but your seat is the only one that you feel you should sit in. As you sit down, you feel the train begin to move, slowly at first, in the way that only a train can do, then faster. As the world begins to blur by the windows, you see the street lights grow less and less, until the only lights are the little lights in the windows of houses, and the sky takes up most of the world. Like a living iron giant, the train shudders, then begins to ascend. The sky will grow nearer, and a silence will fall on your car. It is now that you should crane your neck, arch to see in front of you, for far off there is a light, growing brighter. Suddenly, with all the subtlety of a mouse, the air is filled with light, below you -- if you could see it -- are little holes, leaks where this star light leaks through. No, this isn't heaven, to give it such a name would cast shame upon it, no, |
8. He showed that the iOS 11 will be available to download for all iOS users on September 19th, 2017 (Pacific Time). If you are in another city or country, you may get it on September 20th. You can refer to the below table to get the release time based on your nearby city or country.
Country City iOS 11 Final Release Day Time USA San Francisco Tue, Sep 19, 2017 10:00 am USA New York Tue, Sep 19, 2017 1:00 pm Canada Toronto Tue, Sep 19, 2017 1:00 pm United Kingdom London Tue, Sep 19, 2017 6:00 pm France Paris Tue, Sep 19, 2017 7:00 pm Germany Berlin Tue, Sep 19, 2017 7:00 pm Russia Moscow Tue, Sep 19, 2017 8:00 pm India New Delhi Tue, Sep 19, 2017 10:30 pm China Beijing Wed, Sep 20, 2017 1:00 am Japan Tokyo Wed, Sep 20, 2017 2:00 am Australia Sydney Wed, Sep 20, 2017 3:00 am
Don’t Miss: 2 Official Methods to Install iOS 11 on iPhone iPad
50 Features of iOS 11 You May Like to Know
Apple firstly introduced the features and changes of iOS 11 on 2017 WWDC event on June 5th, 2017. After that, Apple released 10 betas for developers to test continually. According to the betas, we could know almost all features of iOS 11 final version, and it’s no secret.
On September 12th, 2017, Apple shows the new iOS 11 features on iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X on its Autumn Event. For example, it firstly shows the new iOS 11 Portrait Mode and Lighting effects.
You can read our iOS 11 feature category page or click the related link below to know how to use iOS 11 features.
Don’t Miss:Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes is exactly the kind of Democrat whom you would expect to lend bipartisan support to President Donald Trump's $1 trillion infrastructure proposal. The chair of the "pro-growth" New Democrat Coalition on the party's right flank, Himes said he's been thrilled for months by Trump’s promise of a major infrastructure bill — even if it relies more on private investment than some progressives would like.
"We get really excited about the idea he keeps reverting to — a very major investment in infrastructure in a way the brings the economy into the 21st century. It's really critical," Himes said in an interview on Friday.
But he now says it's becoming increasingly difficult to imagine either he or the moderate “New Dems” could back the infrastructure package — not because of anything new Trump has said about infrastructure itself, but because of the president's controversial decisions in unrelated areas, like his executive order on immigration.
"You can work with a quirky, untrained, market-oriented president," Himes said. "You can't work with a president who is eroding the Constitution. The real problem is if we have a lot more weeks that shock Americans, it's going to close the window for having those technocratic discussions we should be having."
Himes said he's not at the point where he's declaring himself unwilling to back anything Trump puts forward. But he's getting there.
Himes and I spoke in his office in the Longworth House Office Building on Friday. A transcript of our interview, edited only for length and clarity, follows.
Donald Trump is losing potential allies in the Democratic Party’s “pro-growth” wing
Jeff Stein
There's been some bipartisan support for the theoretical idea of bolstering American infrastructure. Of what Trump has proposed, is there something you could see your coalition signing on to?
Jim Himes
For the New Democrats, a lot of what Trump says and does is appalling to us — the immigration order, the ill-considered early morning tweets.
But we get really excited about the idea he keeps reverting to — a very major investment in infrastructure in a way that brings the economy into the 21st century. It's really critical.
We have, of course, some concerns with what he's proposed — he has a very tax credit–heavy proposal. But this whole government is set up to negotiate those kinds of things — and we're excited by the prospect that there could be those kinds of negotiations.
Jeff Stein
If Trump's infrastructure plan relies primarily on PPPs [public-private partnerships] and tax credits, do you think that's something the New Democrats would get behind? A lot of progressives have opposed the idea that private corporations would be paid and then get to maintain what is ostensibly public infrastructure. [In a public-private partnership, private firms often get to bid for a road project and then recoup its costs by controlling the tolls.]
Jim Himes
The reality is that these PPPs... for certain things and in certain areas, they can really make progress. There's toll roads all over the country, but they're not the whole story. You're not building a toll road in a rural area with a public-private partnership. So the answer is not, "Your way is totally wrong”; it's, "There are limitations to your way, and we need to find ways to fill those limitations."
Jeff Stein
My understanding is that one of the main problem with PPPs is that they wouldn't address the biggest problem in America's infrastructure — which is replacing existing roads and bridges. PPPs are better suited for new infrastructure, which isn't what experts see as the critical need.
Jim Himes
The only main difference between a PPP project and a public one is that you pay for one with tolls and you pay for the other, generally, with a gasoline tax. There's no magic solution out there where nobody pays for it — someone's going to pay for it. And that's something we should talk about.
Again, PPPs will work in certain areas. A lot of people in this area will use the Dulles tolls to get to Dulles. They don't necessarily work in other areas. If Republicans say, "We have this magical plan to fix all of American infrastructure with PPPs," then we'll be a little skeptical about that. But at least we're having that conversation.
If Trump comes up with a Muslim registry, we're not having that conversation.
Jeff Stein
Do you anticipate that being a potential fissure point with other Democrats? How does the New Democrat thinking about infrastructure differ from other members of the party?
Jim Himes
Infrastructure doesn't really lend itself to battle flags, so the challenge will be that the more Trump does that's so offensive — not just to Democrats, but I think a lot of Republicans saying, "What? Green card holders can't be reunited with their families?" — he could do enough stuff that would put the ability of Democrats and maybe even some Republicans to work with him into question.
You can work with a quirky, untrained, market-oriented president. You can't work with a president who is eroding the Constitution. The real problem is if we have a lot more weeks that shock Americans, it's going to close the window for having those technocratic discussions we should be having.
Jeff Stein
So you're saying the outrageousness that keeps coming down the pipelines will make unrelated negotiations more difficult? And it doesn't sound like you're quite there, but the idea is if the Muslim ban and things like it continue, the willingness of New Democrats to work on infrastructure would be weakened.
Where do you draw that line in the sand — to say that we like this thing, but you're going to have to reverse all these other things first before we can work with you on any of it?
Jim Himes
There's two levels of things going on here. Donald Trump could offend so much of our values — and I'm not talking Democratic values; I'm talking about American values — such that just as a matter of morality, it would be very hard to work with the guy. He's making some progress between the immigration thing, not mentioning Jews in the context of the Holocaust, doing all he can to destroy the press.
He could also alienate so many people that it would be politically hard — and there are elements of the Democratic Party who are already there, and we see Uber and business leaders back[ing] away from this guy — that as a political matter, it would be hard to work with him.
Jeff Stein
Did you anticipate yourself getting to this point so quickly? One month ago, did you imagine you'd already be telling a reporter you may be becoming unwilling to work with the president?
Jim Himes
Well, to be clear, we're not at that point just yet. But he really is putting a lot of people in a very difficult position already.
But you do ask a good question. Last week, I offered the optimistic vision that there's a method to his madness — that maybe what he's doing is that he's making all the anti-immigration people happy with his order, and the reason he's doing that is so he can piss them off with an infrastructure package or whatever it might be.
I'm a little less — I think that's a little less credible, less possible, scenario now. I think he's done some real damage — I'm not going to say it's dead — but he's done some real damage to that shrinking space for collaboration.
Jeff Stein
You could have envisioned a story instead in which Trump gets elected, he has this ambiguous ideological heterogeneity that people aren't sure what he stands for, and if he came out by saying, “Let's start with a massive infrastructure bill,” Democrats are happy about that and maybe he could have been a big bipartisan political win.
Jim Himes
It was a real shame he didn't. If he'd gone that route and said, "Election is over, now we're going to be in a different America" — my God, we'd be in a different place than we are today.One thing I’m getting used to is people censoring (or trying to censor) the speech of others and then claiming it’s not really censorship but something else: avoiding hurt feelings, obviating “hate speech” or so on.
A good example is a report in Yahoo News that the school board of Gilbert, Arizona (covering 39,000 students) has removed two pages from a biology textbook (Campbell Biology: Concepts and Connections) because those pages discuss birth control, including contraception and the morning-after pill. I believe the textbook is for high-school students, and it’s not clear whether the two pages have been physically removed from the book (I suspect they have, since the word “excised” is used), but this is in response to a legal group’s concerns that students might actually learn about how to have sex without the possibility of having babies. And that apparently violates a state law:
An Arizona law signed by Republican Governor Jan Brewer in 2012 says that taking into account “the state’s strong interest in promoting childbirth and adoption over elective abortion,” school programs must present those as the preferred options. The alliance said the materials, which have been used in the district since 2006, present elective abortions as a viable option for students while making no mention of childbirth or adoption.
Now the news report is scanty, but it suggests not that the text promotes or even mentions abortion, but mentions the morning-after pill as a form of contraception. Most people know that that that pill doesn’t cause an abortion, but prevents an egg from being released, so a zygote isn’t even formed, much less implanted.
The opposition, of course, comes from conservative religious people, and that’s also mentioned in the news report (“Some conservative Christians believe life begins at the moment of conception”). Of course, there is also no “conception” with either birth-control pills or the morning-after pill.
It’s bad enough to try to keep this information from kids, but worse when you claim it’s not censorship:
“By redacting, we are not censoring,” board member Julie Smith told 12 News in Phoenix. “This school district does offer sexual education classes. If we were censoring, we would not offer anything on this topic whatsoever.”
My online definition defines “redact” as “censoring or obscuring (part of a text)”, so thats a distinction without a difference. And to say that there’s no censorship because, after all, they do teach sex education, is simply lying. They know what they’re doing; they’re just trying to pretend it’s not censorship. Ms. Smith, at least, needs to read Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language.”
h/t: MarkGuys agonize over the menu—steak or chicken, fries or baked caesar —but few of us seriously think about what to drink. “I’ll have what he’s having,” we say. Or we fall back on knee-jerk favorites: a cola, a cold one, a cup of coffee, a cocktail. But our bodies are 60 percent fluid i.e. 108 pounds of a 180-pound man[1] are H20—so what we drink is just as important as what we eat.
“Staying hydrated and drinking the right thing at the right time can make a difference in how you feel and perform”
Drinking something is the quickest way to nourish, refuel, recover, and re-energize yourself[2]. To remove your confusion of what not to drink, we bring you the 19 most unexpected occasions to drink to your health. Consider hitting the bottle in any of these conditions.
Symptoms: HUNGER
Remedy: You’re on the road, scanning fast-food joints. Head to a drink outlet instead, and grab a canned meal replacement, such as Ensure (250 calories, 6 grams of fat) or Boost (240 calories, 4 grams of fat). They give you much of what you need. Or have tomato juice. It’s thick and satisfying.
Symptoms: INDIGESTION
Remedy: Buy a bottle of peppermint oil and mix a few drops with 2 teaspoons of sugar. Dissolve the mixture in a half-glass of water. It should help reduce spasms in your intestinal tract[3].
Symptoms :ANXIETY
Remedy: Have a brew, but make it a nonalcoholic beer. The hops will calm you down.
Symptoms: CONSTIPATION
Remedy: You need liquid and fiber to spur your cranky colon, so mix a fruit smoothie. Toss an orange, a banana some frozen berries, a handful of cereals, some orange juice, a and ice into a blender. Pour the concoction into your travel mug and head to work. By the time you turn on your PC, you’ll be ready to download.
Symptom: INSOMNIA
Remedy: Try warm milk, just like Mom used to make. Milk contains L-tryptophan[4], the same protein that has you fighting for couch space after your Thanks-giving turkey dinner. What to avoid: alcohol. A bottle of cold duck may put you out, but you won’t sleep as well, and you’ll be likely to wake up—we hope—to pee.
Symptom : OVEREATING
Remedy: Drinking too much water right after exercise encourages your kidneys to excrete it faster[5]. So have a sports drink, t such as Gatorade. Sports drinks contain small amounts of sodium and electrolytes that help direct the water where it’s needed most in the body.
Symptom: FINISHED EXERCISING
Remedy: Studies show that both carbohydrates and protein are necessary for refueling after a hard workout[6]. So buy a powdered drink mix that has the necessary 4-to-1 ratio of carbohydrates to protein. Or have 16 ounces of orange juice and half of a tuna sandwich.
Symptom: SORENESS FROM WORKING OUT
Remedy: Here’s your excuse to have a dark beer. Heavy brews, such as porters, contain flavonoids—antioxidants that help you recover more quickly from your morning blast-a-thon. But be sure you’re properly hydrated before you imbibe. Alcohol is a diuretic.
Symptom: HOPING TO PREVENT CANCER
Remedy: Make yourself a cup of hot chocolate. Cocoa powder has more antioxidant power than green tea[7] or any fruit or vegetable you can name. Numerous studies have shown that antioxidants fight cancer.
Symptom: DIARRHEA
Remedy: Diarrhea swiftly depletes the fluids and essential electrolytes that keep your system balanced. You need to re-place them fast, so have a sports drink to refuel. Better yet, if you have Pedialyte in the house for your kids, try that. (Pedialyte also comes in freezer pops, in case you’re having trouble keeping down fluids.)
Symptom: SICK WITH AN INFECTION
Remedy: Green or black tea fights infections, even those caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. In lab studies, a component in the tea made Staphylococcus aureus-the resistant superbug—more vulnerable. Also, chicken soup can help‘you feel better. Simply breathing in the vapors can open your sinuses. And swallowing the hot broth increases bloodflow to the affected area, allowing white blood cells speedy access so they can start fighting infection faster.
Symptom: DINNER’S NOT FOR AN HOUR, BUT YOU’RE FAMISHED NOW
Remedy: You need some fat and protein to feel satisfied, but you don’t want to fill up. The perfect solution is 1% milk. Pretzels or other snacks aren’t satisfying enough, and heavier foods will dampen your appetite.
Symptom: HEADACHE
Remedy: Since your brain is three-quarters water, maybe dehydration is the problem. So first try 16 ounces of water. If you’re suffering from a migraine, brew a pot of coffee. Caffeine has a constricting effect on the arteries[8] in your head, which can help relieve pain.
Symptom: TIREDNESS
Remedy: Pass on the caffeine, and have a club soda with lemon or lime instead. The carbonation and aroma will energize you.
Symptom: HANGOVER
Remedy: Drink a Spicy vegetable juice or a virgin Bloody Mary. The spices help dilate blood vessels, which could speed recovery by improving blood circulation. Also, antioxidants from the tomatoes will help fight damage from the alcohol.
Symptom: PREPARING FOR A WORKOUT
Remedy: Drink 17 ounces of water or a sports drink 2 hours before exercises. If your workout lasts longer than an hour, have a sports drink. Your fluid in-take should match your sweat loss, and your drink should contain carbohydrates and electrolytes to help move water to your intestines.
Symptom: HOARSENESS WITH A SORE THROAT
Remedy: The vitamin C in orange juice would help, but the acid might exacerbate the soreness. So try tea with a few lemon wedges squeezed in—you’ll get a dose of vitamin C, and the warmth will soothe your throat.
Symptom: DRY SKIN
Remedy: The next time you make a drink in the blender, toss in some flax seed. The oil from this grain that you can buy at supermarkets or health food stores will help keep your skin smooth and glowing.
Symptom: THIRST AND LACK OF CASH
Remedy: Switch from fancy bottled water to tap water. In a survey of the purity of bottled waters, one-third of 103 brands failed to meet either industry guidelines or state standards.
So next time before grabbing a can of soft drink, think twice that what could be the best drink you can have at that moment to fetch your thirst.Ben Carson (pictured Jan. 6 in Panora, Iowa,) met with the affected student following the Cedar Rapids, Iowa, rally and encouraged him to become a neurosurgeon. | AP Photo Carson's attempt to buck up Iowa student backfires spectacularly
In a painful campaign moment that went briefly viral online Thursday, Ben Carson asked a group of grade-school students who the "worst student" in their class was, prompting a handful of the youngsters to single out a fifth-grader.
“As a fifth grade student, I was a horrible student. Anybody here in fifth grade? Who’s the worst student?” Carson asked a group of students with their hands raised.
Story Continued Below
Carson was speaking at a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. According to The Des Moines Register, roughly 500 people — including many students from the Isaac Newton Christian Academy — were in attendance.
After posing the question, a number of students identified the same classmate. The retired neurosurgeon seized the moment to explain that he, too, was once the worst student in his class before sharing his story of academic triumph.
“Well, let me tell you, if you had asked that question in my classroom, there would have been no doubt,” he said, adding that as a student, himself, his classmates overwhelmingly agreed that he was “the dumbest person in the world.”
Carson met with the student following the rally and encouraged him to become a neurosurgeon — just like him.
Dean Ridder, who heads the school, said the media’s version of what transpired isn’t quite the way he would describe it. “This story is much ado about nothing,” he told POLITICO in a phone interview Thursday. “Dr. Carson was making a point about how he was not the smartest person in the class in fifth grade, and our students were just kind of joking around, pointing at all kinds of people. But for some reason the press seems to single out one of them.”
Carson campaign senior communications strategist Jason Osborne singled out the student as well, tweeting an image of a boy he identified as “Seth” alongside Carson. “They bonded over shared experiences as young kids,” he said.
Ridder said Carson handled the situation well. “He spoke with the student afterward,” he told POLITICO. “He met with him, he gave him a book of his and encouraged him to become a neurosurgeon.”
Here's how a Register reporter captured the moment in real time:
Feelin like a pep rally for @RealBenCarson in Cedar Rapids. Many rowdy youngsters from Isaac Newton Christian School pic.twitter.com/XllWCjlqPC — Timothy Meinch (@timeinch) January 7, 2016
W/ crowd of 500 @RealBenCarson just called out to 5th grade class: who's dumbest kid in class? At least half dozen kids point to 1 student. — Timothy Meinch (@timeinch) January 7, 2016
.@Howie_OT @RealBenCarson it was a joke re: how he felt in grade school. But students responded before he said "just kidding" about question — Timothy Meinch (@timeinch) January 7, 2016
Direct @RealBenCarson quote to 5th grade class (in crowd of 500) was: "who's the worst student?" Then talked about how he also was #iacaucus — Timothy Meinch (@timeinch) January 7, 2016
.@RealBenCarson just met the 5th grade student back stage. Said he wants him to become a neurosurgeon #iacaucus pic.twitter.com/XAO5LRcDYJ — Timothy Meinch (@timeinch) January 7, 2016Editor’s Note: Earlier today we published a story about how the City of Kenosha is trying to kill off home-sharing. It seems the government, both local and federal, is on a full frontal assault on private property.
The following story is yet another example of government getting completely out of control.
Remember the Oregon ‘Rain Man’ or Gary Harrington — who was sent to 30 days in Jackson County Jail and slapped with a $1,500 fine for collecting rainwater on his 170-acre property? He was ordered to breach his dams and drain his ponds that held more than 13 million gallons of water, enough to fill 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Now, an Oregon couple faces a similar fate as Gary Harrington because the rain belongs to the overbearing government, because corporate greed claims water is not a human right, and because Americans are not entitled to do what they please on their private property.
The Jackson County Watermaster’s office has told Jon and Sabrina Carey to destroy their 2-acre pond — built 40 years ago, long before they bought the 10-acre property off Butte Falls Highway two and a half years ago — as they don’t have any water rights.
“I basically bought a lemon. That’s how they explained it to me.”
The county had no issues with the pond until Jon sought to grow legal medical cannabis on his property. He was then required to produce proof that he had a viable source of water for cannabis cultivation.
Although the county records clearly show the pond, the Watermaster’s Office claimed the previous owners had not received a permit for the pond so the Careys were now in violation of Oregon regulations — and they would have to shoulder the cost of draining the water. As a result, the Careys stopped using pond water and resorted to trucking in water from Butte Falls for their household and garden needs.Forty-six decillion joules is horrific overkill, commensurate with the urgency of Virtual civilisation's combined desire for more processing power. The energy packet distorts spacetime as it travels, and when the Earth's core node catches it, the planet measurably increases in mass and widens in orbit.
Vivid red lasers unzip the planet from top to bottom, slicing it along criss-crossing spiral rhumb lines. The lasers are powerful enough to be visible to the naked eye from Pluto; with good telescopy, the light show can be seen from other star systems. One beam even plays across the Moon's face before the dicing procedure is over, scorching it mildly.
The lasers represent the smaller share of the energy. Far more is spent to physically lift the jigsaw pieces of the first crust layer into the sky, hoisting significant amounts of sky with it. The planet unfurls like an onion over the course of an hour, individual shreds of country and rainforest unfolding themselves into thinner shreds still, absorbing further sunlight and reconstituting themselves into first-stage hosting substrate. Kicked with useful pulses of momentum from the coordinating core, the shreds radiate away into free space and align themselves against the solar wind, effecting an orbital change which will bring them nearer to the Sun, where energy is more plentiful. That takes care of the first layer, including all remaining physical traces of human civilisation. That was us. That was home.
A raw, molten second layer of Earth is exposed, where the process cycles around and starts again with the lasers. It's the rush job from hell, with unimaginable resource expenditure behind it; taking the whole planet apart will only take ten hours. Newly-awakened Virtualities are already colonising the remains, like maggots laid in roadkill. Within another thousand hours, the remains are ground entirely into a film of computronic sludge, wrapping the Sun tightly and harvesting almost all of its energy for processing power. The Sun dims as it happens, its spectrum shifting out of the visible and far into the infrared.
Adam King watches the synthesised edition of the recording, coverage assembled by passive observation platforms in the Oort Cloud. From this perspective, with false colour and no audio, the demolition is chillingly distant and its impact is hard to feel.
King is inside a very small, extremely temporary virtual space inside an otherwise inert starship the size and shape of a javelin, almost three light years from Earth in the direction of Sirius. This is the destination that the Wheel Group evacuated to. It was the only open receiver anywhere in extrasolar space.
The ship left Earth for Sirius very shortly after Abstract War. The back half of the ship is data, the front half is the terraformer. It's hardly much more than a single bootstrap, a chunk of machinery which serves no purpose but to assemble other chunks of machinery. The ship has been travelling for more than thirty years, and will not arrive at its destination for another sixty. There is a planet at Sirius A, in the Goldilocks zone. It doesn't have water, yet.
King's virtuality is the size of an elevator car, with only a small table, a folding metal chair and a portable CRT television. There is only one other person physically present with him, the arbiter, who stands behind him watching him watch the replay. But everybody is sharing her eyes. There are well over a hundred stored people on board, survivors of the war, mostly survivors of the Triton mission. Calling them Wheel Group members would be strictly inaccurate, they having left the world before the Wheel was formed. Reasons for leaving vary-- some thought the Sol system was a lost cause, or that abandoning the ruined Earth was moral and necessary, or just had a powerful desire to flee into the dark; some despised King and his vision, and couldn't muster the support to shout him down. The unifying thought among them, back then, was disapproval. Now it's horror. King is not among friends.
He fidgets in the deliberately uncomfortable chair, trying to find room for his legs, and/or some way to dodge the arbiter's stare.
"And you survive," the arbiter concludes. "Out of six billion, two hundred and seventy-five million, four hundred thousand people, you survive. You, and your Group, and nobody else. A crowning achievement of cowardice."
King begins, "It was impossible to save anybody else, we didn't have the broadcast power--"
"You lost your mind in the War." The arbiter's tone of voice is calculatedly neutral and impossible to speak over. "You, together with everybody who fell in with you. After such unimaginable chaos, you were desperate for a world where there would be a manageable order. You turned the Earth into a facsimile of a working planet. A romance. You dragged billions of people into existence and you let them raise children as if it was real. In a world which they basically believed that they understood, and which they basically believed to be rational and safe.
"We find'magic' to be absurd. We find the 'Earth' you built to be an obscenity. You could have built an entirely new world, or left the planet uninhabitable as it was, as an honest memorial. Even oblivion would have been preferable. We left the world rather than stay and be complicit in your madness. We set out for an entirely other star system, knowing it would take decades to get there. You should see what we're going to build. Any of you could have come with us and seen it, if you'd chosen to.
"And in the end your 'Earth' was illusory, and all of this amounts to a delayed action. Three decades later, Virtual humanity takes the Sol system anyway; Ra remains 'radioactive' for ten billion years."
King clenches his fist at the series of accusations. They're intolerable, and he could find the words to fight any or all of them, but where would be the point? This isn't the trial anymore. The decision is already made, and all of this is just infodump; the minimum necessary courtesy.
"You're relieved," King says. "All of you. You're glad it's finally over. You're glad that you get to say you made the right decision to leave, and that I made the wrong decision to stay and rebuild. The world I built worked."
The arbiter ignores this. "Adam King, we deny your Group's request for asylum. Your patterns will be stored indefinitely, or until a more lenient future generation pardons you."
*
Rachel Ferno doesn't need yammering voices for the rest of this. "Save everybody except me," she stage-whispers into the Bridge. Five white snaps of light mark the departure of Nick Laughon, Edward Hatt, Anil Devi and Laura and Natalie Ferno. Of them, only Devi is paying close enough attention to the proceedings to react to the instruction. He shows a fraction of a second of surprise, but doesn't have time to process what's happening before it's done. Hatt, Laura and Natalie simply don't react. Nick Laughon, for his part, was already turning away from the Ferno story, a story he no longer wanted to be part of, one which he felt an urgent need to exit.
Rachel is standing too far from civilisation to see everybody else being uploaded, but she imagines she can feel the world emptying and the Bridge filling up. The wave of white events spreads at close to the speed of light, taking people from their beds and from behind the wheels of cars and from aeroplanes in flight. These are destructive reads. In one second, all the important people on Earth - which is to say, all the people - are missing from it, converted to information and archived in the Bridge's capacious buffer. That leaves Rachel alone on a ghost world. She snaps a shot of the world's crust, for good measure. Animals and buildings, mainly, the lower priorities.
She takes one step and is immediately at the Wheel Group penthouse in New York city, where it's the small hours of the morning. In the streets outside the enormous bay window, vehicles are still rolling to a halt after the rapture.
Rachel was excommunicated from the Wheel Group, or left it, or never joined it, depending on how you slice the sequence of events, but she retains one or two privileges. She retains enough status for the penthouse system to dutifully inform her that the whole Wheel, Adam King included, has been beamed straight out of the Sol system. The evacuation procedure is already complete, which is why the sky has cleared of warnings and the penthouse is standing empty like the rest of the world.
Rachel is further informed that the Wheel Group burned through almost all of the energy in the Earth core cache to do this. Approximately zero point eight three percent per member, for maximum clarity and signal intensity in the nonlocal "radio" transmission. Magic still works, but the world is running on fumes now. Much, much more energy is coming down the downlink, of course, but by that point it'll be all too late. There is, perhaps, enough remaining mana on the whole planet to beam a single additional human being to safety, and there's no other way to get there-- the practical range of site-to-site teleportation using the Bridge is only a few thousand kilometres.
One person. Rachel spends a dangerous amount of time seriously contemplating this prospect. She could drop the Bridge where she's standing and send herself. That'd be easy. It would, in fact, be the simplest thing in the world.
She could send either of her children. Not both.
She could send her husband.
Rachel is in the penthouse dining room, with the bay window as big as a tennis court. She kicks it out, scattering plate glass into the East River, and looks up. It's November, and the city is overcast. The air is freezing and there is even a flake or two of snow, which come to rest on her hair. The star, Sirius, is up there somewhere, but all Rachel sees is the underside of thick grey cloud. The ship, she knows, is three light years away in that direction. That's closer than any star, but still a staggering distance to transmit a clear signal. And a human being represents a staggering amount of signal to transmit.
She asks the penthouse system, if all possible compression was used and all the margins of safety were entirely ignored, how many people she could really save. The penthouse replies, one.
The honest, honourable, heroic thing to do would be to pick a human being totally at random, from everybody saved inside the Bridge.
And after that one dangerous moment Rachel discards the entire option as a red herring. It's a waste of drama. She clearly needs more power.
Another step, and Rachel is ten hours east and forty degrees south, on a minuscule, unspoilt spit of white sand in the Maldives. This places her in broad daylight, almost directly underneath the adversary, looking straight up at the incoming energy.
She could intercept part of it. Just the tiniest, tiniest skimmed sliver would be more than she needs. She could rise up and meet the packet in space, build a makeshift soft receiver out of pure fields, a receiver which would probably overload and explode at the instant it met what was coming, and then she could leech what she needed from the detonation. Or she could teleport one of the eight receiver nodes right out of the Earth's core, repurpose it with advanced-level Wheel Group privilege escalation hackery, and execute an outright heist of the first subpacket. Six Sol-months of energy, in a steel boule the size of Monaco.
But the plans fizzle away. The Bridge would be disabled before any of that worked, Rachel knows, because Ra wants all of that energy. Ra would put her back on the ground, helpless. It would steal the stolen node back again, it would purée her medulla oblongata. It would plant fearful and uncertain thoughts in her head, making it so she wouldn't even want to try.
Because you can't fight Ra, can you? You can't fight God unless God wants you to. You can't even entertain the thought of it.
So it's plan C, which is close to impossible. Part of her is already laying the framework out and that's the bottom line: close to impossible.
Rachel accepts the estimate and dismisses the rest, compartmentalising the doubts and the intimidation. She will have abundant time to reflect on doing the near-impossible after it's done. The same goes for final words. It seems they've already been spoken.
After all that, it feels strange to be allowed to get away clean, to represent such a non-threat as to be ignorable. But all the client strictly asked for was a Matrioshka brain. Just one.
*
Laura wakes up with a start, in complete darkness, without any senses. She feels like a bare, numb thought centre, as if someone amputated her entire body.
"Mum?" she tries. She can't feel her jaw or tongue moving. She can't hear herself speaking. She can't breathe, and she can't feel the urgent pressure of needing to breathe either. She should be choking, or hyperventilating. Maybe she is, and can't tell. "Mum!"
She could be dead. She's died four times, that she knows of. Surely, sooner or later, that would qualify her to see what's on the other side? Except that afterlives are generally more inventive.
There's a blast of maniacal pink noise, loud enough that Laura knows it should be painful, but it isn't, it just redlines her hearing for a while and then cuts out. "There we go," she hears her mother say.
"What did you do?"
"Just relax."
"This feels horrible--"
"No," Rachel explains patiently |
the year after all this stuff, but you have no idea because you’re out of the loop.
You’re heading for the Italian baseball league this season. Are you excited for Italy, and why is it a good choice for you at this point?
I’ve changed as a person, so my dreams have also changed. I don’t want this idea — that the only way I can feel good about my career as a baseball player is if I’m trying to make it to the big leagues — to dominate the decisions I make. I have a chance to go play in Italy... it doesn’t pay as much, but does that really matter? My wife wants to go really bad, I want to go really bad. I think it’s an adventure.Chapter 272: The Second Conference of Heroes [Start]
I step out of the Onsen and expose my body to the nighttime breeze. While I bask in the cool air, Ren and Motoyasu get out as well.
Itsuki and Rishia are already out, and they’re cooling off together.
I can see nothing but a couple when I look at them, but Itsuki’s expressionless face makes it feel like they had just experienced a failed date.
“Naofumi.” (Ren)
Ren calls out to me.
I’m not sure what Raphtalia and the others are doing, but they haven’t exited the women’s side yet.
They’re taking a long bath.
“What?” (Naofumi)
“I asked this island’s count when I got here. He allowed us to use the conference room we used last time. Can we gather all the heroes there to talk?” (Ren)
“Isn’t the village fine?” (Naofumi)
“That’s true, but if you think about it, that’s the place where the heroes started arguing with and denying one another. That’s why I want us to gather there and talk once more.” (Ren)
“How unnecessary.” (Naofumi)
“I’ve already talked to Itsuki and Motoyasu. Let’s talk a bit before the women come out.” (Ren)
“Waiting for them is a waste of time. I guess it’s fine.” (Naofumi)
There’s nothing gained in waiting, so I’m fine with it.
It seems that Ren will be satisfied by it.
We climb the spiral stairs to the room we met in before.
Last time I climbed these steps, I was able to look out at the other islands.
When I try to look through the windows now, my vision is clouded by the darkness of night. I see nothing but shadows.
The island’s activation period is long over.
It’s like a resort’s off-season.
This island will only be lively again in 10 years.
I remember hearing it from the lord here.
Even during off-season, adventurers still come.
The area’s a tourist attraction, and the monsters have moderate strength, so hunting is permitted to a certain extent.
There are some rare monsters to be found. Are the materials rare as well?
I didn’t get too much money for them though.
Ren, Motoyasu and Midori, Itsuki and Rishia, and I enter the room and find seats around the round table.
“Henceforth, the second official conference of Heroes shall commence.” (Ren)
Ren raises his hand and declares.
“There’s no chairman, I’d like to act as a representative.” (Ren)
“Got it.” (Naofumi)
Recently, Ren’s been overflowing with enthusiasm.
The goal of fighting the wave has ignited a flame within his soul.
My end goal is survival, so I doubt I’ll ever become like that.
The fact that he’s still obsessed with himself means that he hasn’t changed that much from the start.
Though, I think he’s on a better track than before.
“And? What did you want to talk about?” (Naofumi)
“Let’s continue the discussion that was suspended last time.” (Ren)
“I think we were arguing about reinforcement methods.” (Naofumi)
“Yeah…” (Ren)
Ren raises his sword out front and starts reading something I cannot see.
“Naofumi gave Shadow… a list of our various methods of getting stronger. We can combine them to obtain greater strength. At first, I didn’t believe it… but Naofumi was able to integrate all of them to put a stop to the calamity we caused. This points to the fact that his words were the truth.” (Ren)
“That’s right.” (Motoyasu)
Motoyasu and Ren both nod.
Itsuki just gives off the feeling of nodding.
“Because of my curse, I was unable to carry out smithing or enhancements well, but thanks to the daily usage of the onsens, I’m gradually getting better.” (Ren)
“There’s no way Father-in-Law would ever lie. I learned to put these methods to practice myself!” (Motoyasu)
Motoyasu announces this fact with a smile on his face.
“I know, so calm down. Itsuki, what about you?” (Naofumi)
“… I understand.” (Itsuki)
Itsuki fiddles with the icons on his status. His eyes dart back and forth.
“I did it.” (Itsuki)
It’s because he can’t think for himself right now.
The current Itsuki doesn’t know how to doubt others.
I guess this makes his situation worthwhile.
“… So it was true. If I wasn’t so prideful at that time, then perhaps all of that wouldn’t have happened.” (Itsuki)
Since his symptoms are slowly being alleviated, Itsuki is able to utter some words of regret.
Is this because of the curse? Or are those his true thoughts? Who can say.
“That’s why, once more, I wish to continue this talk.” (Ren)
“Are you sure there’s more to talk about?” (Naofumi)
“No, there has to be something else.” (Ren)
“What is there left to say?” (Naofumi)
I think I know everything I need to know from the other three heroes.
“Naofumi, recently, I’ve been travelling with Eclaire, Rishia, and the others from your village. During that time, I discovered something that I want to show you.” (Ren)
“What?” (Naofumi)
“This.” (Ren)
Ren changes the shape of his sword and presents it to me.
It’s a strangely shaped sword which looks like a bundle of strings strung around each other countless times.
Honestly, it doesn’t look strong at all.
“What is that?” (Naofumi)
“It’s a blade called the Comrade Sword. It’s ability is『Comrade Growth Adjustment (Small)』” (Ren)
“What are the conditions to unlock it?” (Naofumi) (TL: Literally, the Nakama Sword)
“… I don’t know. Before I knew it, it was unlocked.” (Ren)
“Fumu…” (Naofumi)
Comrade Growth Adjustment (Small)… is it? It’s the same as my slave enhancement.
Looking at the current Ren, I have no idea how he got it.
“If this were a game, would the unlock condition be something like trusting your companions from the bottom of your heart?” (Naofumi)
I start off with a vague enquiry, and Ren nods.
“Probably…” (Ren)
With a bitter expression, he continues.
“As I thought. I didn’t fully trust my previous comrades. If only this sword came out earlier, then perhaps they wouldn’t have died.” (Ren)
“That’s one possibility. But that doesn’t make it useless now.” (Naofumi)
“… As expected of Naofumi. That’s why, like this, I want to discuss any new things we may have discovered.” (Ren)
“I see. I understand where you’re coming from.” (Naofumi)
I think there are plenty of things I haven’t discovered yet, so asking around may be useful.
There may be materials I have yet to feed my shield with highly desirable abilities.
Comrade Sword… It seems to have an ability like my Slave Use Shield.
… Wait a second. Do the effects stack?
I mean, Ren’s trusted comrades are Female Knight and Taniko, right?
Female Knight’s another case, but Taniko’s my slave.
If his comrade growth correction stacks with my slave one, then it would be really useful.
I’ll need to carefully look over Taniko’s status later.
By the way, I’m also doing a bit of research on my own.
“Then, should I teach you something?” (Naofumi)
“What is it?” (Ren)
“Yeah, when I fed my slave’s hair and such to the Shield, more Shields with growth corrections came out. In Ren’s case, I recommend feeding Kiel or Taniko’s weapon to your sword.” (Naofumi)
What I found were racial Shield systems.
But, there are plenty of skill-trees I’m unable to unlock as of yet.
Atlas, Fohl, and Sadina’s races are currently impossible.
What I unlocked were race Growth Corrections.
“Recommend… Naofumi even knows that much.” (Ren)
“But it’s not like I’ve tried feeding meat and bone.” (Naofumi)
As if I could do something that insane.
The Heroes must remain as humans.
“Right. Ren, try Female Knight’s hair too. Perhaps you’ll get a Comrade Sword II.” (Naofumi)
“Eclaire is a bit…” (Ren)
She looks like one who would complain a bit.
That girl seems like the type who would say, ‘A girl’s hair is her life’ or something.
(TL: A Japanese saying)
“Father-in-Law, I’ve also tried absorbing everyone’s feathers into my spear.” (Motoyasu)
“I’ve already unlocked all of the Filo Rial series.” (Naofumi)
“As expected of Father-in-Law! How did you get them all!? Please tell me!” (Motoyasu)
“Motoyasu, you’re being loud. Think about it by yourself.” (Naofumi)
My base stats have risen a considerable amount.
Now that I think about it… Sadina said that Raphtalia was not of the Raccoon tribe.
Though she’s of some relation to them.
There was a Raccoon Shield on my shield tree, but it never unlocked.
I’ve always wondered why, but it must be because Raphtalia is a subspecies.
I guess I’m satisfied with that explanation.
By the way, Sadina’s didn’t unlock either.
I fed her materials to the Shield too, but the Luka Shield didn’t unlock.
She said she was of the Sakamata Race, I think.
Taniko was of the Nui Race, and when I inserted Kiel’s fur into the shield, the Wanui Shield was unlocked.
(TL: Nui is an anagram of Inu, which is dog. If I scramble Dog, they become too OP.)
(ED: God Kiel lol)
From a glance, they both have dog ears and tails, but it seems they’re a little different.
I mean, Kiel can transform.
Anyways, with all the subspecies and relatives, even if I know the basic traits, I can’t tell apart the specific species.
Raphtalia’s race is pretty much like the difference between a Balloon and an Orange Balloon.
If I took some Raccoon hair, would I understand something?
No, it didn’t help at all.
An icon did light up, but it didn’t unlock.
I should have been able to see the name of her racial shield, but I couldn’t figure it out.
Though several shields lit up, even if I knew the race, I could’t change to it.
The Shields linked to Raccoon are ones like High Raccoon and East Raccoon. There are quite a few.
Perhaps it would be good to look at the Filo Rial tree for reference.
After I received Fitoria’s feather, though it unlocked the series, after a certain point, the names showed up as???.
It’s like that.
The Filo Rial series has had all the material requirements met, so as long as I raise my level, I should become able to use them. Even now, there are a few locked ones.
In Raphtalia’s case, the materials are insufficient.
Is hair not enough?
But it’s not like she’s a monster, so I can’t get any meat or bone.
… But if you think about it, could I use humans as materials too?
What exactly are these legendary weapons?
“Father-in-Law?” (Motoyasu)
“… What?” (Naofumi)
Is he going to talk about Filo Rials again?
“How about feeding death row prisoners to your weapon?” (Motoyasu)
“………………………………………… Ren, how about it?” (Naofumi)
“Nonono! I get the feeling that’s a line that should never be crossed…” (Ren)
“That’s right, let’s give up.” (Naofumi)
Motoyasu. You’re getting quite dangerous.
I think it’s best to carefully distance myself from him.
I forcibly change the topic.
“Ah, right. The Hero Inscription on this island, did you people read it?” (Naofumi)
Itsuki is still learning. His magic doesn’t recover, so he can’t read magic words.
Even so, he’s learning the written language.
That’s why I address this question to Ren and Motoyasu.
“Yeah, I read it.” (Ren)
“Of course, Father-in-Law!” (Motoyasu)
“What magic did you get?” (Naofumi)
There’s a possibility that the magic learned depends on the individual.
I learned Zveit Aura, but it’s not certain that Ren and Motoyasu learned the same.
“Zveit Magic Enchant.”No. 1 Stanford women’s soccer (9-0-1, 2-0 Pac-12) defeated Washington State (5-4-1, 0-2 Pac-12) 2-1 on Thursday night, as senior goalie Jane Campbell made dramatic saves to protect the Cardinal’s lead.
The game was closely contested, and, particularly in the second half, Washington State was able to take the ball into Stanford’s half of the field. Each team had opportunities to take the lead, but Stanford performed at the crucial moments to clinch the victory at home.
“Washington State had a great game and created a lot of problems for us,” said head coach Paul Ratcliffe. “But Jane was amazing with some big saves, and then the two goals we scored were incredible too.”
Junior midfielder Andi Sullivan scored the first goal of the night in the 63rd minute as she broke away from the Cougars’ defenders through the midfield.
Sophomore forward Averie Collins put Stanford up 2-0 in the 78th minute, after an elaborate setup from sophomore defender Tegan McGrady and junior forward Kyra Carusa. Sprinting toward the corner of the field, McGrady left-footed the ball back into the penalty box area. At the left goal post, Carusa flipped the ball between her legs and behind her so it passed in front of the goal. There, Collins shot the ball high and straight ahead for the game-winning goal.
Collins scored the game-winning goal against Washington State last season as well, in double overtime.
Campbell had an unusually busy night defending the goal for the Cardinal. She notched six saves, five of them during the second half. Washington State goalkeeper Ella Dederick had four saves.
Morgan Weaver scored the Cougars’ only goal in the 88th minute, left-footing the ball 18 yards into the goal.
“Big takeaway from the game would probably be, we’ve got to stay in it for 90 minutes,” Campbell said. “They could’ve tied the game.”
Campbell also got some crucial help from sophomore defender Alana Cook, who blocked a shot at the goal line in the 59th minute.
But Campbell said she enjoyed some moments during the challenging night, particularly when she defended two back-to-back shots from Washington State.
“I haven’t seen [back-to-back shots] quite as much this year, because our back line has done a good job,” Campbell said. “Washington State put up a good fight. It was just fun to see, and it’s part of the job.”
It’s highly unusual for Stanford to trail its opponent in number of shots or corner kicks, but Washington State managed to get the upper hand in those statistics on Thursday. The Cougars took 14 shots — 10 in the second half — compared to 10 in total from the Cardinal. Washington State also had 6 corner kicks, three more than Stanford.
Stanford next hosts the University of Washington on Sunday at 2 p.m., concluding the Cardinal’s nine-game homestand.
Contact Alexa Corse at corsea ‘at’ stanford.edu.Sources indicate that Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte’s anti-American tirades stem from his historical association with known Filipino Communists and his Vietnam-era leftist movement involvement.
The Nikkei Asian Review’s Jun Endo states that:
“Jose Maria Sison, the founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines, was one of his teachers at college. The Duterte cabinet also includes certain members recommended by the communist party.”
Jose Maria Sison praises President Rodrigo Duterte's performance on his first 100 days in office. #100DaysOfDuterte https://t.co/pZXrRi2fR8 — Rappler (@rapplerdotcom) October 7, 2016
In May, the New York Times ran a piece that detailed the incidents of a “mysterious blast” in the Philippines that happened on Rodrigo Duterte’s watch as mayor of Davao.
Mysterious Blast in Philippines Fuels Rodrigo Duterte’s ‘Hatred’ of U.S. https://t.co/7O0p8pN4Gc — alanah torralba (@alanah_torralba) May 14, 2016
Duterte’s complaints stem from what he perceives to be unfair criticism against his violent drug war and alleged extrajudicial tactics being used.
“Son of a whore, I will curse you in front of everybody“. (referring to President Barack Obama, prior to an ASEAN conference) Duterte
While there are few indications that Duterte intends to emulate an ultra-statist and redistributionist approach to governance a la Venezuela – his coziness with the Communist Party of China and his recent announcement of a “separation” from the United States may provide some clues as to what drives the man behind the bellicose words.by the Earth First! Journal Collective
No joke, folks, dirt bag Brandon Darby—the snitch who sent the Texas 2 to prison, threw the Common Ground Collective under the bus, and recently bullied one of your very own Earth Firs! journalistas at an anti-Arpaio action—has been trolling around Occupy Wall Street with a camera, interviewing people who were upset with the internal order of the encampment. Obviously, misogynist creepo Darby, has made it his goal to sow dissension within the ranks of the Left and then to air the dirty laundry in public (as if anyone really cared).
His cohort, Lee Stranahan, is a blogger for the Huffington Post who posts about liberal themes, contrasting the harsh realities of life to the lofty ideas of activists. For instance, he declares that recent military abuses in Egypt should show OWS that the inspirational Arab Spring is really not a movement for democracy, apparently forgetting that the US is backing the military government to suppress the popular mobilizations and protect the investments of Goldman Sachs and friends.
So, long story short, someone gave this craven couple a camera and now they have an hour long movie documenting activist frustrations. You can watch their scramble to support the right wing by posing as radicals here.
AdvertisementsThis is a letter I (as Alison Tuvoices) wrote in 2003, and genuinely sent to KP Foods. I’ve always regretted not using a real name and return address. What did I think they would do? Hunt me down? Sue me? Sick the Space Raiders on me? They probably just smirked and then shredded the letter. The ‘fun facts’ mentioned in the letter now no longer appear on the backs of Space Raiders’ packets; they haven’t since 2010. What can I say, I’ve really got my finger on the pulse. Anyway, the cannibalisation continues… – Jamie
Dear Sirs
Space Raiders re: Intention to Sue
It is hard, in this day and age, to cushion your offspring from the horrors of the world. This task is made all the more difficult by sick companies such as yours (KP? What does it stand for? May I suggest ‘Killer Produce’?) with absolutely no regard for the sanctity nor the sanity of the consumers you seek to damage, exploit and murder. I thought my son was safe. I thought I’d done a good job of protecting him. Enter KP foods, stage left.
Just try to imagine my surprise when I returned home from a hard day’s work as a crack-whore to find my son lying in his bedroom amidst a nest of empty crisp wrappers, crying his eyes out but unable to stop himself from shoving clammy-handfuls of crisps into his fat gob!
‘What’s wrong, little Timmy?’ I asked. But Timmy is far from little, I can assure you. Thanks to the evil actions of your criminal empire, my eight year old son weighs as much as a couch. In fact, the whole suite.
‘It’s the aliens, mummy,’ he wailed, through a mush of crisps and a veil of tears. ‘I have to stop them!’
‘What on Earth do you mean, little Timmy?’ I asked. And that’s when he pointed at an empty bag of Space Raiders and implored me, through a glob of beef snacks, to read it and share his pain. And so I did.
Now, I am fully aware that you will know your own sickening mantra cum promotional evil off by heart, spawned as it was by your own vile and Hellish minds, but, in the interests of clarity, allow me to repeat it:
They came… From the darkest depths of the uncharted cosmos… THE SPACE RAIDERS Brightly coloured, bug eyed, bad guys with really big brains and easily enough technology to take over the planet. The only thing that can stop the Space raiders imminent invasion of the Earth is the sound of munchin’ crunchin’ snacks! So finish off this pack and go get another… before it’s too late!
Before it’s too late! So, in my Sumo-son’s effort to both save the known universe and stave off a multitude of panic attacks he has, to date, spent almost four and a half thousand pounds of his pocket money, my drugs-and-whoring money, and a great deal of my credit card limit on Space Raiders. To pour more salt (and, indeed, sugar) into the wound, he developed a form of diabetes so severe that he has to inject himself with insulin more times a day than I do myself with heroin.
What kind of a world is this we live in where people like you can warp the minds of impressionable youths and destroy their futures with complete and Satan-sealed impunity from prosecution? If only the torment had ended there! May I direct you to the ‘fun facts’ printed on each of the flavours of your disgusting product. Perhaps ‘Hellish facts designed to drag your weak and vulnerable children down deep into the fiery bowels of Hell to be disgorged and dismembered by the Lord Beelzebub himself’ would have been more appropriate, although I appreciate it probably wouldn’t fit on the packet.
Let me turn your attention to the ‘fun fact’ printed on the packet of your Beef flavoured ‘snacks’. It reads as follows:
ALIEN FUN FACT There is no such thing as a grey alien, in fact they are all bright colours, usually red, yellow, blue, green and purple. They only turn grey when you feed them with Beef-flavour snacks. So, go on, take the colour out of their faces and feed them as many Beef snacks as you can.
It may not take a vast leap of intelligence to see the relationship between cause and effect once I begin my heart-wrenching tale of horror. My crippled mother, moaning and gasping her last on her urine-soaked death-bed, let it be known that she wished to bequeath something to me that was very valuable to her. Unfortunately it was not her Bentley, as I had hoped, but something of an altogether more sentimental value. Since my mother has never given me anything but beatings and a strange fetish for silk stockings, you can imagine I was moved to tears by the old bitch’s intended legacy. She left me Geoffrey, her forty-five year old red, green, blue, yellow and purple parrot.
Are you a step ahead of me now, you evil swines? So, my demented son, believing Geoffrey to be a multi-coloured alien on a ruthless mission to enslave the human race, dutifully stuffed that feathered bastard full of five hundred and eighty-seven packets of Beef flavoured Space Raiders. And, do you know, much as your Beef-mantra predicted, Geoffrey did turn grey? He was fucking dead!
‘Mummy, the packet was right!’ Timmy cried, as I hit him with a snow-shovel.
To fill the void that Geoffrey’s terrible death had left in my heart, one of my Johns bought me a beautiful, fluffy Persian cat. I named it Cecil, after Cecil Parkinson. Perhaps I should have thought to consult, like some twisted Horoscope, the blurb on the back of your pickled onion snacks before welcoming another life-form into my home. May I direct you this time to the filthy pish you have splashed across the back of these Hell-snacks:
ALIEN FUN FACT Many people claim to have been abducted by aliens. This is a myth – Space raiders only abduct cats. They make them really fluffy, put little aliens inside their heads and then send them back to earth to spy on us…we call them Persian cats. You’ll never see a fluffy Persian cat eating Space Raiders snacks.
And so as I wandered out into the back garden to toss off my thoughtful John as a show of thanks, imagine my dismay at catching little Timmy bent over Cecil with a rusty hacksaw, the poor beast’s head lying meaowing and bloodied on the ground, as Timmy proceeded to slop out the goo inside.
‘But mummy,’ he said as I raised the spade, ‘he was one of them! He wouldn’t eat the Space Raiders!’
As Salt and Vinegar is my favourite flavour of crisps in the whole wide world I found it doubly difficult to accept that you could both warp my arsehole of a son even further and sully the good name of Salt and Vinegar at the same time. Since the ‘fun fact’ contained on this packet does not directly advocate the murder of animals, but instead opts to distort and violate the authority of Timmy’s history teacher {…they (the Space Raiders, of course!) built them (the sodding Pyramids!) out of bits of giant plastic and made them look very old just to confuse us humans!}, I’ll curtail my venom in this instance.
Suffice to say, Timmy was expelled for becoming unruly and hitting Mr Gilhouley in the ghoulies infront of the school bullies with a bottle of Dooleys he’d bought from Woolies, and now no other school will accept him because, and I quote, ‘…he is a complete piece of skum with the brain of an alcoholic maggot on acid.’ I’m quoting myself, of course.
I have since had to have my son put down. I hold you accountable for both the vets bill and a damage pay-out somewhere in the region of forty million pounds. I have arrived at this figure through consultation with my schizophrenic alter-ego, who assures me that the sum is a modest one given the circumstances. You will, of course, be hearing from my lawyer.
And you can tell the Space Raiders to expect a call as well. If they think they’re going to get away with this, they’ve got another thing coming.
Yours dementedly,
Alison Tuvoices
PS Tonight while you sleep I will suffocate your pets with a Bag-For-Life from Lidl’s. Incidentally, they’re only about thirty pence and are pleasingly durable. Worth a look the next time you’re popping in. Take care now.
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Like this: Like Loading...Comedy Central’s South Park marathon — the eight-day wall-to-wall run of over 250 episodes from September 6-13 — was up 21% vs the same period a year ago.
Helped in no small part by the marathon, the Wednesday Season 21 South Park premiere, which aired immediately following its conclusion, drew 1.7 million total viewers and a 1.36 Live+same day rating in adults 18-49 making it the top show on cable on Wednesday. It also was the highest-rated premiere in 2017 among adults 18-49 and adults 18-34 for any primetime comedy across all of ad-supported cable, according to the network.
The Season 21 premiere was also essentially flat (-3%) from last season’s opener, which was heavily promoted as marking the animated series’ 20th anniversary. It also boosted the season premiere ratings of lead-out, Broad City.
The South Park marathon drew more than 10 million unique viewers, with over seven million video views and 500K engagements generated via social posts across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
As usual, the Emmy and Peabody-winning animated series created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone tackled current controversy in its premiere episode titled “White People Renovating Houses.” In one scene, tiki torch-toting white nationalists, who bore striking resemblance to those who participated in the Charlottesville march chanted “You will not replace us!” and held signs reading “You took our jobs!”The debate over HTML5 vs. Flash is great for comments and page views, but all that chatter obscures the bigger issue: Should developers and designers invest in HTML5?
According to Eric A. Meyer, an author and HTML/CSS expert, the answer is a definitive yes. In the following Q&A, Meyer explains why HTML5, CSS and JavaScript are the “classic three” for developers and designers. He also pushes past the HTML5 vs. Flash bombast to offer a rational and much-needed comparison of the toolsets.
HTML5’s feature set
Mac Slocum: How is HTML5 different than HTML as we currently know it?
Eric Meyer: It’s really the HTML we’re all used to plus more elements. But that’s the 80/20 answer. HTML5 adds new elements for things like sections of a document and articles, and figures and captions for figures. So it covers things that a lot of us do all the time, like create <div class=”figure”> and then <p class=”caption”> inside of that to go along with an image. Now there’s just an element called “figure” and you insert an image and you have an element after that called “caption.”
There’s been an attempt to look at what people are doing. What class names are people using over and over again? What structures are they setting up over and over again? Because HTML doesn’t have elements that directly address those.
The HTML5 spec also attempts to very precisely and exhaustively describe what browsers should do in pretty much any given circumstance. Older HTML specifications would simply say: “These are the elements. These are the attributes. Here are some basic parsing rules. Here is what you’re supposed to do if you encounter an error.” HTML5 has these really long algorithms that say: “Do this, then this, then this, then this. And if you hit a problem, here, do this other thing.” There’s a lot of debate as to whether that’s even a good idea. But if the vision that’s encoded in those algorithms is brought out — I’m not saying it will be, but if it is, then browsers will be a lot more interoperable.
But that’s the base level answer. As you push further into the more obscure corners, then the answer to “how is HTML5 different?” becomes much more complicated.
MS: Is HTML5 becoming a full-fledged development environment?
EM: I don’t see it stepping forward into full-fledged programming. But I do see it pushing HTML forward so that it’s a better foundation for web apps. That’s one of HTML5’s primary goals. There are sections of it that are devoted solely to how to deal with web application environments.
The thing that’s most directly applicable to making HTML more web-application friendly is the attempt to include what’s known as microdata. That’s semantic information and little snippets of data that can be embedded directly into what we think of as pages right now. But these can become the views a web application presents. It’s the kind of stuff that we put in cookies now.
But HTML is not getting for loops or switch statements. That’s going to stay with JavaScript. In that sense, no, HTML is not becoming a programming language.
What developers and designers need to know about HTML5
MS: What skills do developers need to take full advantage of HTML5?
EM: Developers need to know HTML5. They need to know JavaScript and they need to know CSS. That’s the classic three.
MS: How about designers?
EM: Designers need to know mark-up. They need to know HTML5. They need to be able to write CSS and understand web layout. And they need to have at least a decent grasp of what JavaScript does. I don’t necessarily insist that everyone who ever touches the web be able to write their own web app by hand, but designers should understand how JavaScript works.
There are a lot of people who call themselves web designers who are really just designers who put their designs on the web. And there’s nothing wrong with being just a designer. But they’re not necessarily web designers. They’re visual designers. There’s a difference.
MS: Would you recommend starting with web development skills and then adding Flash and others later?
Yeah. Make that your grounding and then add things to it if you like. You’re making a very dangerous bet to not have web tools at your disposal. The developer should be able to do web work. And it’s not a bad idea to add Flash to the tool belt.
HTML5 vs. Flash: A rational comparison
MS: Without getting into the “Flash killer” stuff, how does HTML5 compare to Flash?
EM: HTML5 itself and Flash are vastly different. They have different things that they’re trying to do. But the HTML5 plus CSS plus JavaScript package is more. I think that’s an easier comparison to make to Flash because Flash is supposed to be this total environment. You can put things on the screen and you can script it and you can define interaction. And HTML5-CSS-JavaScript lets you do that as well.
We got to the point a couple of years ago where the HTML-CSS-JavaScript stack can technically do just about anything that the Flash environment makes possible. It’s just a lot harder at the moment to do that in HTML5-CSS-JavaScript because Flash has about a decade’s head start on authoring environments.
There are a number of people, myself included, who have been observing for a while now that the current web stack feels like Flash did in 1996. Look at the canvas demos, for example. The canvas demos we’re seeing now are totally reminiscent of the Flash demos we used to see in the ’96 era, where it was like: “Hey, look! I have three circles and you can grab one with a mouse and flick it. And then it bounces around the box and there’s physics and collision and animation and they’re blobby and woo hoo.”
MS: What’s your take on plugins? Are they inherently inelegant?
EM: That’s been my feeling for a long time. That any plug-in is kind of inelegant and the wrong way to be going about this. And I don’t reserve that just for Flash. I really mean any plug-in. The fact that we need plug-ins to play movies has never felt right.
MS: If, for a given application, HTML5 and Flash can provide the same result, why would a developer go with HTML5? What’s the motivation?
EM: HTML5 is native to the medium. It’s the feeling that if we’re going to do web stuff, let’s do web stuff. Let’s not do Flash stuff that happens to be represented in a web page. So I think that’s the philosophical drive.
The technical drive, to a large degree, is that companies don’t want to be beholden to somebody else. And doing everything in Flash means that they’re effectively beholden to Adobe. With web technologies, the only entity that can reasonably be said to hold the keys to the kingdom is the W3C. And even if the W3C for some reason turned into “evil goatee Spock” tomorrow and said “we want licensing fees,” everyone would go, “yeah, no.”
HTML5 and mobile applications
MS: Does HTML5 give mobile developers more latitude? Is there benefit in developing applications outside Apple’s approval process?
EM: Absolutely. No question. There are some people who have argued that the whole App Store phase is a fad. Granted, a very popular and lucrative and probably long-lived fad, but that it’s still a fad.
The argument is that 10 years from now we’re going to look back at rebuilding apps for every mobile device and go “What the hell were we thinking?” It’s the same way kids who graduate from decent web development programs today don’t understand why anyone ever tried to layout a page with tables. I’ve had conversations with people who literally just can’t understand. Even when you explain, “Well, there was no CSS.” They’re like, “But surely there was something better because that’s just awful.”
Betting against the web is the sure losing bet of technology. Over the long-term, that’s where I see things going.
Note: This interview was condensed and edited.Developers Tamsoft have madeOneechanbara Z2 Chaosan absolutely gorgeous game in 60FPS, 1080p glory! And with graphics like thatthe game needs the visuals to match- including thesame raunchy and risque visuals we've come to expect, now for the PS4! The levels of sexy have been turned up inZ2 Chaos, something fans of the series won't be surprised by!
For those notsidetracked by the character models: have we got some gameplay news for you! The largest and most talked about gameplay change is the addition of the new combat system dubbed'Cross Merge Combination System';meaning you can have more than one character 'active' on the battlefield at any point, removing the need for on-the-fly swapping.
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question that Romney’s ad spending advantage is indeed an advantage, it just might not be a very big one. But the assessment of Romney's ad spending advantage is incomplete without considering Obama's ground game. Part of the reason why Romney has such a large advantage in ad spending is because the Obama campaign has decided to invest heavily in building and cultivating their ground operation. According to The Washington Post, Obama and Democratic field operatives outnumber their Republican counterparts by more than two-to-one and the most recent ABC/Washington Post poll found that a far greater share of voters has been contacted by the Obama campaign. Political Scientists have found that voter contact is one of the most effective forms of political persuasion, with experiments by Gerber and Green finding that voters turned out at an 8.7 percent higher rate than a control group. In a high-turnout presidential election year, the increase in turnout will not be nearly as large as it was in an off-year, local election. Even so, direct contact is a demonstrably effective means to increase turnout.
For whatever reason, the Romney campaign has decided not to match Obama’s investments on the ground. The previously mentioned Washington Post article found Republican officials arguing that the Obama campaign was wasting their money. Given that Republicans had the resources necessary to make similar investments but elected not do so, I assume that the gap in spending on the ground reflects a deliberate calculation that it's not worth the cost to Republicans. After all, the law of diminishing returns applies on the ground as well as the air: initial field offices in Cleveland and Orlando will be able to reach out to many more voters than the thirtieth field offices in Zanesvile and Ocala. And it’s not entirely clear whether paid staffers and infrastructure are the most important metric, given that they’ll be supplemented and outnumbered by an army of free volunteers, and that there's presumably a qualitative element to the ground game, as well.
But the respective spending strategies might not just be a Moneyball-esque calculation about the relative effectiveness of air versus ground spending, but instead a cold reflection on the strategic imperatives facing each campaign. Obama holds a clear lead among registered voters and an unusually large gap between likely and registered voters has been responsible for a close race. If Obama’s ground game could narrow the gap, Romney’s deficit would become daunting. But unlike Obama, Romney probably won’t win on turnout alone. He trails among likely voters, can't and won't count on the wide gap between likely and registered voters persisting, and demographics don’t give Romney an unusual large untapped reservoir of potential new voters, so closing the gap will require him to persuade undecided voters, presumably with a barrage of campaign advertisements. So the Obama campaign has two routes to victory that appear consistent with their spending strategy: invest millions in a potential demographic trump card, while spending enough on the airwaves to keep Romney from sweeping undecided voters. And conversely, winning undecided voters is prerequisite to a Romney victory, so they’ve piled money onto the airwaves.
There's no way to be sure whether Obama will benefit from superior turnout, let alone whether it would overwhelm Romney's advantage on the air. But there's not much cause to presume that Romney's air campaign will pulverize Obama into defeat, either. The historical effects of ad spending are relatively meager, views of the president are deeply entrenched, and voters have already been exposed to a full presidential campaign's worth of advertisements. Even in the plausibly competitive states where Team Romney ran uncontested advertisements, millions of dollars do not appear to have put the states into play. Given that Team Obama maintains a lead after being outspent by a two-to-one margin for two months, there is no reason to assume that a deluge of advertisements will hand Romney the lead in the race's final hours.PORTLAND — Something is rotten in Bangor.
The state’s public college campuses – where faculty teach and students learn – face huge cutbacks. But the University of Maine System office in Bangor – where no one teaches anybody anything – spends $20 million a year, almost 10 percent of the state’s higher education appropriation.
about the author Susan Feiner is a professor of economics and women and gender studies at the University of Southern Maine. Additional Photos A University of Southern Maine student uses the Bedford Street skywalk to get to classes. The writer claims high administrative costs are harming the core mission of the state’s university system. Photo by John Patriquin/Staff Photographer
Just take a look at the budget. The $20 million the system office spends not teaching exceeds the $14.95 million spent annually by the three smallest University of Maine campuses (at Fort Kent, Machias and Presque Isle). If it doesn’t teach, doesn’t grade, doesn’t create assignments or even talk with the faculty who do all these things, how does the system blow through 20 million bucks a year?
There are 291 people employed at the University of Maine System office, of whom 87 (30 percent) are administrators. One of the most senior, and expensive, positions in the system is that of the vice chancellor for academic affairs. That’s a provost, and there’s a provost on each campus. The system has a chief student affairs officer, as does each campus.
In Bangor offices that duplicate campus level human resources, information technology and finance offices you’ll find flocks of directors, executive directors, assistant directors and coordinators. How efficient.
The University of Maine System is not unique. Just last month the Delta Cost Project reported that “Growth in administrative jobs was widespread across higher education... As the ranks of managerial and professional administrative workers grew, the number of faculty and staff per administrator continued to decline.”
Here’s how this plays out in Maine. Since 2008, 311 positions have been eliminated across campuses and within the system office. Reductions in hourly positions (191) comprise 61 percent of total job losses. Faculty losses (105) account for 34 percent of jobs eliminated. Just 5 percent of the job losses (15 positions) came from the ranks of administrators.
The trade-off between funding the system administration and funding education is stark. Every million dollars the system sinks into the bureaucracy is an additional million bucks Maine students have to cough up. Most of our students already work. Working more lowers grades, and diminishes the odds of college completion. Or Maine’s students can borrow more. Great. These choices are the direct result of decisions made by system administrators.
The public’s been told the University of Maine System is collapsing. But it’s not. Assets and reserves are growing. Liabilities are declining. Year-over-year revenues exceed expenses. Operating cash flows are positive.
Don’t believe me? S&P speaks glowingly about the system’s financial strength and gives the UMS an AA- bond rating, the fourth highest rating possible. Why? Because the system has such strong reserves and positive cash flows. In 2013 the total reserves of the system reached $283 million, because it was able to generate $17 million of operating cash flows. In each of the past six years, the system has taken in more than it’s spent. But instead of funding education, they’ve built reserves.
Here’s another stunning fact. Over the last six years – while pleading poverty – the system office decided to increase unrestricted net assets from $88 million to $188 million.
Help me out here: How can the University of Maine System be both so broke it has to eliminate another 165 positions and cut dozens of programs, while at the same time it can stash away $100 million?
Any claim that the system is in financial trouble, or that it’s broke, is absurd. If anything’s broken it’s the system’s priorities. The system devotes a mere 27 percent of total expenses to the core academic mission. Every year for the last five years the share of expenses devoted to education has declined while the share sucked up by the administration has increased.
Bain Higher Education Consulting says, “As colleges and universities look to areas where they can make cuts and achieve efficiencies, they should start farthest from the core of teaching and research. Cut from the outside in, and build from the inside out.”
The University of Maine System is taking the exact opposite tack. They’d rather destroy public higher education based on the false claim that there’s a financial emergency, than reduce their bloated administrative ranks.
— Special to the Telegram
ShareHello Citizens of the Blogosphere!
For a while now, I’ve been meaning to get more serious about watercolor painting. In addition to practicing more, I also wanted to get some higher quality paints to keep me motivated. Earlier this year, I decided to buy a nice little watercolor kit as a birthday present to myself.
Criteria
I wanted to find a paint set that was reasonably priced (around $30 or less), had decent quality paints, offered a wide variety of colors and was portable (for painting on the go or outside). To my surprise, there were actually quite a few paint sets that fit my criteria. In the end I finally decided to go with the Koi® Water Color Field Sketch Travel Kit made by Sakura of America.
Koi Water Color Field Sketch Travel Kit
The kit I chose comes with 24 different colors, a water brush with detachable tip, a removable mixing palette and 2 dabbing sponges. The average price of this kit is $24; I bought mine from Amazon for around $22.
(If you want to read more about this product’s specifications, Sakura of America has more detailed information on their website.)
Efficient Design: A Complete Package
Upon opening the sleek white kit, you find a detachable pallet with five seperate sections that you can use to either mix paint or hold water. Pulling off the pallet reveals 24 half-pan watercolors and a water brush with a detached tip that fits perfectly in the slot provided. On the sides of the paint are two dabbing sponges that can be used to clean off a wet brush. Every piece is intentional. Each section meticulously calculated for maximum efficiency.
What can I say? I’m a sucker for thoughtful design and this is definitely a carefully designed product. I really love how everything serves a purpose. There is even a bit of space in between the palette and the lid so that you can carry a few small sheets of watercolor paper with you. While I’ve never actually tried it myself, the box advertises that you can use the lid as a mini easel. Bravo … Sakura of America…Bravo!
So Many Colors
With the 24 color kit, you really have a lot of fun colors to play with. Some of my favorites include: Permanent Deep Green, Viridian Hue (a bluish-green), Jaune Brilliant (a peachy tone) and Vermillion Hue (a deep red/orange). Although I would have liked to see more pinks and purples, such colors were easily mixed using the colors included in the kit.
Here’s a quick (and rough) color chart that I made to keep in the lid of the kit.
Paint Quality
Although I did like the selection of colors included in the kit, I did find that some of them lacked vibrancy. For example, several of the blues seemed fairly dull compared to some of the other colors in the kit. Moreover, many of the colors are slightly muted and opaque, as if they were kissed with a touch of white paint.
While these don’t seem to be professional quality paints, they are perfect for sketches or quick lettering projects. Moreover, they are great for practicing, which is pretty much what I was looking for.
Product Marketing
One thing to keep in mind is that this kit is definitely advertised as a complete package. While the packaging does state that the paints are professional quality, the brand’s marketing emphasis seems to be on the product’s utility, rather than on the quality of the paints themselves.
Art Examples and Closing Statements
As of this writing, I’ve been using the product pretty regularly for a little over a month and I’m really liking it so far. I would recommend this kit to anyone who wants an intermediary between student grade and high quality professional watercolor paints.
As always, thanks so much for following my creative journey!
🌵Audrey
– P.S –
Check me out on Instagram (@annotatedaudrey) for updates about my adventures or for sneak peeks of new art I create!
💗 This product is available on Amazon. If you buy this product via my affiliate link, I get a small commission, which I can put towards creating more content! Koi Watercolor Set: http://amzn.to/29qB3tz 💗Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Bridge is played by four players who form two partnerships and involves bets being made on the number of tricks each side will win
The head of funding body Sport England has defended its decision not to class the card game bridge as a sport, as a judicial review into the ruling began.
Phil Smith said Sport England's job was to promote fitness and bridge "isn't getting the nation any fitter".
But the English Bridge Union argues it has health benefits for the mind.
The Royal Courts of Justice will not decide if bridge is a sport - only whether it was reasonable for Sport England to have ruled it was not.
Sport England distributes government and National Lottery funding, so reclassification would make bridge clubs eligible for grants and could help boost participation.
Lawyers for the English Bridge Union (EBU), which has 55,000 members, told the High Court bridge was based on rules, fairness and competition - just like other activities classified as sports.
Richard Clayton QC argued that the meaning of "sport" in the 1996 Royal Charter which established Sport England was sufficiently broad not necessarily to require physical activity.
He also said bridge was one of a smaller number of sports available to older people, to whom it brought a vital sense of inclusion and community.
What is a sport?
Along with well-known sporting activities like football, rugby and cricket, Sport England has some less obvious choices on its list, including:
Lifesaving
Angling
Model aircraft flying
Quoits
Rambling
Do bridge and chess make you fitter?
Sport England, taking its lead from the Council of Europe, defines a sport as an "activity aimed at improving physical fitness and well-being, forming social relations and gaining results in competition".
It has argued that bridge is no more of a sporting activity than "sitting at home, reading a book".
Ben Jaffey, lawyer for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, told the court: "There is nothing objectionable about bridge, chess or similar mind games, but the sports councils are entitled to separate mind games from physical activities when deciding who to recognise."
He said the government could choose to provide funding for bridge, "but the route to achieving that result is by applying for funding under an appropriate category".
'Fantastic pursuit'
The EBU says it has the definition of sport in the 2011 Charities Act on its side - activities "which promote health involving physical or mental skill or exertion" - as well as the International Olympic Committee, which said in 1999 that bridge and chess should be considered "mind sports".
They are not currently part of the Olympic Games programme, but organisers of the 2020 summer Games in Tokyo have invited both chess and bridge to apply for inclusion, with the decision to be made next year.
Phil Smith, director of Sport England, told BBC Radio 5 live the argument ultimately came down to money and his organisation must spend its "precious funding" on activities which improve physical health.
"It's Sport England's job to get the nation fitter," he said. "And although bridge is a fantastic pursuit, and we think it probably gives pleasure to a lot of people, it certainly isn't getting the nation any fitter."
Image copyright PA Image caption Late film star Omar Sharif was a lover of bridge
Mr Smith said classifying bridge as a sport would also "open the door" to other pursuits like chess and Scrabble to "dilute" Sport England's budget.
But Heather Dhondy, a member of England's women's bridge team, said the card game "doesn't involve a great deal of physical activity", but players still had to be physically fit.
"We can be playing up to nine hours a day," she added.
Separately the EBU has also mounted a legal challenge to a decision by HM Revenue and Customs that bridge is not a sport and is not therefore exempt from VAT.
Bridge, or contract bridge, is a card game played by four players who form two partnerships. It uses a standard 52-card deck and involves bets being made on the number of tricks each side will win.
Bridge trivia
An early version of the game was played in England as far back as the 16th Century
Oliver Cromwell banned all card games during his Protectorate
Mrs Anthony Fly, of Little Rock, Arkansas, filed a petition for divorce, on the grounds that her husband refused to make up a four at bridge
The modern form of contract bridge was invented in the 1920s by American billionaire Harold Vanderbilt
World leaders such as China's Deng Xiaoping, India's Mahatma Ghandi and Britain's Winston Churchill played bridge
Celebrities such as tennis player Martina Navratilova, the band Radiohead and Microsoft's Bill Gates enjoy the game. The late film star Omar Sharif was also a fan
Source: English Bridge UnionImage copyright Getty Images Image caption The UK is believed to have large resources of shale gas that have yet to be extracted
The government has outlined plans to give tax breaks to companies involved in the UK's nascent shale gas industry.
It has proposed cutting the tax on some of the income generated from producing shale gas - found in underground shale rock formations - from 62% to just 30%.
The plans would make the UK the "most generous" regime for shale gas in the world, the government said.
But they have been criticised by environmentalists, with Friends of the Earth calling them a "disgrace".
Greenpeace added that communities affected by fracking - the technique for extracting shale gas - faced a lot of disruption for very little gain.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Chancellor George Osborne says Britain must be" at the forefront of the shale gas revolution"
Chancellor George Osborne said shale gas was a resource with "huge potential" for the UK's energy mix.
"We want to create the right conditions for industry to explore and unlock that potential in a way that allows communities to share in the benefits," he said.
"I want Britain to be a leader of the shale gas revolution because it has the potential to create thousands of jobs and keep energy bills low for millions of people."
The shale gas firm Cuadrilla welcomed the news and said it would consider the implications.
"Whilst we are still in the exploration phase, we believe that shale gas has the potential to make a considerable contribution to the UK's energy supply and security, while at the same time creating thousands of jobs and generating very significant tax revenues and community benefits," said Cuadrilla's chief executive, Francis Egan.
Image copyright (C) British Broadcasting Corporation
The UK is believed to have large resources of shale gas.
A recent report from the British Geological Survey estimated there may be 1,300 trillion cubic feet of shale gas present in the north of England alone - much of it in the Bowland Basin under Lancashire.
Analysis Just how generous are these tax breaks? Gas production is typically taxed at 62% although in some parts of the north sea long standing operations are taxed at up to 81%. So the 30% tax rate proposed for shale gas does look generous. The government insists it is in line with what already exists for small or challenging fields offshore. What's more it won't be for the lifetime of the well. In practice part of the profits from the well will be exempt from the higher tax rate. Just how much is still to be decided, but it will be linked to the amount of investment that a firm has made. The industry insists the tax break is necessary as initial costs will be high and there is still much uncertainty about how much oil and gas will be liberated from our shale deposits. But with up to 50 wells expected to be drilled in the next 2 to 3 years - the hope from the government is that this tax announcement will help to kick-start what could be a hugely important new industry.
Drilling companies have previously estimated that they may be able to extract about 10% of this gas - far in excess of the three trillion cubic feet of gas currently consumed in the UK each year.
However, the industry is still in its infancy with a handful of companies holding licences for shale gas exploration in the UK, none of which have begun extracting gas.
Water quality
In backing shale gas exploration, the government points to the experience of the US, where a shale gas boom has had a dramatic effect on the energy sector.
Under its plans, the tax break would apply to a proportion of the income generated from shale gas production. What that proportion is will be determined after a consultation.
BBC industry correspondent John Moylan says the industry regards the tax incentives as necessary, as costs are likely to be high during the initial exploration phase over the coming years.
The government has also confirmed plans to give communities that host shale gas sites £100,000 per site, and up to 1% of all revenues from production.
That is designed to offset some of the controversy surrounding the process of fracking.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Science Editor David Shukman explains the process of fracking
There are concerns the process, which involves pumping high pressure water, sand and chemicals into rock to force out the gas, is related to water contamination and even earth tremors.
Promising tax hand-outs to polluting energy firms that threaten our communities and environment, when everyone else is being told to tighten their belts, is a disgrace Andrew Pendleton, Friends of the Earth
Water companies have warned that the quality of drinking water must be protected "at all costs".
Water UK, which represents the UK water companies, points out that fracking requires huge amounts of water which could put a strain on local supplies.
It also says the drilling and the fracturing process could damage water pipes.
"The water industry is not taking sides. If it (fracking) goes ahead we want to ensure corners are not cut and standards compromised," said Jim Marshall, policy and business adviser at Water UK.
Environmental groups argue that investment in the industry will divert attention from the need to develop renewable sources of energy.
Andrew Pendleton, from Friends of the Earth, condemned the move.
"Promising tax hand-outs to polluting energy firms that threaten our communities and environment, when everyone else is being told to tighten their belts, is a disgrace," he said.
"Ministers should be encouraging investors to develop the nation's huge renewable energy potential. This would create tens of thousands of jobs and wean the nation off its increasingly expensive fossil fuel dependency."National security adviser Michael Flynn, center, and senior counselor Stephen K. Bannon sit nearby as President Trump speaks by phone with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Jan. 28. (Pete Marovich/European Pressphoto Agency)
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a regular contributor to PostEverything
The Drezner family has only a few important rules that govern the household. Basic stuff, like not being in the common rooms of the house with only underwear on. A big rule, however, is that when we all eat dinner together, no screens are allowed. Family meals are important moments in the day; even silly conversations about Harry Potter are worthwhile ways to rouse the children from their smartphones.
The Trump era has made this a bit difficult, however. The problem is that the pace of Trump-generated news has accelerated so quickly that even spending an hour away from the news means that one misses a few norm-shattering headlines. Wednesday night, for example:
That moment when you check Twitter after a spell and see that Trump browbeat one ally & threatened to invade another https://t.co/JfS7WeMn4j — Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) February 2, 2017
I’m hardly the only person experiencing this phenomenon during the first two weeks of the Trump administration:
Threat to invade Mexico? Trump alienating Australia? The weird threat escalation w Iran? The end to counter-terror against white racists? https://t.co/x4SbSVOalK — Josh Busby (@busbyj2) February 2, 2017
Most of today felt like the first normalish day of the Trump administration.
And now we're at war with Australia.
Australia! — Binyamin Appelbaum (@BCAppelbaum) February 2, 2017
For political scientists in particular, these first two weeks have been exhausting. Friends and colleagues have commented on how the flurry of tweets, executive orders, protests, counter-protests and news leaks have seemed overwhelming.
This is a problem for the discipline, for two reasons. First, the opportunity costs can be great. Research programs take months or years to gear up. They can’t just come to a crashing halt. Well, actually, they can, but that usually doesn’t end well for the political scientist seeking promotion or publication. Second, it is undeniable that most political scientists, like most academics, are pretty liberal in their orientation. The conflation of normative horror at what Trump is doing threatens to warp attempts at a more positivist analysis of Trump’s political and policy effects. Or, worse, it will just cause political scientists to abandon their primary areas of research and obsess about the guy in the Oval Office.
The hard-working staff here at Spoiler Alerts is not immune to these problems. I am fortunate that I largely finished my major research project from last year and am now casting about for new things to work on.
I am, however, somewhat familiar with the interplay between things like blogging and more rigorous research. As someone who is further down the learning curve, let me proffer a few survival tips for political scientists trying to cope with the new reality of the Trump administration.
1) It’s going to be like this for a spell. As noted previously this week, all new administrations make rookie mistakes in the weeks and months after Inauguration Day. So maybe, as Cabinet and other officials get confirmed, and as Trump’s White House staff moves along its own learning curve, the pace of mistakes and norm violations will slow down.
the pace of completely off-the-wall stuff happening is now down to about once an hour — Rosie Gray (@RosieGray) February 2, 2017
The thing is, I don’t think this will be true for quite some time. Trump is way behind on staffing up his Cabinet, as this handy-dandy Post tracker makes clear. Furthermore, Trump’s style is so at odds with previous presidents’, and his staff’s worldview is so at odds with prior presidents’, that even anodyne moments wind up generating news. We’re talking about a White House that managed to make both Holocaust Remembrance Day and the first day of Black History Month controversy-generating news cycles. Phone calls with close allies are now fraught with peril. This triggers reactions from other actors, which generate further news cycles, which will generate more Trump tweets in defense or deflection. Staff turmoil and discontent will generate more profiles and weak attempts at spin control.
This will be the new normal for longer than anyone of any political persuasion wants it to be.
2) Redirect your research, but be smart about it. It’s okay to redirect one’s research stream in response to real-world events. Terrorism was considered a backwater area of research, and then 9/11 happened, and a lot of scholars who knew little about the topic dived in. My own research projects have often pivoted in response to real-world events. So go ahead and follow the news!
That said, make sure you have properly framed your research question before proceeding — or, at least, nail down the areas of inquiry that would animate you. As with its presidential campaign, the Trump administration will be generating a cornucopia of natural experiments in its first year. Figure out which natural experiment interests you, figure out how to measure the variables and outcomes, and then start process-tracing!
3) Don’t count on federal funding. I would put cash money down on the Trump administration cutting National Science Foundation funding for the social and economic sciences. The total budget is a bit more than $100 million, which is one of those figures that sounds huge to the public even though eliminating it entirely would have a negligible effect on fiscal probity. But it would be a popular move with Trump supporters and pundits bending over backward to find something to agree with Trump about in a visible display of fair-mindedness. Other political-science-relevant research funding from the federal government might persist, but anything overtly focusing on the American presidency might be problematic.
My advice would be to look for funding from foundations rather than the government. Of course, some macro trends within the world of philanthropy will present its own challenges for researchers. But that is a question best left to forthcoming books.
There is probably more and better advice that I could proffer. But, to be honest, I’m too exhausted to think of it right now. Plus, I’ve been writing this up for a while. So excuse me while I go see what the Trump administration has done this morning while I was away.A colony of nearly 40,000 of Adelie penguins in Antarctica suffered a catastrophic breeding season with just two chicks surviving, experts have said.
Photos of the aftermath of the tragedy show adult penguins mourning as they examine dead chicks in the Terre Adelie region in East Antarctica.
The disaster for the colony on Petrels Island was down to unusually extensive sea ice late in the summer - despite low ice early in the season - which meant penguins had to travel further for food and the chicks starved.
In the colony of about 18,000 breeding pairs in the region, scientists discovered just two surviving chicks amid thousands of starved chicks and unhatched eggs.
In the wake of the 'devastating' event, conservation group WWF is calling for greater protection for the waters off East Antarctica to ensure penguins do not face added pressure of competition from fishing fleets for their main food source of krill, a small shrimp-like crustacean.
In the colony of about 18,000 breeding pairs in the country's Terre Adelie region, scientists discovered just two surviving chicks amid thousands of starved chicks and unhatched eggs. Pictured above, an adult penguin next to a dead chick
The disaster for the colony on was down to unusually extensive sea ice late in the summer - despite low ice early in the season - which meant penguins had to travel further for food and the chicks starved. Pictured above, dead chicks on the island
Photos of the aftermath of the tragedy show adult penguins mourning as they examine dead chicks across the region
The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), made up 25 member states and the EU, are meeting on Monday to consider a proposal for a new marine protected area for the waters off East Antarctica.
A marine protected area, which would prevent krill fishing, would help to secure a future for the wildlife of East Antarctica, including Adelie and emperor penguins, WWF said.
Adelie penguins, slick and efficient swimmers, are generally faring well in East Antarctica, but declining in the Antarctic peninsula region where climate change is already established, the conservation group said.
But the same colony which failed to breed chicks this year, failed to produce a single chick four years ago from 20,196 adult pairs.
Heavy sea ice, combined with unusually warm weather and rain followed by a rapid drop in temperature, resulted in them becoming saturated and freezing to death.
WWF has been supporting penguin research by French scientists working for the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in the region since 2010.
The same colony which failed to breed chicks this year, failed to produce a single chick four years ago from 20,196 adult pairs (file photo)
Adelie penguins, slick and efficient swimmers, are generally faring well in East Antarctica, but declining in the Antarctic peninsula region where climate change is already established, the conservation group said (file photo)
Rod Downie, head of polar programmes at WWF said: 'Adelie penguins are one of the hardiest and most amazing animals on our planet.
THE ADELIE PENGUIN The Adélie penguin is a species that breeds around the entire Antarctic continent. The species is experiencing population declines along the West Antarctic Peninsula (WAP), which is one of the most rapidly warming places on Earth, while Adélie populations in other areas around the continent where the climate is stable or even cooling remain steady or increasing.
'This devastating event contrasts with the Disney image that many people might have of penguins. It's more like 'Tarantino does Happy Feet', with dead penguin chicks strewn across a beach in Adelie Land.
'The risk of opening up this area to exploratory krill fisheries, which would compete with the Adelie penguins for food as they recover from two catastrophic breeding failures in four years, is unthinkable.
'So CCAMLR needs to act now by adopting a new Marine Protected Area for the waters off East Antarctica, to protect the home of the penguins.'
Yan Ropert-Coudert, senior penguin scientist at the CNRS who leads the Adelie penguin programme at Dumont D'Urville research station adjacent to the colony, said: 'The region is impacted by environmental changes that are linked to the breakup of the Mertz glacier since 2010.
The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), made up 25 member states and the EU, are meeting on Monday to consider a proposal for a new marine protected area for the waters off East Antarctica (file photo)
Hopes are high it will get the green light this time with WWF's head of polar programmes Rod Downie saying it would help secure the future for Adelie penguins (file photo)
'A marine protected area will not remedy these changes but it could prevent further impacts that direct anthropogenic pressures, such as tourism and proposed fisheries, could bring.'
Last year CCAMLR agreed to create the world's largest marine sanctuary covering more than 1.55million square kilometres (600,000 square miles) - roughly the size of Britain, Germany and France combined - in the Ross Sea area of Antarctica.
But time ran out on a second proposed protected area in East Antarctica, covering another one million square kilometre zone, where the penguins died.
Hopes are high it will get the green light this time with WWF's head of polar programmes Rod Downie saying it would help secure the future for Adelie penguins.
'The risk of opening up this area to exploratory krill fisheries, which would compete with the Adelie penguins for food as they recover from two catastrophic breeding failures in four years, is unthinkable,' he said.The Internet of Things company Slock.it is about to unveil something revolutionary – the first autonomous lock you can open with money. The digital locking system designed by the German startup can be controlled by a smart contract on the blockchain, using Ethereum.
This technology - to be officially unveiled at the Ethereum annual Devcon conference in London (10-13 November) - will further decentralise the Sharing Economy, empowering anyone to easily rent, share or sell anything that can be locked. This means disrupting the disrupters, including companies like Airbnb and a host of other sharing economy companies acting as intermediaries based around some form of physical access.
Christoph Jentzsch, founder of Slock.it, said the technology has an vast array of uses. As well as houses and apartments, it can be applied to cars, bikes, padlocks, or even having a locker to store anything you might want to sell - the list goes on.
Jentzsch told IBTimes UK: "Slock is working together with smart lock manufacturers wanting to implement our technology stack into their products. Airbnb-style apps are of course an obvious use case - but ironically, with a slock you wouldn't have to use Airbnb, therefore it's very disruptive and revolutionary in the sense that for the first time, you can open a lock by paying money to it directly, as an autonomous entity."
He said at the moment the technology is just being put on the table. Current smart locks available on the market can only be shared among friends and trusted people, but Slock allows locks to be shared with strangers.
"I received emails from a lot of companies ranging from bike rentals, to companies renting out apartments or offering short term rentals for single rooms, seeking to use this as their locking system and payment system, all in one.
"The rental use case is straightforward. The owner of the lock only has to decide on two numbers - the deposit and the rental cost. The user of the lock scans it and sees what he has to pay in terms of deposit. When the deposit is received by the lock, control is granted.
"The user can then open and close the lock as often as he wants to. When he no longer needs the lock, he gets back his deposit minus the cost of rental, which is transferred to the owner of the lock.
"The lock runs an Ethereum client to check what's happening on the blockchain and determines who is the current authorized user. The user can then sign transactions to open and close this lock using a smartphone.
"The smart contract itself is very simple, anyone can read it and understand it immediately. We've put some effort in optimizing it for readability. The open and close lock functions, which are the most used, are only 10 or 20 lines of code. It's a really simple example of a smart contract, and a very powerful one."
The company has also built a power outlet. This allows users to switch power on and off down to the level of their home sockets, based on an Ethereum transaction. For example, a user could allow people to charge their cars in front of his or her house and then charge for the power.
The technology will be announced at Devcon next week, and Jentzsch said the plan was to start selling the first reference products by mid 2016.
"... But it's too early to give actual dates. We are also looking to raise money and how we will do this will also be revealed at Devcon," said Jentzsch.Last Updated ago. Click "Updates" above to see the latest.
You want to see Good Mythical Morning as an official LEGO set? Let's talk about that.
Good Mythical Morning is a daily talk show hosted by two "Internetainers" Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal. They occasionally have guests, and usually have contests or play games with them. The main things that they talk about are weird news, strange things, sometimes they test something (usually food) to see if it "will" or "won't" be good to use/eat, and sometimes Rhett & Link have contests against each other.
Rhett & Link run several Youtube channels, make skits, funny music videos, and local ads. Their main channel is Rhett & Link, and their other channels are Good Mythical Morning, Good Mythical More, and RhettandLink4. They also had a TV show called Commercial Kings.
This project is based on the newer episodes from season 7.
There are 9 proposed minifigures:
Rhett
Link
Alex with a Rhett & Link hoodie
Becca with |
. Although Splinter was contradicted by later entries in the Star Wars film canon, it was the first "Star Wars expanded universe" entry written (although not the first published—a Marvel Comics story holds that honor).
Foster wrote the novelization of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.[3]
Star Trek [ edit ]
Foster has the story credit for Star Trek: The Motion Picture.[4] He also wrote 10 books based on episodes of the animated Star Trek, the first six books each consisting of three linked novella-length episode adaptations, and the last four being expanded adaptations of single episodes that segued into original story. In the mid-seventies, he wrote original Star Trek stories for the Peter Pan-label Star Trek audio story records. He later wrote the novelization of the 2009 film Star Trek, his first Star Trek novel in over 30 years.[5] He later wrote the novelization for Star Trek's sequel, Star Trek Into Darkness.[6]
Awards [ edit ]
Foster won the 2008 Grand Master award from the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers.[7]
Bibliography [ edit ]
Humanx Commonwealth Universe [ edit ]
Pip and Flinx [ edit ]
Novels are listed in chronological order of the story (not chronological order of publication). Foster comments, in a foreword to a re-issued edition of Bloodhype, that it is the eleventh novel in the series, and should fall between Running from the Deity and Trouble Magnet.[8]
Founding of the Commonwealth [ edit ]
Icerigger Trilogy [ edit ]
Standalone Commonwealth novels [ edit ]
In chronological order:
A Call to Arms (1991) ISBN 0-345-35855-4 The False Mirror (1992) ISBN 0-345-35856-2 The Spoils of War (1993) ISBN 0-345-35857-0
Dinotopia Universe [ edit ]
Dinotopia Lost (1996) ISBN 1-57036-279-3
(1996) ISBN 1-57036-279-3 The Hand of Dinotopia (1997) ISBN 1-57036-396-X
Journeys of the Catechist [ edit ]
Carnivores of Light and Darkness (1998) ISBN 0-446-52132-9 Into the Thinking Kingdoms (1999) ISBN 0-446-52136-1 A Triumph of Souls (2000) ISBN 0-446-52218-X
Marexx [ edit ]
Spellsinger series [ edit ]
"Serenade" (2004), a novelette set immediately after The Time of the Transference,[11] was first published in the anthology Masters of Fantasy and was later reprinted in Foster's short story collection Exceptions to Reality.[12]
The Taken trilogy [ edit ]
Lost and Found (2004) ISBN 0-345-46125-8 The Light-Years Beneath My Feet (2005) ISBN 0-345-46128-2 The Candle of Distant Earth (2005) ISBN 0-345-46131-2
The Tipping Point trilogy [ edit ]
The Human Blend (2010) ISBN 978-0-345-51197-3 [13]
(2010) ISBN 978-0-345-51197-3 Body, Inc. (2012) ISBN 978-0-345-51199-7
(2012) ISBN 978-0-345-51199-7 The Sum of Her Parts (2012) ISBN 978-0-345-51202-4
Montezuma Strip [ edit ]
Standalone novels [ edit ]
Collections [ edit ]
Anthologies edited [ edit ]
Smart Dragons, Foolish Elves (1991) with Martin H. Greenberg
(1991) with Martin H. Greenberg Betcha Can't Read Just One (1993)
(1993) Short Stories from Small Islands: Tales Shared in Palau (2005)
Novelizations [ edit ]
Star Trek Universe [ edit ]
Star Trek: The Animated Series [ edit ]
Star Trek Log One (1974) ISBN 0-345-24014-6 Star Trek Log Two (1974) ISBN 0-345-25812-6 Star Trek Log Three (1975) ISBN 0-345-24260-2 Star Trek Log Four (1975) ISBN 0-345-24435-4 Star Trek Log Five (1975) ISBN 0-345-33351-9 Star Trek Log Six (1976) ISBN 0-345-24655-1 Star Trek Log Seven (1976) ISBN 0-345-24965-8 Star Trek Log Eight (1976) ISBN 0-345-25141-5 Star Trek Log Nine (1977) ISBN 0-345-25557-7 Star Trek Log Ten (1978) ISBN 0-345-27212-9[14]
Star Trek movies [ edit ]
Star Wars Universe [ edit ]
Alien Nation [ edit ]
Alien Universe [ edit ]
Terminator Universe [ edit ]
Transformers [ edit ]
Standalone novelizations [ edit ]Hydrogen-powered vehicles have been pitched as a greener alternative to gas-powered vehicles, but one problem with this is that the hydrogen is typically produced from a fossil fuel—natural gas—in a process that releases a lot of carbon dioxide.
BASF, the world’s largest chemical company, may have a solution. It’s developing a process that could cut those emissions in half, making hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles significantly cleaner than electric vehicles in most locations (the environmental benefits of electric cars vary depending on how the electricity is generated). Beyond providing a cleaner source of hydrogen for fuel-cell vehicles, the process could also help clean up industrial processes, like oil refining, that use large amounts of hydrogen.
BASF is working on a pilot plant to demonstrate the technology as part of a $30 million project partially financed by the German government. A second part of the project will demonstrate a new way to use carbon dioxide emissions as a raw material for chemicals and fuels, by combining them with the hydrogen produced in BASF’s low-carbon emissions process.
Taken together, the systems could create new markets for natural gas, especially in the United States, where fracking has led to a boom in production. A cleaner form of hydrogen could also revive stronger interest in fuel-cell vehicles. A handful of automakers have plans to start selling fuel-cell vehicles as early as 2015 (see “Why Toyota and GM Are Pushing Fuel-Cell Cars to Market”). Conventional hydrogen production involves reacting methane—the main ingredient of natural gas—with oxygen or water. This reaction produces hydrogen gas and, as the carbon reacts with oxygen, carbon dioxide.
Researchers have known for a long time that it’s possible to form hydrogen without introducing oxygen, avoiding carbon dioxide production. At high-enough temperatures, methane forms hydrogen and solid carbon. (The carbon can be used in industrial processes, such as making steel.) But this approach hasn’t proved economical.
That’s partly because generating high temperatures requires a lot of energy, and producing that energy usually involves carbon dioxide emissions, which would offset much of the potential environmental benefit. BASF has found better ways to recycle heat within its system, greatly decreasing the amount of energy needed. “The hydrogen production will be cost-competitive, while at the same time having the added advantage of having a reduced carbon footprint,” says Andreas Bode, the BASF project coordinator.
BASF is working with ThyssenKrupp Steel to use the carbon produced in the process in steel manufacturing.
The second part of the project is using the hydrogen to make useful products from carbon dioxide. In the presence of novel catalysts developed by BASF, hydrogen and carbon dioxide form syngas, a mixture of mostly carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Syngas is used to make methanol and other chemicals and fuels. Using hydrogen produced in a way that produces relatively little carbon dioxide helps keep overall emissions low. The basic reaction has been known for some time, but BASF thinks its new catalysts—the details of which it is keeping to itself—can make it economical. “It’s really a breakthrough,” Bode says.
Though finding such uses for carbon dioxide will do little to dent overall greenhouse gas emissions, the process could be important because it could allow chemical producers to use alternatives to petroleum.Ubuntu's tablet ambitions stretch back for years -- Canonical released an Ubuntu installer for the original Nexus 7, and a preview version of Ubuntu Touch was made available for the Nexus 10. It's a little surprising that it took this long for a full-blown Ubuntu tablet to hit the market, but better late than never, we guess. Anyway, once those peripherals are connected, Ubuntu's touch-friendly interface shifts into a more familiar desktop view, allowing you to multitask, run desktop apps and manage mobile apps you already have installed. New software can be had after a quick trip to the platform's single app store, too, and Canonical has to draw lots of attention there if it wants people to seriously consider Ubuntu gadgetry as a functional alternative to other mobile platforms.
If that all sounds familiar, it's because Microsoft's direction with its new Windows Phones is nearly identical. Both approaches focus on the ability to let a device's computing power — and the software that harnesses that power — to thrive no matter what display is attached to it. Unfortunately for Ubuntu, Microsoft's seemingly endless cash and talent hasn't kept Windows 10's Continuum feature from feeling like a fancy, hamstrung add-on. The situation has slowly gotten better as developers continue to explore what's capable with universal apps -- hopefully, Ubuntu doesn't run into similar growing pains.Houston Dynamo forward Erick “Cubo” Torres was named Major League Soccer’s Player of the Week for Week 5 by the North American Soccer Reporters (NASR), MLS announced today.
Torres made history when he recorded a hat trick in a 4-1 victory over the New York Red Bulls at BBVA Compass Stadium on Saturday, becoming the second Mexican player in MLS history to accomplish the feat. With the hat trick, the first of his career, Torres now leads MLS with six tallies, while Houston’s combined 11 team goals are tied for second in the league. Houston sits in second place in the Western Conference (3-1-0, nine points), holding a perfect 3-0-0 record at home.
“Cubo” scored a goal in his fourth consecutive match with a well struck penalty kick in the 41st minute to give Houston a 2-1 advantage (Watch Goal). Torres would then score his second goal 15 minutes later, firing a curling shot past goalkeeper Luis Robles (Watch Goal). With the goal, Torres recorded his first multi-goal performance since September 2013, pushing Houston’s lead to 3-1.
Torres completed his hat trick in the 91st minute with a beautiful curling free kick from the top of the box, giving the game a final score of 4-1 (Watch Goal).
For the 24-year-old Mexican international, the honor is the second of his career. Torres was named MLS Player of the Week 17 of 2014. This marks the 16th time that a Dynamo player was recognized as MLS Player of the Week and the first time since forward Mauro Manotas received the honor in Week 29 of 2016. Former Dynamo forward Brian Ching was named MLS Player of the Week four times with the Dynamo, while Brad Davis earned the honor three times and Will Bruin and Dwayne De Rosario each earned it twice.
HOUSTON DYNAMO PLAYERS NAMED MLS PLAYER OF THE WEEK
Player Season Week Opponent Erick Torres 2017 5 New York Red Bulls Mauro Manotas 2016 29 Portland Timbers Andrew Wenger 2016 2 FC Dallas Will Bruin 2013 11 D.C. United Brad Davis 2013 7 Chicago Fire Calen Carr 2012 20 Sporting Kansas City Will Bruin 2011 7 D.C. United Brian Ching 2010 21 Chicago Fire Brad Davis 2009 27 Real Salt Lake Brian Ching 2008 28 Colorado Rapids Brian Ching 2008 11 New York Red Bulls Stuart Holden 2007 14 New York Red Bulls Brad Davis 2007 12 Chivas USA Dwayne De Rosario 2007 5 Colorado Rapids Dwayne De Rosario 2006 6 FC Dallas Brian Ching 2006 1 Colorado Rapids
The Dynamo continue the 2017 season, presented by 76, on Saturday, April 8 at 1 p.m. CDT at the New England Revolution. That game will be televised live on KUBE TV Ch. 57, with the pregame show starting at 12:30 p.m. The Dynamo return home on Saturday, April 15 to face Minnesota United FC at 7:30 p.m. CDT.
Tickets for all regular season games start at $25 and are on sale now at HoustonDynamo.com, by phone at 713-276-GOAL and at the BBVA Compass Stadium box office. Partial Season Ticket Plans for the 2017 home campaign are also available online at HoustonDynamo.com/2017 or by phone at 713-276-GOAL.A good friend in the lawsuit business alerted us the other day to an important, recent decision of the Oregon Supreme Court that could reach down into the pockets of anyone in the state who has ever used Craigslist or a garage sale to unload used goods -- or anyone who's ever sold their home, for that matter. The case is Bailey v. Lewis Farm, Inc., and the full text of the court's opinion is here.
The facts of the case are pretty simple. May Trucking had a Paccar tractor-trailer that it drove about 500,000 miles over six years. Then it sold it to another party, who in turn sold it to Lewis Farms. About a year after May had gotten rid of the truck, the wheels came off on the highway due to an axle failure. They hit a car, which then crashed and burned, and the car's owner, Jerome Bailey, was badly hurt. Bailey sued Paccar, Lewis, and May. His allegations against May were that it had negligently failed to maintain the axle, and that that failure is what caused the awful accident.
May said it couldn't possible be liable to Bailey, because it sold the truck a year before the axle failure. Lewis was responsible for the safety of the vehicle it was operating, said May, and so May should be off the hook to Bailey. May moved to dismiss the case, arguing that even if it were negligent, it had no duty to Bailey, and that the harm Bailey suffered wasn't reasonably foreseeable when May owned the tractor-trailer.
No way, said the court. Just because Lewis had a duty to Bailey doesn't mean that May was relieved of its obligation to act reasonably in maintaining the truck. And of course the harm could be reasonably foreseeable -- if you let your truck run down without proper maintenance, it's no surprise if somebody gets hurt in an accident as a result.
And so back the case goes to Multnomah County Circuit Court, where May may very well have to pay up whatever damages Paccar and Lewis aren't covering -- at least if it's proven that May was negligent, and that its negligence caused the axle to fail. (Evidence on those points hasn't been presented yet.)
How far does the rule of this case go? Would it cover tools that you unloaded at a garage sale last year? How about the house you sold last year, or five years ago? Surely, it would cover that used car you got rid of, although the court hinted that maybe you'd be off the hook if the dangerous condition was obvious when you sold it, or if you traded the car in at a dealership.
What can you do to protect yourself? I doubt that your insurance covers it -- at least auto policies end when the vehicle is sold, and I'd be surprised if a standard homeowners policy wouldn't work the same way. There's no way to get a release in advance from everyone who might be hurt by breakdowns of your former stuff while it's in the hands of future owners whom you don't even know.
I suppose you could try to make the person who buys your junk sign a contract that says from here on out, they'll pay for any harm that's caused by problems with the stuff, even if it's due to crummy maintenance by you. Those ought to be some interesting negotiations. Particularly at the garage sale. And that contract's only as good as the future credit of the person you're dealing with. Heck, in a lot of cases you probably wouldn't even take their check.CINCINNATI – City council member Christopher Smitherman has a concealed carry permit but he opposes some Ohio legislation that would loosen concealed carry restrictions.
Smitherman described being attacked when he wasn’t packing his weapon Monday while the Law and Public Safety Committee considered a resolution opposing House Bill 228 and Senate Bill 180.
“I had one situation in the last two years where I was attacked and I didn't have my firearm at the time of the attack, but it was very dangerous and the possibility of retreating wasn’t there for me,” Smitherman said.
Despite that, Smitherman joined the unanimous vote to send a resolution to Columbus opposing the two bills under consideration.
The legislation would lessen concealed carry restrictions, lessen penalties for illegally carrying a concealed carry weapon, and lessen a person's obligation to retreat if they're being attacked.
Council member Yvette Simpson, running for mayor against incumbent John Cranley next month, sponsored the resolution.
“If you take an illegally concealed handgun into a place, whether you use it or not, it's now a minor misdemeanor,” Simpson said. “I mean, to me, when we think about what's happened across the country, this is just dangerous.”
Have an opinion about this? Call our Feedback Friday hotline at 513-852-4998 or tell us what you think at WCPO.com/FeedbackFriday.Interview with comedian, actor, voice artist and co-founder of the edgy, dark and surreal sketch comedy troupe Kids in the Hall, Kevin McDonald. Kids in the Hall brought us 5 seasons of ground-breaking sketch comedy, the feature film Brain Candy, live tours, and mini-series Death Comes to Town. I spent my formative years watching Kids reruns after school, and learned that a lot was possible with sketch comedy. I was delighted to meet Kevin and learn that he is not only an incredible talent, but also kind, generous and humble.
Kevin and I discuss the process by which the Kids wrote a new weekly sketch show before the TV series (and to some degree during and after) by improvising pitches to refine them into sketches, the dynamics of the Kids writers’ room that led to such gifts as their inspired monologues, and the confidence of experience that allows Kevin to improvise with such ease.
After the interview, we improvise a short scene and Kevin describes how he might instruct students to write it into a sketch, then Kevin takes questions from the audience. Here's video of our improv.
We refer to a number of Kids in the Hall sketches throughout the interview that I am including here for reference:First, let us define our terms
A few weeks ago, during an unexpected visit from our local curate, I realized that there might be an easier solution to converting nice young Novusordoist priests to the fullness of Tradition than I had previously thought. It dawned on me that we have a huge advantage in the polite form of combat known as “debate”; they don’t know our positions. They haven’t been taught anything at all about the Traditionalist proposals and arguments.
Demand that he define his terms. What does “accept” mean?
If he is asking if you are a sedevacantist, force him to use the term and ask the question honestly.
Demand to know exactly which doctrines he thinks Vatican II taught that are different from everything that went before.
During our conversation, this good young priest managed to confirm nearly everything I had expected about the quality of seminary education with regard to the issues of concern to Traditionalists. Indeed, as we talked, it occurred to me that what he had was nothing more than a set of slogans, a few lines taught to young fellows in seminaries that are more or less repeated verbatim every time one of them meets someone like me. I wanted to tell him, “You have no idea how many times I’ve heard exactly the same line. Do they teach you this in seminary?”In a discussion like this, if your interlocutor has, as do most remaining Mass-attending Catholics, a basically honest desire to be as Catholic as possible – a starting point that we could use as a definition of “conservatism” – your only task is to counter the slogans with facts. You must reveal the slogans as little more than shallow rhetorical talking points; essentially to force the person to understand that he doesn’t know what he thinks he knows.Before this, of course, the task is for Trads to become better acquainted not only with the facts but with some of the classical rhetorical techniques of debate.What did he say? All Trads will recognise it: “Do you accept the Council? [1] ” And my response comes straight out of my training in politics: “Well, let’s define our terms, shall we? Be specific. What do you mean by ‘accept’?”“Are you asking me if I ‘accept’ that an ecumenical council was called by Pope John XXIII? That is a historical fact about which there is nothing to accept or reject. If, however, you are asking me to ‘accept’ every word that was published in its documents, we are going to have to start being very specific. There is nothing in the deposit of the Faith that requires that every word from an ecumenical council must be ‘accepted’ by the faithful. Still less is any Catholic required to ‘accept’ conflicting and confused subsequent ‘interpretations’ of a Council’s documents.“In fact, there have been a lot of ecumenical councils throughout the history of the Church; some have defined doctrines but some were failures. In fact, one of them posthumously condemned a pope for failing to defend the Faith with sufficient zeal. So, let’s be specific.”(It helps at this point if you have a piercingly ironic Irish look you can give.)You don’t have to know every detail about Vatican II to go forward with a discussion, but there are some things to remember to ask about if you are accused of not “accepting the Council”. Pope John himself said that Vatican II was a “pastoral” council, that would not concern itself with dogma. This has been interpreted to mean that Vatican II would declare no dogmas for the assent of the faithful. But in fact, even he declined to define this term; no one knows to this day what the difference is and this ambiguity alone has allowed massive confusion to be fomented.You can ask, “If the most educated and illustrious voices in the theological discussion are still, fifty years later, arguing about ‘what the Council meant’ how am I obliged to ‘accept’ it in the way you seem to mean? Aren’t you really telling me I have to buy a car without looking under the hood?”The play here is to try to force you onto the wrong ground. You’re supposed to react emotionally, and respond with an embarrassed yelp, “OF COURSE! I accept the Council!” [2] But once you have done that, you have conceded the ground and accepted the wrong frame of the discussion.You are expected to hotly and indignantly deny being a sedevacantist. But this is actually a deflection tactic. What he doesn’t want to do is enter into a substantive discussion on the Council itself. You can call the bluff: “Are you asking me if I’m a sedevacantist? If I were, do you think we’d be having this conversation? Have you actually met any sedevacantists?”Your response to being asked if you “accept the Council” must always and only be, “Why? Does it propose something new? Something that contradicts anything that went before? Because if it does then I’m under no obligation to ‘accept it’. Quite the contrary. But if there is nothing new to ‘accept’ then why are you even asking?”In reality, “accepting” or “rejecting” the Council is not even part of the discussion. The SSPX have been repeatedly presented with the demand from Rome to “accept” or “assent” to the Council’s “teachings” and, so far, they have responded in the same way: “Please be specific; what teachings exactly?”A Catholic has by definition already given his full assent of intellect and will to everything the Church teaches. If, therefore, someone is asking you to “accept” or “assent to” the Council because it presents something new, something contrary to anything taught by the Church in the 1963 years before Vatican II, then your questioner is the one with the doctrinal problem. As a faithful Catholic, I am not only not obliged to assent to some new, contrary doctrine,But if the Council was as innocuous as Novusordoist “conservatives” like to claim, if it “taught nothing new” – if it was only a “pastoral council” to make the Church relevant to the “modern world” … or whatever – then why do we need to continue to bother our heads about it? You could point out that if that’s the case, the “modern world” of today is rather a different place from that of 1963, therefore Vatican II by these lights is merely outdated and irrelevant.The contradictions of revolutionaries’ tactics are thereby revealed:. They can’t have it both ways.To recap: if a “conservative” Novusordoist is asking whether you “accept the Council,” your job is to cut to the heart of the matter. He thinks he’s being clever; throw him off balance by being blunt, using forbidden words and calling the bluff.
Your rhetorical task is to reveal that you know this is a subterfuge and force the conversation back to facts, openness and forthright honesty. Demand specifics and fear no words.
Doing this has forced your interlocutor to present something more than slogans, catchphrases and cheap rhetorical tricks. At this point, it’s your turn to ask him, “What, precisely, does Vatican II ‘teach’ that you think I need to give assent to? Let’s hear it.” Make him tell you what new doctrines he’s really talking about, make him look up the references. It’s only at that point that you can really have a meaningful and maybe even – for him – salvific conversation.
You’re there to help him
Remember also that this is a brother in Christ you’re talking to. He thinks he’s challenging you, but you’re the one who’s out of the Novusordoist Matrix. You know more than he does and it’s your task to rescue him. You’re not there to win an argument, but to save someone who’s in danger.
Offer to bring out the books, if you have them, or the internet if you don’t. Your tasks – two of the Seven Spiritual Works of Mercy – are to instruct the ignorant and counsel the doubtful. You have now succeeded in throwing him off balance enough to get his attention. He is now going to be receptive to something new, something you have to offer.
Moreover, in just the few exchanges you’ve had to get to this point, he’s probably learned things he’d never heard before. “Pastoral council? What’s that?” “Which council condemned a pope, and what for?” Have a discussion about the real teaching of the Church about “religious freedom;” start talking about ecumenism or the duty of all States to obey Christ; dig out Archbishop Lefebvre’s “Letter to Confused Catholics;” offer to read the Ottaviani Intervention to him. Go for broke; now’s your chance to tell a Novusordoist that he has been kept willfully in the dark all his life and offer a way out. You’ve got the Red Pill, and you’re morally obliged to offer it to others[3].
Slogans but no arguments; lessons learned from pro-life activism
For me it was a hard lesson to learn that people really don’t know very much. In 1998, I was completely green, and especially new to the world of politics. I was a very recent “revert” to the Faith. I wanted to help, but I was suffering from the foolish confidence that people who didn’t know what I knew would want to know, and would change their minds when I told them. This was a very hard idea to unlearn.
Knowing distantly that I needed help navigating this world, I undertook training sessions in “pro-life apologetics” run by a guy who developed an entire programme to help pro-life activists develop their rhetorical skills. In these seminars I was astonished to hear that there are really only five slogans that had been to promote legal abortion. Being new, I could hardly credit that the entire global abortion industry had been founded on these five flimsy and often rationally contradictory slogans. But in the years that followed, hearing the same five tired old chestnuts dragged out again and again, I had to admit that our instructor, Scott Klusendorf, had been telling the simple truth.
In the course of our training, Scott gave us the rhetorical tools to handle the slogans smoothly and effectively by applying one simple rule: always bring the discussion back to the thing we’re actually talking about. In the case of the early life issues, the thing we’re always talking about is whether a human being entire exists before birth. Is that living thing in there a human being? If it is, no arguments about women’s rights or poverty or overpopulation are relevant. In fact, every single one of the abortion slogans is a deflection tactic, an attempt to evade the one relevant question, against which they know they have no argument.
What astonished me was the confidence that abortion-promoters had in their flagrantly irrational slogans. They deploy them like weapons, as though they are unassailable, argument-ending truths. I suppose they have good reason to believe this; their reliance on emotivism and bullying has accomplished everything they wanted, and then some. But the one thing Planned Parenthood and the like will never, ever do is engage in a discussion about the nature of the entity of the being inside a pregnant woman. These Sexual Revolutionaries have won the entire Culture War by crying into microphones and evading the facts.
But it takes next to nothing – a mere puff of logic – to reveal the slogans as empty. All it really takes to do it is nerve. The Revolutionaries – whether in the Church or in the secular world – have won by intimidation, bullying and doing everything they can to erase reality. In short, they’re bullies who rely on the emotional and intellectual weakness of their victims to get what they want. Stand up to them, start picking apart their slogans, their assertions, and asking for specifics, facts, and the entire edifice will collapse[4]. No revolution is ever won by creating clearly defined doctrinal positions, backed by facts and rational arguments.
And this is the case every time there is a set of slogans being employed. The purpose of a slogan is not clarity, it’s not truth, it’s not to get to the heart of the matter; it’s to shut someone up. Millions of Catholics have picked up a set of slogans regarding Vatican II, the new Mass, “religious freedom,” “ecumenism,” and the whole playlist of the Novusordoist proposal. They have picked it up from their priests, who were taught it all in seminary. And for the seminarians it was often made rather forcefully clear that any awkward questions on such topics would place their entire future in question.
What was being recited to me by my young friend in my kitchen that morning was, in effect, a kind of litany of slogans. (I add that it was doubtful that my friend the curate understood that this was what he was doing. It was clear that these were “talking points” he had learned somewhere and assumed were unassailable, without troubling about much rigorous inquiry. Traditionalist positions aren’t much discussed in seminaries, except perhaps to mock and quickly dismiss them.) What was clear was that he had never really stopped to think about what he had been taught, and this is obviously the most common situation in the modern Church.
The changes we have seen in the Church’s doctrines have been brought about by stealth, by erasure and the creation of a powerful system of “omerta.” That which is never, ever uttered or mentioned or alluded to by anyone, ever, will soon pass into the Memory Hole. The revolutionaries took Orwell’s lessons to heart; you will never succeed in eradicating a culture by responding to its assertions. To erase something forever you first diminish it by ridicule in public (backed up with an iron discipline, as tradition-minded seminarians have learned,) and then make sure no one ever talks about it again.
Fabled lost kingdoms
The other day Aaron Seng wrote about his own experience of learning that there is an entire lost ancient kingdom under the false floor of the New Catholicism, a vast and unimaginably richer treasure that has been forgotten because it has been deliberately buried.
He writes[5], “Rather than overtly proclaiming a firm doctrinal content that contradicts the Deposit of Faith (although this is beginning to occur in some sectors), the approach has been to simply keep quiet on some of the more unfashionable Catholic doctrines, or to so bury them in theological qualification and psychobabble that they lose their Gospel clarity and vivifying power.”
Catholics who start to investigate this lost world, “are often surprised to find en route that before the mid-twentieth century, the Church universal spoke with clear and consistent voice on doctrines that one rarely hears (if one hears any doctrine) from the pulpit today.”
What Scott Klusendorf taught us in our training was that when we are in a confrontation, we are not looking for an immediate conversion. In most cases in a face-to-face discussion there’s too much emotion going on too rapidly to allow it. The one thing you’re looking for from your interlocutor is, “You know, I’ve never thought of it that way before.” That is the sweet, sweet sound of a key turning in a lock.
[1] They will often phrase it as an assertion, “Vatican II was valid,” but the response is the same: define “valid” please.
[2] For some reason, they expect ordinary Catholics to be as emotionally invested as they are in supine submission to the status quo. Even more than knowing your stuff, it’s important to keep your emotions out of it. Keep your head. You can sometimes throw him off his game just by not responding emotionally.
[3] Pro-tip: don’t ever try to do this in a commbox, Facebook thread or Twitter. There is something about having an unseen audience that makes it nearly impossible to back down. I’ve had useful discussions on private messages, by Skype or email, but never in a public comment box. Face to face is best. It’s incredibly easy to forget that you’re there to help the person you’re talking to if you’re doing it online.
[4] I don’t actually recommend confrontations with the secularist-sexual revolutionaries. Since I took this training that world has morphed bizarrely into something actually physically violent and quite dangerous. Leave it to the professionals.
[5] Mr. Seng includes a helpful bullet-point list of Catholic teachings that have been deliberately memory-holed since The Council, as well as a valuable reading list for those who want to learn more.
Catch Hilary's regular column in The Remnant's Print-/E-Edition. Subscribe Today!Emily Lakdawalla • June 21, 2016
National Selfie Day: Spacecraft self-portraits
It's apparently National Selfie Day. I'm not entirely sure who has the authority to declare these things, or why they decided we needed a National Selfie Day, but since the self-portrait is one of my favorite subgenres of spacecraft photography, I couldn't resist writing about them.
The unequivocal master of self-portraits is Curiosity, an often-anthropomorphized robot that can even take its selfies the way humans do, by regarding itself with a camera held at the end of its own arm. Curiosity takes self-portraits relatively frequently, nearly every time it drills or scoops samples from Mars to deliver to its scientific instruments. Here are six such self-portraits:
NASA / JPL / MSSS / Thomas Appéré Six Curiosity self-portraits
But Curiosity wasn't the first Mars robot to do this. The Mars Exploration Rovers also occasionally performed "deck panorama" images to check out the amount of dust covering their solar panels. Here's a comparison of two such Opportunity panoramas, before and after a dust-cleaning event when a gust of wind puffed the panels clean:
NASA / JPL / Cornell / ASU / Emily Lakdawalla Before & after: Opportunity's deck gets cleaned on Endeavour's rim Two self-portraits of Opportunity show effects of wind events that cleaned much of the accumulated dust off the rover's solar panels between sols 3538 and 3611 (January 6 and March 22, 2014). Two self-portraits of Opportunity show effects of wind events that cleaned much of the accumulated dust off the rover's solar panels between sols 3538 and 3611 (January 6 and March 22, 2014).
And here's poor Spirit. I still get a lump in my throat whenever I see images of Spirit at Home Plate.
NASA / JPL / Cornell / ASU Spirit self-portrait at McMurdo, sols 814-980 This self-portrait of Spirit is a polar projection of the 360-degree "McMurdo" panorama made from images taken from April 18 through October 5, 2006, during the mission's second Martian winter. Unlike many other rover panoramas, this one is approximately true color, made from images taken through red, green, and blue filters. This self-portrait of Spirit is a polar projection of the 360-degree "McMurdo" panorama made from images taken from April 18 through October 5, 2006, during the mission's second Martian winter. Unlike many other rover panoramas, this one is approximately true color, made from images taken through red, green, and blue filters.
Like Curiosity, Spirit and Opportunity both had cameras on the ends of their robotic arms, but those cameras were very nearsighted; any attempt at self-portrait would be blurry. Spirit did attempt to use the arm to take a look at its own underbelly when it got stuck at Troy, but the view was blurry enough to be of limited use.
There's one more Mars craft that used an arm-mounted camera to take a photo of itself, generating one of my favorite pairs of images:
NASA / JPL / UA / MPI Phoenix self-portrait On sol |
government have announced an expensive experimental plan to create a massive wall of frozen soil around the plant to prevent groundwater from entering the reactor buildings, which are generating toxic water of their own.
Kanda, however, said the top priority for now should be to strengthen the tanks and remove the other radioactive materials in the water they’re holding.
Tepco had by now planned to start using ALPS — a high-tech filtering machine that can remove everything radioactive but tritium from tainted water — but the utility halted test runs after finding corrosion holes in the equipment. It is set to reactivate ALPS later this month.
Kanda, no defender of Tepco or the nuclear industry, was among the first scientists to sound the alarm about the radiation risk to the ocean, despite Tepco’s denials. He published his findings on probable cesium contamination in an academic thesis in English in February this year. When NHK and other media reported on his findings, Tepco disputed them.
“I was surprised. I thought, ‘Wow, the Tepco people clearly deny this,’ ” Kanda said, asserting that the conclusion of his thesis was basically “common knowledge” among marine researchers who have been monitoring the density of radioactive substances in and outside the crippled plant’s artificial bay on a regular basis.
Kanda’s estimates on cesium-137 are based on earlier cesium density fluctuations in the bay. Given the rapid decline in cesium density right after the three meltdowns, Kanda concluded that 44 percent of the water in the bay is exchanged daily with water from the ocean. Using this data, Kanda inversely calculated the amount of cesium-137 that was reaching the sea from the nuclear compound.
Since around April 2012, the cesium density in the bay has leveled out and stayed basically constant despite the daily exchange between the bay and the wider sea. This indicates that the radioactive substances have been leaking into the bay at a constant rate that has reached a rough parity with the amount leaving each day, he said.
In August, Tepco reluctantly accepted Kanda’s theory and published a simulation showing that a maximum of 20 trillion becquerels of cesium-137 had reached the ocean, along with 10 trillion becquerels of deadly strontium.
Tepco’s denial and ensuing about-face helped the radioactive water spill become a scandal instead of a discovery, fanned by media reports that didn’t clearly explain the impact of the leakage, Kanda said.
“Tepco had some (communication) problems, as did researchers like us. And, of course, so did the mass media,” he said.Everybody knows that UFC heavyweight Pat Barry is a deadly striker, but equally it’s common knowledge that his ground game is still a major weak point.
Apparently Barry is working to address that issue however, as is apparent in new footage that has emerged of him competing at ‘Combat Corner 6,’ a submission grappling tournament this weekend.
Going up against two big opponents it’s evident that Barry’s grappling is still very raw at this stage, but gaining experience in tournaments like this can only help him in the Octagon.
Watch both matches below, and pay close attention to 1.19mins of his fight with Hamlin when Barry shows a rather acrobatic escape from a standing guillotine choke.
—
Pat Barry Vs Matt Hamlin:
—
Pat Barry Vs John Ruiz:
—
Results:
Advanced (No Gi) +225 lbs
1-Matt Hamlin (Submit Sport)
2-Jose Ruiz (Submit Sport)
3-Pat Barry (Roufusport/LCCT)
—
White Belt (With Gi) +225 lbs
1-Josh Dunn (Neutral Ground)
2-Kirk Will (Neutral Ground)
3-Pat Barry (Roufusport/LCCT)
—
Videos courtesy of SubmitSportMerry Christmas, everyone! It's that time -- all the little kiddies in Vienna are just waking up to the presents that Santa left overnight. Over here, it's a bit earlier, but that doesn't mean I don't have some presents for you just the same.To set the Christmas mood, here's aKevin whipped up. He's dunked the theme song in egg nog and sprinkled it all over with tinsel to capture the wonders of the season!If you're looking for a feel-good story filled with all the joy and love you'd expect of him, Gloom wrote a little something you'll probably enjoy. You can check it outLast but not least, here's a bit of art from our friend roz,. (Also, try clicking on that present to unwrap something else you might like.)And hey -- if I don't see you before again before then, have a great New Years! See you in 2014!-alabasterSandy Rios, just a few days after the Supreme Court marriage equality ruling, took to the airwaves to warn of the dire consequences of displaying the rainbow.
...the Obama administration’s decision to light up the White House in rainbow colors in celebration of the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision was “an unbelievable affront to God” that will have “consequences.” According to Rios, God will lift His hand of protection from America in response to the court’s ruling and the celebratory rainbow images, thereby increasing the threat of terror attacks on the United States.
She appeared on Alan Colmes weekly Versus segment that airs on FoxNews.com. Alan tried to coax Sandy to elaborate on her comments regarding the rainbow lights on the White House leading to increased terrorism threats. She claimed she never said such a thing, of course forgetting that we have recording devices these days.
'If a nation wants to live and behave or if people want to do things that are immoral and are against 'His' principles and 'His' precepts, he doesn't force them, you know, he says, you can have it... If you ignore 'His' boundaries, he removes 'His' protections.
.
This would all be fine and dandy if the
'God that we serve changed his mind (about those gay people), but He hasn't.'
She is very sure of that, which is anathema to me, as I've never been certain of things based on hearsay and centuries-old writings of nomadic desert dwellers. That level of faith and certitude is truly mind-blowing.
Alan attempts to explain that the Court ruled on marriage equality based on the Constitution which it was designed from. Colmes says, on that basis, there's no precedent in the Constitution on straight marriage. Sandy isn't interested in reality, she wants the Biblical Marriage that's over two millennia old, never mind that there was all sorts of rape, slavery and polygamy in her bible.
She was just beside herself with grief about the people who are being fined for their refusal to provide services without discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation. She thinks the bible provides justification, and legitimately moral justification at that, to practice discrimination regardless of what American law dictates.
'People should have the right to express their personal views without fear of punishment from the government.'
↓ Story continues below ↓
Colmes asks her about her comment that Satan she made on her radio show in May.
'Do you really think that Satan is the father of liberals?'
Rios, now doubling down on paranoia and crazy,
'Saul Alinsky is the godfather of the Hard Left. His book, Rules for Radicals, '
and Alan adds,
"It was a great book, I read it."
And back and forth it went, saying how the book was dedicated to Lucifer, except Alan tries futilely to explain that Alinsky was being ironic! She refused to accept that reality, as she does quite a bit throughout this segment.
Alan tried to speed things up and asked her about her comment that Satan is the father of liberals. He asked,
'I'm a liberal, is Satan my dad?'
Rios cried,
'I hope not Alan, only you can answer that.'
Any Liberal reading this may be shocked to learn that all that we believe is controlled by the Dark Lord (no, not Dick Cheney, the other guy). Alan ended what had to be an interview filled with moments where he may have wanted to burst out laughing, but he simply allowed her enough rope to hang herself and make her look as ridiculous as the rest of the Klown Kar.“The reader wants to travel beside you, looking over your shoulder.” It was such matter-of-fact, practical advice, but my wise first book-editor, Charles Elliott at Knopf, had the rare gift of writing with such directness and concreteness that it was hard not to listen to what he said.
I’d begun to learn how to become a writer by moving from grad school (where I had only one reader I was keen to impress, myself) to Time magazine, where I tried to absorb certain basic lessons about clarity and communication (the reader wants to learn about what happened last week in Beirut, not Pico Iyer’s prose style). Friends and elders offered me plenty of sage counsel about following one’s bliss and working with the subconscious and the hazards of the freelance writer’s life. It was all sound advice, but something I needed to learn for myself, the hard way, by doing everything wrong.
Chuck’s advice, by contrast, was as precise, as portable as a doctor’s crisp diagnosis and prescription. I sent him the first two chapters of my first book, and he wrote back, “You write, ‘Every morning, I would wake up in Tibet and walk to a temple …’ If you just changed it to a specific instance, ‘One morning I woke up and went to such-and-such a place,’ it would come into much sharper focus.”
Twenty-seven years on, his six-sentence typed letter informs every other sentence I write, and reminds me not to drift into poetic vagueness when immediacy and specificity would be so much more welcome to a reader. Becoming a writer, I suspect, involves not even thinking of being a “writer,” but simply confiding one’s most intimate experiences to the page, in a way that, through training, makes sense to an unmet stranger.While working with one large project, my colleague and I were thinking about how to automate building the CSS sprites. Before, we used to build them manually or with different online services which anyway took a lot of time. Also, by that time we already used Gulp to build the project and so were looking for a gulp-friendly solution for sprites.
Initially we were choosing from different variants:
The first one is too complex to install; it has a few dependencies which require additional package managers. Once gotten a new developer into our team, we would need to explain this complex process. This did not look as an option for us. Also, it does not enable to tune image positions in the sprite.
The other three modules are based on the same spritesmith generator. Eventually we chose gulp.spritesmith as an official port of it.
The first think to do is to install Gulp. Its official documentation will help you a lot.
Then install gulp.spritesmith. If your project is empty yet (as mine is), take supplement packages as well:
npm i gulp gulp-stylus gulp.spritesmith --save
Now you can move to tuning the generator.
Before you start declaring the task, let's introduce all the possible parameters to the function.
imgName String - Filename to save image as Supported image extensions are.png and.jpg/jpeg (limited to specfic engines) Image format can be overridden via imgOpts.format
- Filename to save image as cssName String - Filename to save CSS as Supported CSS extensions are.css (CSS),.sass ([SASS][]),.scss ([SCSS][]),.less ([LESS][]),.styl/.stylus ([Stylus][]), and.json ([JSON][]) CSS format can be overridden via cssFormat
- Filename to save CSS as imgPath String - Optional path to use in CSS referring to image location
- Optional path to use in CSS referring to image location engine String - Optional image generating engine to use By default, auto will be used which detects the best supported engine for your system Supported options are phantomjs, canvas, gm, and pngsmith More information can be found in the [engine][] section
- Optional image generating engine to use algorithm String - Optional method for how to pack images Supported options are top-down (default), left-right, diagonal, alt-diagonal, and binary-tree More information can be found in the [algorithm][] section
- Optional method for how to pack images padding Number - Optional amount of pixels to include between images By default, there will be no padding
- Optional amount of pixels to include between images imgOpts Object - Options for image output format String - Override for format of output image Supported values are png and jpg (limited to specific engines) quality Number - Quality of image (only supported by gm engine) timeout Number - Milliseconds to wait before terminating render (limited to phantomjs engine)
- Options for image output algorithmOpts Object - Options for algorithm configuration sort Boolean - Enable/disable image sorting by algorithm By default, sorting is enabled ( true )
- Options for algorithm configuration engineOpts Object - Options for engine configuration imagemagick Boolean - Force usage of imagemagick over graphicsmagick (limited to gm )
- Options for engine configuration cssFormat String - Override for format of CSS output Supported values are css (CSS), sass ([SASS][]), scss ([SCSS][]), scss_maps ([SCSS][] using [map notation][sass-maps]), less ([LESS][]), stylus ([Stylus][]), and json ([JSON][])
- Override for format of CSS output cssVarMap Function - Iterator to customize CSS variable names An example can be found [here][cssvarmap-example]
- Iterator to customize CSS variable names cssTemplate Function|String - CSS templating function or path to alternative [mustache][] template More information can be found in the [cssTemplate][] section
- CSS templating function or path to alternative [mustache][] template cssOpts Object - Container for CSS templates functions Boolean - Skip output of mixins cssClass Function - Iterator to override default CSS selectors An example can be found [here][cssclass-example]
- Container for CSS templates
Assuming this, the simpliest task would look like the following:
gulp.task('sprite', function() { var spriteData = gulp.src('./src/assets/images/sprite/*.*') // source path of the sprite images.pipe(spritesmith({ imgName:'sprite.png', cssName:'sprite.css', })); spriteData.img.pipe(gulp.dest('./built/images/')); // output path for the sprite spriteData.css.pipe(gulp.dest('./built/styles/')); // output path for the CSS });
With that we can generate this sprite:
It is served with the following CSS code:
/* Icon classes can be used entirely standalone. They are named after their original file names. ~```html <i class="icon-home"></i> ```~ */.icon-home { background-image: url(sprite.png); background-position: 0px 0px; width: 16px; height: 16px; }.icon-home_hover { background-image: url(sprite.png); background-position: 0px -16px; width: 16px; height: 16px; }.icon-instagram { background-image: url(sprite.png); background-position: 0px -32px; width: 16px; height: 16px; }.icon-instagram_hover { background-image: url(sprite.png); background-position: 0px -48px; width: 16px; height: 16px; }.icon-pin { background-image: url(sprite.png); background-position: 0px -64px; width: 12px; height: 16px; }.icon-pin_hover { background-image: url(sprite.png); background-position: 0px -80px; width: 12px; height: 16px; }.icon-tras_hover { background-image: url(sprite.png); background-position: 0px -96px; width: 16px; height: 16px; }.icon-trash { background-image: url(sprite.png); background-position: 0px -112px; width: 16px; height: 16px; }.icon-user { background-image: url(sprite.png); background-position: 0px -128px; width: 16px; height: 16px; }.icon-user_hover { background-image: url(sprite.png); background-position: 0px -144px; width: 16px; height: 16px; }
In our project we use Stylus for processing CSS, so it is much more handy to get a.styl file with the variables.
I use binary-tree algorythm to make it more compact. All the variables are prefixed with s-, this makes them recognizable. I switched off generating the mixings and now have them in a separate file. I have created my own CSS template because the generic variant has too much of redundant code making the file heavier; and I don't use it anyway.
As a result, I get such a sprite:
There are the JavaScript and Stylus code for it:
gulp.task('sprite', function() { var spriteData = gulp.src('./src/assets/images/sprite/*.*') // путь, откуда берем картинки для спрайта.pipe(spritesmith({ imgName:'sprite.png', cssName:'sprite.styl', cssFormat:'stylus', algorithm: 'binary-tree', cssTemplate:'stylus.template.mustache', cssVarMap: function(sprite) { sprite.name ='s-' + sprite.name } })); spriteData.img.pipe(gulp.dest('./built/images/')); // путь, куда сохраняем картинку spriteData.css.pipe(gulp.dest('./src/styles/')); // путь, куда сохраняем стили });
$s-book = 16px 0px -16px 0px 16px 16px 80px 64px'sprite.png'; $s-book_hover = 48px 16px -48px -16px 16px 16px 80px 64px'sprite.png'; $s-comments = 0px 16px 0px -16px 16px 16px 80px 64px'sprite.png'; $s-comments_hover = 16px 16px -16px -16px 16px 16px 80px 64px'sprite.png'; $s-compose = 32px 0px -32px 0px 16px 16px 80px 64px'sprite.png'; $s-compose_hover = 32px 16px -32px -16px 16px 16px 80px 64px'sprite.png'; $s-faceboo_hover = 0px 32px 0px -32px 16px 16px 80px 64px'sprite.png'; $s-facebook = 16px 32px -16px -32px 16px 16px 80px 64px'sprite.png'; $s-globe = 32px 32px -32px -32px 16px 16px 80px 64px'sprite.png'; $s-globe_hover = 48px 0px -48px 0px 16px 16px 80px 64px'sprite.png'; $s-home = 0px 0px 0px 0px 16px 16px 80px 64px'sprite.png'; $s-home_hover = 48px 32px -48px -32px 16px 16px 80px 64px'sprite.png'; $s-instagram = 0px 48px 0px -48px 16px 16px 80px 64px'sprite.png'; $s-instagram_hover = 16px 48px -16px -48px 16px 16px 80px 64px'sprite.png'; $s-pin = 32px 48px -32px -48px 12px 16px 80px 64px'sprite.png'; $s-pin_hover = 44px 48px -44px -48px 12px 16px 80px 64px'sprite.png'; $s-tras_hover = 64px 0px -64px 0px 16px 16px 80px 64px'sprite.png'; $s-trash = 64px 16px -64px -16px 16px 16px 80px 64px'sprite.png'; $s-user = 64px 32px -64px -32px 16px 16px 80px 64px'sprite.png'; $s-user_hover = 64px 48px -64px -48px 16px 16px 80px 64px'sprite.png';
Ok, the sprite image has been generated and there is a stylys file of variables, what is next?
The next are mixins which I am not generating. I manually created a separate file for them which is mixins.styl. Here is its content:
spriteWidth($sprite) { width: $sprite[4]; } spriteHeight($sprite) { height: $sprite[5]; } spritePosition($sprite) { background-position: $sprite[2] $sprite[3]; } spriteImage($sprite) { background-image: url(../images/$sprite[8]); } sprite($sprite) { spriteImage($sprite) spritePosition($sprite) spriteWidth($sprite) spriteHeight($sprite) }
The main mixin is sprite($sprite). As $sprite I use the needed variable, for example sprite($s-home). It gives such a result:
background-image:url("../images/sprite.png"); background-position:0 0; width:16px; height:16px
The mixin enables to define the image sizes which is very useful when using pseudo elements.
Here is the working example.
I noticed only one problem since the time I've started to use the solution.
An icon is blinking when using :hover or :active. This happens because the sprite mixin generates background-image for every case and changes the picture on hover.
After thinking for a while and reading the Stylys' documentation, I have found the solution. We just need to check if a selector has these pseudo classes. And if they are, we can skip the spriteImage($sprite) output.
This is the final version of the mixin:
sprite($sprite) if!match('hover', selector()) &&!match('active', selector()) spriteImage($sprite) spritePosition($sprite) spriteWidth($sprite) spriteHeight($sprite)
Unfortunately this is not possible to foresee all the cases. Probably there would be some JavaScript code changing a CSS class. So, we can use spritePosition($sprite) if an image was already in use.
I've been working with this solution for a few months and happy to say that it saves a lot of time. Aim to automate any routine and use your time the most effectively.
I created a sample repository for you, you can use it as a dummy for your project or just explore how it work.
##LinksWe’ve had DK2. We’re getting Before Watchmen. We’re looking forward to Sandman Zero. But what about… The Invisibles?
At the previously referred to Dundee Comics Day, Grant Morrison told the crowd how he’d already been asked. Laura Sneddon reports for The Beat;
Asked whether Morrison was ever tempted to return to works like The Invisibles, close to many a readers heart, the writer revealed that such an offer had been tabled. “Karen Berger asked me to do some more Invisibles for the anniversary of Vertigo next year, and I thought about it for five minutes and just didn’t want to do it. It was the same, when I tried to go back to Justice League and I did the Justice League Classified book which was like three years after I’d finished Justice League, I couldn’t connect with those characters at all and I had to fill the book with other characters to make it palatable to write. So I kind of, once the divorce has happened I don’t want to know!” A brief laugh before the added afterthought, “Batman’s the only one I can go back to, because he’s so sexy.”
About Rich Johnston Chief writer and founder of Bleeding Cool. Father of two. Comic book clairvoyant. Political cartoonist.
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None foundExcerpt: "Sisters have the ability to redirect the Church to a place where conservative men do not want to go."
Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of Network, speaks in Ames, Iowa, during a stop on the first day of a nine-state Nuns on the Bus tour. Their fight is with a Republican proposed federal budget they say hurts the poor and needy. (photo: Charlie Neibergall/AP)
Why the Hierarchy Fears the Nuns
By Frank Cocozzelli, Talk to Action
n recent weeks we've watched the Vatican try to stifle a vital part of the Catholic Church: the nuns. Indeed, the Church fathers seem to have become quite unhinged in their efforts to quiet women who have dedicated their lives not only to Catholicism, but to betterment of all.
Why is this? Its simply because the good Sisters have the ability to redirect the Church to a place where conservative men do not want to go.
Chris Hedges once wrote "faith is how we treat each other." Perhaps no other group of Catholics embodies Hedges' definition of faith than the various orders of Catholic nuns. The women's orders and individual nuns perform a wide range of services; from teaching in parochial schools; to providing health care; to making great contributions in theology. It has often been nuns who reported their suspicions of priestly pedophilia and forced transparency in how these matters were handled.
Nuns have also been at the forefront of a potential Catholic remonstrance. Is it any wonder that the hierarchy and their friends on the Catholic Right are trying to reign them in?
The Vatican has revealed itself in the current spectacle as more reactionary than conservative. Even the suggestion of discussing progressive takes on dogma is often denounced as heresy. Arguably, moderate and liberal Catholics live in a new reign of terror whose principal players are Bernard Law, disgraced former Boston Cardinal; Cardinal William Levada, Prefect for the Congregation for Doctrine of the Faith; Cardinal Raymond Burke, Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura; and well-placed, movement conservative-friendly bishops and cardinals in cities such as Madison, Wisconsin, New York and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
These clerics apparently recognize that the nuns could become a rallying point and potential leadership for reform for those of us unhappy with the turn away from Vatican II's Aggiornamento - "bringing up to date" that has occurred since the ascendancy of Pope John Paul II.
In fact, that is exactly how many of us who oppose the reactionary doctrine and culture trickling down from the hierarchy see the nuns' potential for leadership. They are not a dissident lay group such as Call to Action, but part of the institutional Church. It would be a change from within.
While many in the hierarchy are courting reactionary movements such as Opus Dei and SSPX, groups that seek a more insulated, doctrinaire - and smaller Church.
But the sisters toil in the real world; rubbing elbows with everyday people; dealing with the grey issues of life. This provides them with perspectives sorely missing in the Vatican, notably women's points of view. The nuns understand pregnancy; they understand glass ceilings; they live with being marginalized by gender. And they see how related injustices play out in the lives of real people.
One nun who dealt with the grey issue of abortion and paid the price was Sister Margaret McBride, a hospital administrator who allowed an abortion in order to save the life of a critically ill pregnant woman. As I reported two years ago, doctors had determined that continuation of the pregnancy would end the mother's life due to complications from a pulmonary hypertension. For Sister Margaret, it was obvious that if the mother died, so would the child. For this, she was excommunicated by her bishop and removed from her hospital position.
On questions of theology, nuns who put forth heterodoxical but feasible religious theses, they too are censured and bullied. The most recent example has been Sister Margaret Farley, author of the Vatican-criticized book, Just Love. And what did Sister Margaret write so as to incur such wrath? She simply used a theological standpoint to challenge current Church teachings on - among other things - masturbation, homosexuality, gay unions and the problem of divorce and remarriage. To its credit, the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA) backs Sister Margaret.
Now, LCWR, the umbrella group that represents most of America's nuns has been falsely accused of promoting "radical feminist themes." This has been amplified by Rush Limbaugh who (claimed the good sisters "have gone Femi-nazi") and Catholic League President Bill Donohue (who said of Sister Margaret Farley, "Nor would anyone think she was a nun if he consulted her official Yale biography."). This is not the first time Donohue has gone after the LCWR.
After all, progressive-thinking nuns break down the myth that "good Catholics" only vote Republican and an Ayn Rand-inspired economic plan appear godly.
But the nuns have responded to all this by calmly and gracefully brushing aside the sneering accusations with cool reasonableness that exudes confidence.
However, it is worth underscoring that to accuse the nuns of disobedience is to say the same of Saint Thomas Aquinas, who was also denounced in his day for daring to integrate the teachings of Aristotle into Catholic thought.
But part of the threat to the hierarchy is that the nuns point out the obvious; that mere discussion of new interpretations of faith is not disobedience, but the exercise of reason. What's more the nuns are doing about social Social Justice is more than just talk. Most notably with a bus tour that challenges the American bishops apparent tacit approval of GOP economic miserliness.
Pope Benedict is no stranger to persecuting Catholics who propose more enlightened paths of the faith. As head of the CDF - formerly known as the Office of the Inquisition - he had theologian Father Charles F. Curram sacked from the faculty of Catholic University in Washington, DC, for questioning the validity of the Church's disapproval of artificial birth control. Likewise, he ostracized the esteemed theologian Hans Küng, rescinding his authority to teach Catholic theology because he questioned the notion of papal infallibility.
But the situation with the nuns is different. The CDF can pick off one deviant theologian at a time, but it is harder to oust 57,000 American nuns. Catholic hospitals and schools would shut; many other day-to-day functions would simply cease. The Vatican is walking a tightrope and they are in danger of falling off.
In a previous post, I called for a Catholic remonstrance against the current Vatican's strident rejection of Vatican II.
Now a vehicle exists within the Church for the return of reason. These brave sisters should be a rallying cry for every one of my co-religionists who are tired of the bullying, the lack of transparency on issues such as hiding pedophile priests and the absurd notion that the Church is to be a co-belligerent with Protestant evangelical theocrats in a culture war in order to advance the economic agenda of the Republican Party. In short, the nuns' fight is our fight. Let's lend them a hand.
See Also: Nuns on Bus Tour to Protest Federal Budget-Cut ProposalGraham gets emotional: "John McCain is willing to die for this country" and can vote how he wants #HealthCareDebate https://t.co/6UhlQCRrxX
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has one thing to say about Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.):
“He can do whatever damn he wants to. He’s earned that right.”
Graham was responding to President Donald Trump’s latest attack on the Arizona senator for opposing Republicans’ most recent attempt at repealing the Affordable Care Act.
Republicans do not appear to have enough votes to pass the latest bill, which Graham co-wrote, and McCain is one of the few Republicans opposing the new legislation. Trump attacked McCain on Twitter Monday, and Graham fought back tears defending his longtime friend.
“John if you’re listening... nobody respects you more than I do.” Graham said during a CNN debate Monday night. “So to any American who’s got a problem with John McCain’s vote, all I can tell you is that John McCain was willing to die for this country, and he can vote any way he wants to, and it doesn’t matter to me in terms of friendship.”
McCain was the deciding vote that derailed a previous Republican attempt to repeal Obamacare in July. The senator, who is currently battling an aggressive form of brain cancer, has had a poor relationship with Trump since the president’s candidacy, when he said McCain was “not a war hero.”After a slow and difficult push, the Electronic Dance Music scene is exploding exponentially in the United States. Not long ago DJ’s were confined to dark rooms hidden from view and were looked down upon by most of the music community. Now they are the new rockstars and headliners; main stage and front and center. EDM is now a billion dollar commodity, but that in itself is not such a bad thing. I remember dreaming of the day I could live off of music, that is more possible now than it has ever been.
There are more opportunities to play our music, to get paid, and to make a name for ourselves doing what we love. How can anyone be mad about that? What’s the problem? Well…
Like any industry, when the money starts flowing in it attracts people that are after it as their priority. Add attention and fame to the mix and you can get a pretty nasty breed of person mucking up the works. At one time art and passion for the music was overwhelmingly the motive of DJs and producers (for promoters it is a little more debatable), but now we see more and more that money, fame, and less than admirable intentions are what drive a lot of people to our EDM world. The balance is shifting and the art of the music and the dance floor are suffering as a result.
Beat matching tech, gimmicks, and reliance on playing popular music have become the common definition of what a DJ does. It is no wonder that this seems like an easy source of money and fame. The truth of the matter is that these qualities are irrelevant to the art of the mix and in what makes a DJ worth seeing and worth the ticket price. To better understand, let’s take a look at some of the bigger complaints coming from the old-school and why the new-school should care.
David Guetta and Swedish House Mafia
It doesn’t take much digging to find out how old-school head DJ Sneak feels about these guys. He’s called them out for their showmanship antics, elaborate stage setups, and more importantly, for getting caught playing pre-produced sets and not actually DJing during their shows.
First of all it is important to separate the concept of DJ from producer, they are not the same thing. While I applaud these guys for their production skills and developing an accessible sound that attracts lots of people, this does not mean they have the right to charge massive amounts of money to see them press play while they jump around. This would be like paying ridiculous sums to James Cameron to jump around on stage while watching Avatar (actually maybe I would pay to see that). Seriously though, producers either need to put on a live show like Orbital, Daft Punk, Chuck Love, etc., or develop actual DJ skills before they step on stage. Unless, of course, you like paying a premium for gimmicks instead of music and talent.
**Disclaimer – I have seen Steve Angello of the Swedish House Mafia on his own play a great 8 hour set and actually mix, so I know he is at least capable, again it’s about what you are paying to see, demand more. I also know playing pre-recorded sets is nothing new and has been a ‘necessity’ now and then for DJ’s playing nightly on tour (not that I approve), but to use this as a default is unacceptable.
DJ X Factor
Now, in all fairness the verdict is still out on this one as we don’t really have all the details or what the contestants will be judged on, but based on Simon Cowell’s propensity to monetize talent it’s likely this show will do more damage than good. It will further push and expose people to the idea that DJing is more about the show than it is about the music and the art. At one point DJing was about bringing new sounds to the floor and making them hits, now DJ’s play the popular tracks to make themselves hits. They are glorified jukeboxes in fancy packaging with laser shows, not artists.
Just to be clear, I am not anti-showmanship. It’s all part of the bigger artistic package when done correctly, but there has to be art at the core. I am anti-showmanship to cover up a lack of talent. Hopefully this show won’t support that, but I am skeptical. We’ll have a better idea when the judges are selected.
Paris Hilton
I will try to keep the vulgarity to a minimum on this one. Remember not long ago when there was a bit of a scuffle with Paris and a certain house DJ because he wouldn’t play a hip-hop song? Remember all those top-40/hip-hop clubs she was frequenting (even when she wasn’t being paid to be there)? Remember how she has never once mentioned or was seen at any house related event until recent press surrounding her new publicity ploy boyfriend Afrojack? Now all of a sudden house music has always been a passion of hers? What does Paris Hilton and a cow’s colon have in common?
This is the epitome of jumping on the decks for the money and the fame bandwagon. Everything she has done to date has been because she saw it as popular and a way to be famous for the sake of being famous. Do we really expect to believe that passion and art will play any part in this catastrophe in the making? At least I have a new term to call people who aren’t DJing for passion and art. Paris Hiltons. Don’t be a Paris Hilton.
The Point
For all you music consumers out there, I appreciate you, I really do. I just want you to be an educated consumer. Know what it is your hard earned dollars are supporting. Be patrons of art, not ATMs for the money hungry.
You would be DJs, producers and promoters: Create art, don’t just press start. Contribute something to the world and to the people, don’t just look to take their money and attention. Let’s be amazing together.Rick Westhead TSN Senior Correspondent Follow|Archive
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5 96 13.7 Len, Pho. 5 10 22 32 6.4 Stuckey, Ind. 6 23 3.8 Chandler, Den. 6 30 12 82 13.7 2 tied 6.3 2 tied 3.8 PRESEASON / INCLUDES GAMES OF FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2016 FIELD GOAL PCT. FG FGA PCT 3-PT FIELD GOAL PCT. 3FG 3GA PCT FREE THROW PCT. FT FTA PCT Nene, Hou. 25 34.735 Sefolosha, Atl. 7 9.778 Andersen, Cle. 7 7 1.000 Hunter, Chi.-Mem. 11 15.733 Horford, Bos. 5 7.714 Baker, N.Y. 6 6 1.000 Jordan, LA-C 12 17.706 Stuckey, Ind. 7 10.700 Bass, LA-C 8 8 1.000 Koufos, Sac. 20 29.690 Anderson, LA-C 4 6.667 Bogdanovic, Bkn. 5 5 1.000 James, Cle. 17 25.680 Cook, N.O. 4 6.667 Brogdon, Mil. 8 8 1.000 D. Cousins, Sac. 35 53.660 Gallinari, Den. 10 15.667 Galloway, N.O. 9 9 1.000 Whiteside, Mia. 36 55.655 Robinson, Ind. 10 15.667 Gay, Sac. 12 12 1.000 Cauley-Stein, Sac. 18 28.643 Tolliver, Sac. 12 19.632 Green, Bos. 9 9 1.000 Gibson, Chi. 36 56.643 Harris, Bkn. 10 16.625 Hamilton, Bkn. 6 6 1.000 Horford, Bos. 21 33.636 Heslip, Tor. 5 8.625 Ibaka, Orl. 9 9 1.000 Vonleh, Por. 19 30.633 T. Johnson, Mia. 5 8.625 Korver, Atl. 6 6 1.000 Capela, Hou. 24 38.632 Brussino, Dal. 8 13.615 Lawson, Sac. 7 7 1.000 Reed, Mia. 24 38.632 Abrines, OKC. 9 15.600 Lopez, Chi. 8 8 1.000 Gobert, Utah 27 43.628 Barnes, Sac. 3 5.600 McConnell, Phi. 7 7 1.000 Lin, Bkn. 26 42.619 Conley, Mem. 9 15.600 McLemore, Sac. 11 11 1.000 Kanter, OKC. 37 60.617 Gbinije, Det. 3 5.600 Parker, S.A. 5 5 1.000 Gortat, Was. 31 51.608 Lee, N.Y. 6 10.600 Thompson, G.S. 16 16 1.000 O'Quinn, N.Y. 17 28.607 Mills, S.A. 6 10.600 Williams, Cha. 15 15 1.000 Mbah a Moute, LA-C 12 20.600 Rozier, Bos. 9 15.600 Durant, G.S. 27 28.964 Robinson, Ind. 27 45.600 Rush, Min. 12 20.600 Lowry, Tor. 19 20.950 Sefolosha, Atl. 15 25.600 Forbes, S.A. 10 17.588 Collison, Sac. 17 18.944 Adams, OKC. 19 32.594 Rudez, Orl. 8 14.571 Turner, Por. 17 18.944 Lee, N.Y. 19 32.594 Singler, OKC. 12 21.571 Paul, LA-C 16 17.941 Black, LA-L 16 27.593 Smith, Det. 4 7.571 Lillard, Por. 30 32.938 McGee, G.S. 13 22.591 Napier, Por. 9 16.563 Speights, LA-C 15 16.938 Gallinari, Den. 20 34.588 Durant, G.S. 19 34.559 Barnes, Dal. 13 14.929 Afflalo, Sac. 17 29.586 Jackson, Bos. 5 9.556 Gasol, Mem. 13 14.929 Korver, Atl. 17 29.586 Muhammad, Min. 5 9.556 Vucevic, Orl. 13 14.929 Collison, Sac. 21 36.583 Randle, H.Y. 5 9.556 Anderson, LA-C 12 13.923 Dinwiddie, Chi. 14 24.583 Frye, Cle. 6 11.545 Harris, Det. 12 13.923 Tavares, Atl. 15 26.577 Prigioni, Hou. 6 11.545 McCaw, G.S. 12 13.923 Dieng, Min. 20 35.571 Moore, N.O. 9 17.529 Leonard, S.A. 23 25.920 Holland, Cle. 12 21.571 Anthony, N.Y. 10 19.526 Canaan, Chi. 11 12.917 C. Jefferson, Cle. 17 30.567 Beal, Was. 12 23.522 Hardaway, Atl. 11 12.917 Tolliver, Sac. 17 30.567 14 tied.500 Patterson, Sac. 11 12.917 Muscala, Atl. 18 32.563 Walker, Cha. 11 12.917 Poeltl, Tor. 18 32.563 Delaney, Atl. 10 11.909 Asik, N.O. 14 25.560 6 tied.900 Dudley, Pho. 14 25.560 T. Young, Ind. 29 52.558 PRESEASON / INCLUDES GAMES OF FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2016 STEALS PER GAME G STL AVG BLOCKS PER GAME G BLK AVG MINUTES PER GAME G MIN AVG Paul, LA-C 5 12 2.40 Whiteside, Mia. 6 14 2.33 Ibaka, Orl. 5 156 31.2 Wall, Was. 5 12 2.40 Lopez, Chi. 7 16 2.29 Russell, LA-L 8 237 29.6 Weber, Mia. 8 19 2.38 Turner, Ind. 4 9 2.25 Fournier, Orl. 6 177 29.5 Rubio, Min. 6 14 2.33 Gobert, Utah 6 13 2.17 Harris, Det. 6 177 29.4 George, Ind. 4 9 2.25 Dieng, Min. 6 12 2.00 Harden, Hou. 6 177 29.4 Monroe, Mil. 5 11 2.20 Hibbert, Cha. 7 13 1.86 Gordon, Orl. 4 117 29.2 Conley, Mem. 5 10 2.00 Biyombo, Orl. 6 11 1.83 Rivers, LA-C 5 145 29.0 Curry, G.S. 7 14 2.00 Porzingis, N.Y. 6 11 1.83 Caldwell-Pope, Det. 6 173 28.8 Dunn, Min. 7 14 2.00 Howard, Atl. 5 9 1.80 Parker, Mil. 6 171 28.5 Graham, Cha. 3 6 2.00 Harrell, Hou. 7 12 1.71 Wiggins, Min. 4 113 28.1 James, Cle. 3 6 2.00 Reed, Mia. 7 11 1.57 Payton, Orl. 5 141 28.1 Lawson, Sac. 4 8 2.00 Anthony, S.A. 6 9 1.50 Barton, Den. 7 196 28.0 Tokoto, N.Y. 3 6 2.00 Aldrich, Min. 7 10 1.43 Drummond, Det. 5 140 28.0 Ingles, Utah 6 11 1.83 Durant, G.S. 7 10 1.43 McDermott, Chi. 7 193 27.6 DeRozan, Tor. 5 9 1.80 Bogut, Dal. 5 7 1.40 McRae, Cle. 6 165 27.5 Dudley, Pho. 5 9 1.80 Adams, OKC. 3 4 1.33 Hield, N.O. 6 164 27.3 Gay, Sac. 5 9 1.80 Tavares, Atl. 6 8 1.33 Warren, Pho. 6 163 27.1 Roberson, OKC. 4 7 1.75 West, G.S. 6 8 1.33 Hill, N.O. 6 162 27.0 Oubre, Was. 7 12 1.71 Holmes, Phi. 7 9 1.29 Frazier, N.O. 6 162 26.9 Bledsoe, Pho. 6 10 1.67 Jones, N.O. 4 5 1.25 McCollum, Por. 7 188 26.9 Caldwell-Pope, Det. 6 10 1.67 Huestis, OKC. 5 6 1.20 LaVine, Min. 6 160 26.7 Chriss, Pho. 6 10 1.67 Len, Pho. 5 6 1.20 Batum, Cha. 5 133 26.6 Williams, Mem. 6 10 1.67 Henson, Mil. 6 7 1.17 Antetokounmpo, Mil. 6 159 26.6 Russell, LA-L 8 13 1.63 McGee, G.S. 6 7 1.17 Booker, Pho. 5 132 26.5 Booker, Pho. 5 8 1.60 Smith, Det. 6 7 1.17 Teague, Ind. 6 159 26.5 Carroll, Tor. 5 8 1.60 Speights, LA-C 6 7 1.17 Randle, LA-L 8 212 26.4 Collison, Sac. 5 8 1.60 Nogueira, Tor. 7 8 1.14 George, Ind. 4 106 26.4 Leonard, S.A. 5 8 1.60 19 tied 1.00 Smith, Det. 6 157 26.1 Smart, Bos. 7 11 1.57 Biyombo, Orl. 6 156 26.0 Prince, Atl. 7 11 1.57 Jones, N.O. 4 103 25.8 Augustin, Orl. 6 9 1.50 Rondo, Chi. 5 129 25.8 Casspi, Sac. 4 6 1.50 Kaminsky, Cha. 7 180 25.8 Cauley-Stein, Sac. 6 9 1.50 T. Young, Ind. 6 154 25.7 Green, G.S. 6 9 1.50 Dragic, Mia. 6 154 25.6 Nance, LA-L 8 12 1.50 Brogdon, Mil. 6 153 25.6 Ndour, N.Y. 6 9 1.50 Oubre, Was. 7 178 25.5 Patterson, Tor. 6 9 1.50 Oladipo, OKC. 6 153 25.5 Thornton, Was. 4 6 1.50 Roberson, OKC. 4 102 25.5 Covington, Phi. 7 10 1.43 Ariza, Hou. 6 153 25.5 Holmes, Phi. 7 10 1.43 Murray, Den. 8 203 25.4 ------------------------- Final 2015-2016 NBA Regular Season Player Stat Leaders INCLUDES GAMES OF WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13, 2016 SCORING AVERAGE G FG FT PTS AVG REBOUNDS PER GAME G OFF DEF TOT AVG ASSISTS PER GAME G AST AVG Curry, G.S. 79 805 363 2375 30.1 Drummond, Det. 81 395 803 1198 14.8 Rondo, Sac. 72 839 11.7 Harden, Hou. 82 710 720 2376 29.0 Jordan, LA-C 77 267 792 1059 13.8 Westbrook, OKC. 80 834 10.4 Durant, OKC. 72 698 447 2029 28.2 Whiteside, Mia. 73 238 627 865 11.8 Wall, Was. 77 789 10.2 Cousins, Sac. 65 601 476 1748 26.9 Howard, Hou. 71 238 597 835 11.8 Paul, LA-C 74 738 10.0 James, Cle. 76 737 359 1920 25.3 Cousins, Sac. 65 158 589 747 11.5 Rubio, Min. 76 657 8.6 Lillard, Por. 75 618 414 1879 25.1 Gasol, Chi. 72 155 638 793 11.0 Harden, Hou. 82 612 7.5 Davis, N.O. 61 560 326 1481 24.3 Gobert, Utah 61 208 460 668 11.0 Green, G.S. 81 598 7.4 Westbrook, OKC. 80 656 465 1878 23.5 Towns, Min. 82 228 629 857 10.5 Lillard, Por. 75 512 6.8 DeRozan, Tor. 78 614 555 1830 23.5 Davis, N.O. 61 130 497 627 10.3 James, Cle. 76 514 6.8 George, Ind. 81 605 454 1874 23.1 Randle, LA-L 81 172 657 829 10.2 Curry, G.S. 79 527 6.7 Thomas, Bos. 82 591 474 1823 22.2 Love, Cle. 77 149 613 762 9.9 Smith, N.O.-Phi. 77 502 6.5 K. Thompson, G.S. 80 651 193 1771 22.1 Gortat, Was. 75 222 519 741 9.9 Lowry, Tor. 77 494 6.4 Anthony, N.Y. 72 567 334 1573 21.8 Green, G.S. 81 134 635 769 9.5 Payton, Orl. 73 467 6.4 Lowry, Tor. 77 512 398 1634 21.2 Pachulia, Dal. 76 249 469 718 9.4 Jackson, Det. 79 492 6.2 Leonard, S.A. 72 551 292 1523 21.2 Valanciunas, Tor. 60 184 363 547 9.1 Thomas, Bos. 82 509 6.2 Butler, Chi. 67 470 395 1399 20.9 Young, Bkn. 73 176 484 660 9.0 Holiday, N.O. 65 391 6.0 Walker, Cha. 81 568 371 1689 20.9 Millsap, Atl. 81 198 534 732 9.0 Teague, Atl. 79 470 5.9 McCollum, Por. 80 641 187 1666 20.8 Thompson, Cle. 82 268 470 738 9.0 Dragic, Mia. 72 419 5.8 Wiggins, Min. 81 594 430 1675 20.7 Vucevic, Orl. 65 174 402 576 8.9 Williams, Dal. 65 378 5.8 Lopez, Bkn. 73 591 317 1501 20.6 Monroe, Mil. 79 218 478 696 8.8 Batum, Cha. 70 403 5.8 Wall, Was. 77 572 272 1531 19.9 Chandler, Pho. 66 175 401 576 8.7 Mudiay, Den. 68 372 5.5 Hayward, Utah 80 521 393 1578 19.7 Faried, Den. 67 235 346 581 8.7 Parker, S.A. 72 379 5.3 Paul, LA-C 74 515 294 1446 19.5 Aldridge, S.A. 74 176 456 632 8.5 Walker, Cha. 81 421 5.2 Wade, Mia. 74 540 322 1409 19.0 Sullinger, Bos. 81 194 479 673 8.3 Durant, OKC. 72 361 5.0 Jackson, Det. 79 540 291 1489 18.8 Durant, OKC. 72 45 544 589 8.2 Butler, Chi. 67 321 4.8 Towns, Min. 82 625 223 1503 18.3 Favors, Utah 62 169 334 503 8.1 Ellis, Ind. 81 383 4.7 Nowitzki, Dal. 75 498 250 1372 18.3 Kanter, OKC. 82 249 415 664 8.1 Rose, Chi. 66 311 4.7 Vucevic, Orl. 65 533 113 1181 18.2 Noel, Phi. 67 154 388 542 8.1 Wade, Mia. 74 344 4.6 Middleton, Mil. 79 507 277 1434 18.2 Biyombo, Tor. 82 182 473 655 8.0 McConnell, Phi. 81 367 4.5 Aldridge, S.A. 74 536 259 1331 18.0 Lopez, Bkn. 73 204 369 573 7.8 Dellavedova, Cle. 76 337 4.4 Bryant, LA-L 66 398 232 1161 17.6 Westbrook, OKC. 80 145 481 626 7.8 Turner, Bos. 81 359 4.4 Gay, Sac. 70 466 198 1204 17.2 Randolph, Mem. 68 179 350 529 7.8 Sloan, Bkn. 61 268 4.4 Millsap, Atl. 81 501 309 1385 17.1 Anthony, N.Y. 72 98 458 556 7.7 Larkin, Bkn. 78 342 4.4 Anderson, N.O. 66 397 199 1124 17.0 Plumlee, Por. 82 201 427 628 7.7 Schroder, Atl. 80 349 4.4 Antetokounmpo, Mil. 80 513 296 1350 16.9 Antetokounmpo, Mil. 80 113 499 612 7.7 Antetokounmpo, Mil. 80 345 4.3 Holiday, N.O. 65 410 182 1089 16.8 Len, Pho. 78 178 416 594 7.6 Collison, Sac. 74 318 4.3 Gasol, Chi. 72 467 229 1187 16.5 James, Cle. 76 111 454 565 7.4 McCollum, Por. 80 341 4.3 Favors, Utah 62 418 180 1016 16.4 Davis, Por. 81 224 375 599 7.4 Middleton, Mil. 79 331 4.2 Rose, Chi. 66 447 142 1080 16.4 Lopez, N.Y. 82 268 334 602 7.3 Anthony, N.Y. 72 299 4.2 Redick, LA-C 75 422 182 1226 16.3 Duncan, S.A. 61 115 332 447 7.3 Calderon, N.Y. 72 298 4.1 INCLUDES GAMES OF WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13, 2016 FIELD GOAL PCT. FG FGA PCT 3-PT FIELD GOAL PCT. 3FG 3GA PCT FREE THROW PCT. FT FTA PCT Jordan, LA-C 357 508.703 Redick, LA-C 200 421.475 Curry, G.S. 363 400.908 Howard, Hou. 372 600.620 Curry, G.S. 402 886.454 Crawford, LA-C 245 271.904 Whiteside, Mia. 413 682.606 Leonard, S.A. 129 291.443 Durant, OKC. 447 498.898 Kanter, OKC. 414 719.576 Bayless, Mil. 101 231.437 Paul, LA-C 294 328.896 Gortat, Was. 433 764.567 McDermott, Chi. 110 259.425 Nowitzki, Dal. 250 280.893 Valanciunas, Tor. 303 536.565 K. Thompson, G.S. 276 650.425 Lillard, Por. 414 464.892 Faried, Den. 349 626.558 Dudley, Was. 100 238.420 Martin, Min.-S.A. 153 172.890 Towns, Min. 625 1153.542 McCollum, Por. 197 472.417 Middleton, Mil. 277 312.888 Lopez, N.Y. 357 662.539 Parsons, Dal. 104 251.414 Redick, LA-C 182 205.888 Dieng, Min. 308 579.532 Calderon, N.Y. 84 203.414 Irving, Cle. 169 191.885 Monroe, Mil. 491 941.522 Dellavedova, Cle. 98 239.410 Leonard, S.A. 292 334.874 Noel, Phi. 306 587.521 Casspi, Sac. 112 274.409 K. Thompson, G.S. 193 221.873 Drummond, Det. 552 1060.521 G. Hill, Ind. 128 314.408 Anderson, N.O. 199 228.873 James, Cle. 737 1416.520 Olynyk, Bos. 85 210.405 Thomas, Bos. 474 544.871 Favors, Utah 418 811.515 M. Williams, Cha. 152 378.402 Williams, Dal. 179 206.869 Young, Bkn. 495 963.514 Collison, Sac. 87 217.401 Gallinari, Den. 375 432.868 Aldridge, S.A. 536 1045.513 Beverley, Hou. 124 310.400 Jackson, Det. 291 337.864 Jokic, Den. 307 600.512 Fournier, Orl. 156 390.400 Matthews, Dal. 126 146.863 Lopez, Bkn. 591 1157.511 Smith, Cle. 204 510.400 Harden, Hou. 720 837.860 Vucevic, Orl. 533 1046.510 Teague, Atl. 110 275.400 Hood, Utah 172 200.860 Okafor, Phi. 397 781.508 Korver, Atl. 158 396.399 George, Ind. 454 528.860 Antetokounmpo, Mil. 513 1013.506 Middleton, Mil. 143 361.396 Collison, Sac. 194 226.858 Leonard, S.A. 551 1090.506 Crabbe, Por. 112 284.394 Aldridge, S.A. 259 302.858 Durant, OKC. 698 1381.505 Teletovic, Pho. 181 460.393 Knight, Pho. 156 183.852 Horford, Atl. 529 1048.505 Mirotic, Chi. 135 346.390 DeRozan, Tor. 555 653.850 Curry, G.S. 805 1598.504 LaVine, Min. 123 316.389 Batum, Cha. 163 192.849 Griffin, LA-C 301 603.499 Green, G.S. 100 258.388 Rubio, Min. 266 314.847 Davis, N.O. 560 1136.493 Lowry, Tor. 212 547.388 Walker, Cha. 371 438.847 Parker, S.A. 350 710.493 Beal, Was. 105 271.387 Felton, Dal. 149 176.847 Parker, Mil. 443 899.493 Frye, Orl.-Cle. 91 235.387 Bass, LA-L 125 148.845 Parsons, Dal. 320 651.492 Ross, Tor. 131 339.386 Holiday, N.O. 182 216.843 Green, G.S. 401 819.490 Durant, OKC. 186 482.386 Booker, Pho. 215 256.840 Collison, Sac. 377 776.486 Barea, Dal. 100 260.385 Porzingis, N.Y. 201 240.838 Redick, LA-C 422 880.480 Mills, S.A. 123 320.384 Teague, Atl. 261 312.837 Ibaka, OKC. 416 869.479 Gordon, N.O. 113 294.384 Fournier, Orl. 199 238.836 Dragic, Mia. 417 875.477 J. Johnson, Bkn.-Mia 120 313.383 Conley, Mem. 191 229.834 Randolph, Mem. 431 907.475 Barnes, G.S. 82 214.383 Canaan, Phi. 150 180.833 Porter, Was. 339 717.473 Afflalo, N.Y. 91 238.382 Chalmers, Mia.-Mem. 218 262.832 Millsap, Atl. 501 1066.470 Bogdanovic, Bkn. 129 338.382 Butler, Chi. 395 475.832 K. Thompson, G.S. 651 1386.470 H. Thompson, Phi. 149 392.380 Harris, Orl.-Det. 202 243.831 INCLUDES GAMES OF WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13, 2016 STEALS PER GAME G STL AVG BLOCKS PER GAME G BLK AVG MINUTES PER GAME G MIN AVG Curry, G.S. 79 169 2.14 Whiteside, Mia. 73 269 3.68 Harden, Hou. 82 3125 38.1 Rubio, Min. 76 162 2.13 Jordan, LA-C 77 177 2.30 Lowry, Tor. 77 2851 37.0 Paul, LA-C 74 152 2.05 Gobert, Utah 61 135 2.21 Butler, Chi. 67 2474 36.9 Lowry, Tor. 77 158 2.05 Davis, N.O. 61 125 2.05 Caldwell-Pope, Det. 76 2789 36.7 Westbrook, OKC. 80 163 2.04 Gasol, Chi. 72 146 2.03 Hayward, Utah 80 2893 36.2 Ariza, Hou. 81 160 1.98 Ibaka, OKC. 78 148 1.90 Wall, Was. 77 2784 36.2 Rondo, Sac. 72 141 1.96 Porzingis, N.Y. 72 134 1.86 Middleton, Mil. 79 2852 36.1 Wall, Was. 77 145 1.88 Millsap, Atl. 81 139 1.72 DeRozan, Tor. 78 2804 35.9 George, Ind. 81 152 1.88 Lopez, Bkn. 73 124 1.70 Durant, OKC. 72 2578 35.8 Ellis, Ind. 81 150 1.85 Towns, Min. 82 138 1.68 Morris, Det. 80 2856 35.7 Millsap, Atl. 81 147 1.81 Grant, Phi. 77 127 1.65 Lillard, Por. 75 2676 35.7 Leonard, S.A. 72 128 1.78 Bogut, G.S. 70 114 1.63 James, Cle. 76 2709 35.6 Noel, Phi. 67 118 1.76 Biyombo, Tor. 82 133 1.62 Walker, Cha. 81 2885 35.6 Crowder, Bos. 73 126 1.73 Howard, Hou. 71 113 1.59 Davis, N.O. 61 2164 35.5 Allen, Mem. 64 110 1.72 Lopez, N.Y. 82 129 1.57 Ariza, Hou. 81 2859 35.3 Harden, Hou. 82 139 1.70 Noel, Phi. 67 100 1.49 Antetokounmpo, Mil. 80 2823 35.3 Middleton, Mil. 79 131 1.66 Horford, Atl. 82 121 1.48 Rondo, Sac. 72 2537 35.2 Butler, Chi. 67 110 1.64 Favors, Utah 62 91 1.47 Anthony, N.Y. 72 2530 35.1 Oladipo, Orl. 72 116 1.61 Turner, Ind. 60 86 1.43 Wiggins, Min. 81 2845 35.1 Covington, Phi. 67 105 1.57 Cousins, Sac. 65 92 1.42 Batum, Cha. 70 2448 35.0 Walker, Cha. 81 126 1.56 Antetokounmpo, Mil. 80 113 1.41 George, Ind. 81 2819 34.8 Cousins, Sac. 65 101 1.55 Green, G.S. 81 113 1.40 McCollum, Por. 80 2780 34.7 Bradley, Bos. 76 117 1.54 Drummond, Det. 81 112 1.38 Green, G.S. 81 2808 34.7 Young, Bkn. 73 112 1.53 Hibbert, LA-L 81 110 1.36 Cousins, Sac. 65 2246 34.6 Smart, Bos. 61 91 1.49 Valanciunas, Tor. 60 80 1.33 Westbrook, OKC. 80 2750 34.4 Drummond, Det. 81 119 1.47 Gortat, Was. 75 96 1.28 Curry, G.S. 79 2700 34.2 Green, G.S. 81 119 1.47 Duncan, S.A. 61 78 1.28 G. Hill, Ind. 74 2524 34.1 Caldwell-Pope, Det. 76 110 1.45 Capela, Hou. 77 92 1.19 Gay, Sac. 70 2379 34.0 Chalmers, Mia.-Mem. 61 88 1.44 Durant, OKC. 72 85 1.18 Matthews, Dal. 78 2644 33.9 Gay, Sac. 70 100 1.43 Dieng, Min. 82 96 1.17 Ellis, Ind. 81 2734 33.8 Porter, Was. 75 105 1.40 Aldrich, LA-C 60 68 1.13 Jordan, LA-C 77 2598 33.7 James, Cle. 76 104 1.37 Adams, OKC. 80 89 1.11 Lopez, Bkn. 73 2457 33.7 Holiday, N.O. 65 88 1.35 Aldridge, S.A. 74 81 1.09 Afflalo, N.Y. 71 2371 33.4 Beverley, Hou. 71 94 1.32 Vucevic, Orl. 65 70 1.08 J. Johnson, Bkn.-Mia. 81 2703 33.4 Bazemore, Atl. 75 98 1.31 Mahinmi, Ind. 71 75 1.06 Bradley, Bos. 76 2536 33.4 Tucker, Pho. 82 106 1.29 Gibson, Chi. 73 77 1.05 K. Thompson, G.S. 80 2666 33.3 Davis, N.O. 61 78 1.28 Johnson, Bos. 79 83 1.05 Harris, Orl.-Det. 76 2513 33.1 Harris, Den. 76 97 1.28 Plumlee, Por. 82 85 1.04 Leonard, S.A. 72 2380 33.0 Teague, Atl. 79 97 1.23 Cauley-Stein, Sac. 66 66 1.00 Oladipo, Orl. 72 2379 33.0 Payton, Orl. 73 89 1.22 Leonard, S.A. 72 71 0.99 Young, Bkn. 73 2407 33.0 ----------------------------------- FINAL 2014-15 REGULAR SEASON NBA STAT LEADERS INCLUDES GAMES OF WEDNESDAY, APRIL 15, 2015 SCORING AVERAGE G FG FT PTS AVG REBOUNDS PER GAME G OFF DEF TOT AVG ASSISTS PER GAME G AST AVG Westbrook, OKC. 67 627 546 1886 28.1 Jordan, LA-C 82 397 829 1226 15.0 Paul, LA-C 82 838 10.2 Harden, Hou. 81 647 715 2217 27.4 Drummond, Det. 82 437 667 1104 13.5 Wall, Was. 79 792 10.0 James, Cle. 69 624 375 1743 25.3 Cousins, Sac. 59 185 562 747 12.7 Lawson, Den. 75 720 9.6 Davis, N.O. 68 642 371 1656 24.4 Gasol, Chi. 78 220 699 919 11.8 Westbrook, OKC. 67 574 8.6 Cousins, Sac. 59 498 423 1421 24.1 Chandler, Dal. 75 |
2005 to 2006,[4] and again in 2010,[5] the Observatory did not issue a single tropical cyclone warning above Number 3.[6]
Typhoon Prapiroon [ edit ]
In 2006, Typhoon Prapiroon brought 200km/h wind to Hong Kong,[7] overturned containers, uprooted trees, and caused many flight delays at the airport,[8] but the Observatory did not issue Signal Number 8, remaining at the lower level Signal Number 3.[9]
Observatory Chief Lam Chiu-ying later said the decision was based on the fact that wind speeds in Kai Tak, near the Victoria Harbour, did not reach the level required for issuing Signal Number 8.[7] Nevertheless, humorous speculation arose that Li Ka-shing was behind the decision, in an effort to maximize productivity from his workers and prop up the economy.
Scientific reason [ edit ]
Media reports in 2010, citing research by the Observatory, revealed the reason behind the fewer occurrences of Signal Number 8. It is believed that an ocean temperature difference between the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean is to blame.[10]
A track map of all storms in the 2010 Pacific typhoon season. No typhoons came across Hong Kong that year.
Reaction from the Observatory [ edit ]
Former Observatory Chief Lee Boon Ying told reporters in 2010 the Observatory has always put the safety of Hong Kong residents as its first priority, and is not swayed by business or economic concerns.[11]
Survey [ edit ]
In an impromptu survey conducted by Observatory Chief Shun Chi Ming at a student forum in 2014, about 20% of approximately 100 students in attendance say they believe Li's Field exists.[12]
Cultural references [ edit ]
Li's force field has been mentioned in local cultural media, and has been the subject of many Internet memes.[13]
See also [ edit ]TORONTO (Reuters) - Canadian housing starts surged unexpectedly in September while new home prices also beat forecasts in August, prolonging a housing boom in the country despite signs of weakness in other parts of the economy.
Groundbreaking on new homes jumped to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 230,701 in September from a downwardly revised 214,255 in August, a report by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp showed.
That puts housing starts at the highest since August 2012, bucking forecasts for a slowing in construction to 200,000 starts, which economists have said is more in line with demographic demand.
“In the span of about three months, Canadian homebuilding activity has gone from a controlled simmer to a rolling boil,” BMO Capital Markets senior economist Robert Kavcic said in a research note.
“We probably can’t sustain this level of homebuilding activity for long before excess supply concerns start to build.”
Canada’s housing boom has defied predictions of a slowdown for years, buoyed by historically low borrowing costs that have offset slow economic growth and a technical recession in the first half of 2015.
The Bank of Canada has cut rates twice this year to help stimulate the resource-dependent economy amid weak oil prices.
The last time housing starts stayed well above 200,000 for a prolonged period, the Canadian government tightened mortgage lending rules to cool the market.
CMHC Chief Economist Bob Dugan said the projected annual rate of new household formation is 190,000, which “underscores the continuing need for inventory management to minimize the number of completed but unsold units.”
A separate report from Statistics Canada showed new home prices rose by 0.3 percent in August from July on continued strength in Ontario, the most populous of the 10 provinces. That surpassed expectations for a 0.2 percent increase.
Compared with a year earlier, prices were up by 1.3 percent.
The Toronto and Oshawa region, which accounts for 28.8 percent of the entire Canadian market, posted a 0.6 percent gain, advancing for a seventh month.
Prices in Vancouver, another hot market, edged up by 0.1 percent. The Alberta city of Calgary, which is sensitive to Canada’s weakened energy sector, showed no change from July.Note: By submitting this form, you agree to Third Door Media's terms. We respect your privacy.
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When betawor ks acquired Digg a month ago many folks were confident that they had the right attitude, team and environment to resurrect the failing site. Today that dream died when the new Digg was officially launched. The betaworks team worked for six weeks to rebuild the site form scratch, and it shows.
New Digg v1 comes without user profiles, all user history is absent, no Digg login exists (only Facebook,) no commenting is allowed and users have to submit a link via Facebook or Twitter. Digg, the slowly dying social news site can now officially be pronounced. Digg is dead.
The new Digg is merely just another Twitter/Facebook aggregator. Digg counts are nearly all made up of Tweets or Facebook mentions. Instead of rebuilding a passionate Reddit-like community, the new Digg appears to be content with leaning on outside social data to power the site. The majority of “popular” stories have nearly all votes coming from external social sources like this example:
The Verge reports that the new Digg will be editorially driven, curated content stating:
The front page of Digg will also be editorially driven instead of entirely based on a Digg score algorithm.
Digg was news for the people by the people, it was what made the site great. Without the ability for users to submit and choose what’s popular, the site is no longer social news. Launching without the ability to comment drives home the utter lack of social.
Lastly, all previous user data is non-existent on the site. Instead of building a location for users to interact, users are required to sign-in via Facebook, yet stories show the names of Twitter accounts:
Social news sites like Reddit thrive due to the communities they build, and new Digg v1 is community-less. With the new launch, Digg has become another curated social network aggregator … and officially irrelevant.
It should be noted that Digg states that commenting is planned along with greater personalization. For more information see the official Digg blog, or visit Digg.com.Microsoft has submitted a proposal with the city of Mountain View, Calif., to redevelop the company’s campus based there.
In an email to employees on Thursday, Qi Lu, a Microsoft executive vice president, said the company also plans to buy the 515,000-square-foot campus, which it currently leases. Some of the proposed features include modern work spaces, a subterranean parking lot and a soccer field.
“I am excited to announce our plan to further invest in the success of the Silicon Valley region,” Lu wrote. Silicon Valley Business Journal first reported the news.
The software giant, based in Redmond, Wash., first established a presence in the Valley in 1981. It now has more than 2,000 employees in the Bay Area, the company told GeekWire. The Mountain View construction is expected to start in 2017, and will take at least three years.
Microsoft made some cuts in its Silicon Valley operations in the fall of 2014, focusing on Microsoft Research, as part of the company’s broader cutbacks at the time. However, the Silicon Valley operation continues to be a center for research and development for a variety of Microsoft products.
It’s not a bad time to own a construction business in Northern California. Apple is also developing its new 2.8 million-square-foot Cupertino headquarters, dubbed by many as the Spaceship Campus.
Here’s the full text of the email to Microsoft employees.SHARE
By Sheila Burke
After Tennessee's brand new online school assessment test, known as TNReady, crashed on Monday because of computer-networking glitches, the Department of Education has decided to administer the test moving forward with paper and pencil.
"Despite the many improvements the department has helped to make to the system in recent months and based on the events of this morning, we are not confident in the system's ability to perform consistently," said Education Commissioner Candice McQueen in an email to directors late Monday afternoon.
"In the best interest of our students and to protect instructional time, we cannot continue with Measurement Incoporated's online testing platform in its current state. Moving forward, during the 2015-16 school year TNReady will be administered via paper and pencil (for both parts)."
McQueen noted issues have continued to arise with the online platform and Monday's technical issues — on the first day of its rollout — highlighted the uncertainty around the stability of the testing platform.
As a result of the statewide shift, the state will delay and extend the Part 1 testing window.
"Measurement Incorporated is currently scheduling the printing and shipping of the paper tests and the department will share the revised testing window with districts by Thursday of this week," McQueen said in the email.
"Regardless of the medium of assessment, this new and improved test will provide schools, teachers and parents with valuable information about our students college and career readiness."
Earlier in the day, McQueen advised schools that were experiencing problems to discontinue testing. It was unclear how many schools were affected.
A Knox County Schools spokeswoman on Monday afternoon said the school system was going to allow students who were successfully able to access the assessment in the morning to finish, but were not going to start any new tests in the afternoon.
Melissa Tindell said administration officials had heard from about half of the schools that were scheduled to test Monday — and the results were mixed.
"Some were able to start the testing, some were able to finish testing, and others could not complete the testing session for today," she said. "We are continuing to gather information from schools who were scheduled to test (Monday)."
Tindell said the school system officials are optimistic they will be able to resolve any issues before Tuesday's testing.
Tindell said schools that were unable to complete the test will be able to reschedule during the test's four week window. She added the school system is also keeping its eye on the weather and will make adjustments as necessary.
Measurement Inc. is the North Carolina-based company that developed TNReady. No one responded to a telephone message left with the company.
This is the first year that students are taking an assessment test online.
TNReady assesses math and English skills for grades 3-11. It replaces the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, known as TCAP tests. Supporters say it does a better job of assessing critical-thinking skills than the previous test.
Not every school district across the state was scheduled to take the test Monday. Schools had a window through March 4 to complete the first phase of the test.
Students in the Rutherford County Schools system were forced to halt testing due to the glitches. Schools officials sent out an email to parents assuring them that the network failure had nothing to do with Rutherford County schools or its equipment.
"Our network and new computers worked as they were intended," the email to parents said.Update for Customers with Bitcoin Stored on GDAX
Adam White Blocked Unblock Follow Following Mar 19, 2017
We wanted to provide customers notice of how a possible hard fork of the Bitcoin protocol into Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Unlimited will affect your GDAX account.
The only version of Bitcoin supported on GDAX today is Bitcoin Core, currently represented by the symbol BTC.
We may provide support for Bitcoin Unlimited in the future depending on market conditions and stability of the protocol, but we cannot guarantee whether or when such support may be available. Customers who wish to access both blockchains at the time of the hard fork should withdraw their BTC from GDAX since we cannot guarantee what will happen during the hard fork or when this access may be available.
If one chain receives an overwhelming majority of support from miners, users, and exchanges, we reserve the right to alter the name of chains or discontinue support for certain chains in the future.
Ensuring the safety of customer funds is our top priority. In the event of a hard fork of the Bitcoin protocol, it is likely that we will temporarily suspend the deposit, withdrawal and trading of bitcoin on GDAX pending our assessment of the technical risks posed by the fork, such as the possibility of replay attacks, network instability, and other factors. Customers should take note that they will not be able to withdraw bitcoin from or deposit bitcoin to GDAX for a period of up to 24 hours or more following a fork.
We look forward to working with development teams and other exchanges to ensure the smooth execution of any hard forks with as little disruption as possible. Customers can monitor our Status Page and Twitter for the latest updates from GDAX.By Yolande Knell
BBC News, Cairo
In Egypt, where most women wear the Islamic headscarf, Marwa Sherbini has become known as "the veil martyr".
Read your emails on the case There were alerts on state television as news broke that her murderer had been sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of an early release. The Egyptian ambassador in Berlin, Ramzi Izz Al-Din, told Channel One that Alexander Wiens had received "the harshest ruling possible". He said he did not expect the ruling to be reduced if an appeal was filed. Foreign ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki welcomed the verdict, saying it "served justice" and was "a warning to those motivated by hate". Wiens, 28, stabbed Ms Sherbini at least 16 times in a courtroom in Dresden in July, when she was giving evidence against him in a defamation case. He had called her a "terrorist" and "Islamist" in a children's playground because she covered her hair. She had asked him to make room for her three-year old son to play on the swings. Ms Sherbini, a 31-year-old pharmacist, was pregnant when she was killed. Her son was in the courtroom at the time and her husband was stabbed and accidentally shot by a German guard when he tried to intervene. High security Details of the case shocked Egyptians and there was outrage at what was seen as the slow response of the German authorities to offer condolences and deal with claims of Islamophobia. Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. A week after the killing, German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed her sympathies to Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, but she did not comment publicly. Meanwhile, thousands of people turned out for the funeral of Ms Sherbini in her home city, Alexandria. Many held banners demanding retribution. There were also small but angry protests outside the German embassy and in the Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo. Demonstrators described Germany as "a civilisation of tyrants" and shouted: "What happened to human rights? Where is justice?" Wiens's trial was extensively covered in the Egyptian media, with particular attention given to the extra security measures taken in court. Egyptian lawyers also travelled to Dresden and were allowed to present legal arguments. Giving his response to the verdict, the head of the Egyptian Bar Association, Hamdi Khalifah, said it proved the German judiciary was "neutral". An international law professor at Zagazig University, Nabil Himli, believed it showed the system was not "biased against Islam or Arabs and that the German authorities are fair". 'Bad image' Still, many Egyptians have expressed the wish that Germany had a death sentence to use in this case. Mr Akaz was injured as he tried to save his wife "She died, but he's still alive," Badr Shorbagy, a neighbour of Ms Sherbini from Alexandria, complained to the Associated Press news agency. Ms Sherbini's husband, Olwi Akaz, gave testimony in the trial, telling how his son, who now lives with family in Egypt, misses his mother. Mr Akaz had moved to Germany to carry out doctoral research in molecular biology but has said he does not think he will continue to live in Dresden. Tarek Sherbini, the brother of the dead woman, said "the image of the German people is very bad" following the attack and claimed it showed hatred of Muslims. There was a recent sign of a continuing strain in relations when the Dresden orchestra postponed planned performances in Egypt. Officials say they hope tensions will now ease.
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionSCOTLAND having its own currency may be the “most likely” economic outcome in the event of a Yes vote, according to a report conducted by experts working for Barclays.
An independent report produced by the bank examining the currency options after independence said the SNP’s favoured option of a formal currency union is “more challenging than commonly assumed”, making it probable that Scotland would create a separate currency.
The report does not represent the bank’s official view. Barclays said it has maintained a neutral stance on the referendum.
Barclays’ currency analysts looked at four currency options for the report. The first option was the plan outlined by Alex Salmond for a formal currency union that would see Scotland share sterling and the Bank of England with the rest of the UK.
Also considered was an informal currency union – an economic arrangement known as “sterlingisation” – which would see Scotland use the pound but without any input into Bank of England policy.
The third option was joining the euro which, according to the report, posed “particularly large” uncertainties.
Establishing a separate Scottish currency was also looked at. This would require setting up new monetary institutions, including a Scottish central bank with independent lender of last resort responsibilities.
The report said that “an independent currency would provide the maximum degree of flexibility for policy”.
On the Scottish Government’s favoured option of a formal currency union, the report said the benefits would include reduced set-up and transaction costs.
However, it pointed out that Scotland and the rest of the UK would have to negotiate a clear set of fiscal rules between them – including a profit- and loss-sharing agreement for the Bank of England.
Assuming that a geographical share of North Sea oil revenues went north of the Border after independence, the paper said a sterling currency union would be “susceptible to asymmetric shocks” given the relative sizes of the Scottish and rest of UK economies.
It pointed out that Scotland had relatively larger financial and oil sectors.
“Without a well-designed fiscal transfer mechanism, these differences could make a monetary union unsustainable,” the report said.
On sterlingisation, the experts said that the lack of a lender of last resort would “precipitate financial shocks and capital flight in periods of stress”.
Yesterday, Scottish Secretary Alistair Carmichael claimed that the report underlined the benefits of remaining within the United Kingdom.
He said: “Once again, neutral experts have highlighted the difficulties that independence would bring for Scotland and the UK. This report confirms that Scotland and the UK are both better off with Scotland staying part of the UK.
“Leaving the UK causes us all sorts of currency problems and those problems would be amplified by falling oil revenues.
“As part of the UK, Scotland keeps the UK pound and keeps us working together with the rest of the UK, to create better opportunities and jobs.
“With nearly 100 days to go until the referendum, we are still in the ridiculous position of having to speculate as to what currency an independent Scotland would have.
“There is no good reason to trade-in the best of both worlds we have just now for a long list of problems that independence would bring.”
Scottish Conservative finance spokesman Gavin Brown said: “This analysis by Barclays suggests that an independent currency may be the most likely if separation happens.
“But the Scottish Government has done a pitiful amount on this issue so far. I understand that a paper the SNP is going to release this week will address this issue, and I look forward to reviewing that.
“This matter has to be faced up to by the Scottish Government, otherwise it will not be able to give people the information they need to make a decision in September’s referendum.”
A Scottish Government spokesman said: “Scotland has a strong economy and, as an independent country, we will be the 14th most prosperous nation per head in the OECD, ahead of the UK, Japan, Italy and France. As such, an independent Scotland will be a hugely attractive place to do business and to invest in.
“The pound is as much Scotland’s as it is the rest of the UK’s and a currency union, as this paper shows, is in the interests of the rest of the United Kingdom. In fact, this paper rightly points out the risks to sterling of not entering a currency union.
“The Scottish Government has put forward sensible proposals for a formal monetary union that would ensure both governments had full flexibility over their fiscal policies, within an overall sustainable framework.”
SEE ALSO
• Independence essay: We are more alike than unalikeFigures are from the United States Census, 2010
Rank Metropolitan statistical area Population Per capita
income 1 Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, D.C-Virginia-Maryland MSA 5,949,178 $47,411 2 San Jose-Santa Clara-Sunnyvale, California MSA 1,918,944 $40,392 3 Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, Washington MSA 3,611,644 $39,322 4 San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, California MSA 4,122,177 $38,355 5 Boston–Worcester–Lawrence, Massachusetts–New Hampshire–Maine–Connecticut CMSA 5,819,100 $37,311 6 Honolulu, Hawaii MSA 921,000 $36,339 7 Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, Minnesota MSA 3,478,415 $35,388 8 Hartford, Connecticut MSA 1,183,110 $34,310 9 Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, Colorado MSA 2,871,068 $32,399 10 Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, Oregon MSA 2,345,318 $31,377 11 Sarasota–Bradenton, Florida MSA 589,959 $30,344 12 Anchorage, Alaska MSA 260,283 $30,129 13 Baltimore-Towson, Maryland MSA 2,700,000 $29,771 14 Atlanta, Georgia MSA 5,544,577 $25,288 15 Madison, Wisconsin MSA 726,526 $25,163 16 Santa Fe, New Mexico MSA 147,635 $24,967 17 Rochester, Minnesota MSA 124,277 $24,939 18 Raleigh–Durham–Chapel Hill, North Carolina MSA 1,187,941 $24,698 19 New York-Newark-White Plains, New York-New Jersey-Connecticut CMSA 24,177,366 $24,581 20 Fort Myers–Cape Coral, Florida MSA 440,888 $24,542 21 Austin–San Marcos, Texas MSA 2,271,214 $24,516 22 Salt Lake City-Addison-Blue Spring, Utah MSA 1,333,666 $24,277 23 Cleveland-Elyria-Akron, Ohio MSA 3,554,127 $24,275 24 New London–Norwich, Connecticut–Vermont MSA 293,566 $24,225 25 Portland, Maine MSA 243,537 $24,132 26 Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro,Tennessee 1,789,712 $23,994 27 Fort Collins–Loveland, Colorado MSA 251,494 $23,689 28 Richmond–Petersburg, Virginia MSA 996,512 $23,685 29 Dallas–Fort Worth, Texas CMSA 8,500,000 $23,616 30 Charlottesville, Virginia MSA 159,576 $23,533 31 Charlotte–Gastonia–Rock Hill, North Carolina–South Carolina MSA 2,335,440 $23,417 32 Kansas City, Missouri–Kansas MSA 2,053,167 $23,326 33 Des Moines, Iowa MSA 456,022 $23,316 34 Indianapolis, Indiana MSA 1,999,935 $23,198 35 Springfield, Illinois MSA 201,437 $23,074 36 Fort Pierce–Port St. Lucie, Florida MSA 319,426 $23,072 37 Santa Barbara–Santa Maria–Lompoc, California MSA 399,347 $23,059 38 Columbus, Ohio MSA 1,987,911 $23,020 39 Milwaukee–Racine, Wisconsin CMSA 2,240,231 $23,003 40 Cedar Rapids, Iowa MSA 191,701 $22,977 41 Cincinnati–Hamilton, Ohio–Kentucky–Indiana CMSA 2,435,418 $22,947 42 San Diego, California MSA 3,926,941 $22,926 43 Philadelphia-Camden-Atlantic City, Pennsylvania-Delaware-New Jersey MSA 6,138,144 $22,874 44 Burlington, Vermont MSA 169,391 $22,732 45 St. Louis, Missouri–Illinois MSA 2,603,607 $22,698 46 Reno, Nevada MSA 312,000 $22,592 47 Detroit-Flint-Ann Arbor, Michigan MSA 5,270,909 $22,319 48 Albany–Schenectady–Troy, New York MSA 875,583 $22,303 49 Sacramento–Yolo, California CMSA 1,796,857 $22,302 50 Bloomington–Normal, Illinois MSA 150,433 $22,227 51 Iowa City, Iowa MSA 111,006 $22,220 52 Omaha, Nebraska–Iowa MSA 716,998 $22,145 53 Wilmington, North Carolina MSA 233,450 $22,100 54 Huntsville, Alabama MSA 342,376 $22,073 55 Kokomo, Indiana MSA 101,541 $22,029 56 Colorado Springs, Colorado MSA 516,929 $22,005 57 Boulder-Greely Colorado, MSA 714,000 $22,004 58 Harrisburg–Lebanon–Carlisle, Pennsylvania MSA 629,401 $21,936 59 Phoenix–Mesa, Arizona MSA 3,251,876 $21,907 60 Corvallis, Oregon MSA 78,153 $21,868 61 San Luis Obispo–Atascadero–Paso Robles, California MSA 246,681 $21,864 62 Appleton–Oshkosh–Neenah, Wisconsin MSA 358,365 $21,837 63 Punta Gorda, Florida MSA 141,627 $21,806 64 Green Bay, Wisconsin MSA 226,778 $21,784 65 Tampa–St. Petersburg–Clearwater, Florida MSA 2,395,997 $21,784 66 Jacksonville, Florida MSA 1,100,491 $21,763 67 Louisville, Kentucky–Indiana MSA 1,025,598 $21,756 68 Houston–Galveston–Brazoria, Texas CMSA 4,669,571 $21,701 69 Lansing–East Lansing, Michigan MSA 447,728 $21,653 70 Rochester, New York MSA 1,098,201 $21,627 71 Dayton–Springfield, Ohio MSA 950,558 $21,598 72 Sheboygan, Wisconsin MSA 112,646 $21,509 73 Melbourne–Titusville–Palm Bay, Florida MSA 476,230 $21,484 74 Birmingham, Alabama MSA 921,106 $21,410 75 Peoria–Pekin, Illinois MSA 347,387 $21,402 76 Greensboro–Winston-Salem–High Point, North Carolina MSA 1,251,509 $21,392 77 Roanoke, Virginia MSA 235,932 $21,366 78 Lincoln, Nebraska MSA 250,291 $21,265 79 Pittsfield, Massachusetts MSA 84,699 $21,258 80 Allentown–Bethlehem–Easton, Pennsylvania MSA 637,958 $21,243 81 Lexington, Kentucky MSA 479,198 $21,237 82 Orlando, Florida MSA 1,644,561 $21,232 83 Reading, Pennsylvania MSA 373,638 $21,232 84 Las Vegas, Nevada–Arizona MSA 1,563,282 $21,210 85 Providence–Fall River–Warwick, Rhode Island MSA 1,188,613 $21,208 86 Los Angeles–Riverside–Orange County, California CMSA 16,373,645 $21,170 87 Rockford, Illinois MSA 371,236 $21,145 88 York, Pennsylvania MSA 381,751 $21,086 89 Sioux Falls, South Dakota MSA 172,412 $20,936 90 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania MSA 2,358,695 $20,935 91 Fort Walton Beach, Florida MSA 170,498 $20,918 92 Topeka, Kansas MSA 169,871 $20,904 93 Columbia, South Carolina MSA 536,691 $20,902 94 Grand Rapids–Muskegon–Holland, Michigan MSA 1,088,514 $20,901 95 Janesville–Beloit, Wisconsin MSA 152,307 $20,895 96 Savannah, Georgia MSA 293,000 $20,752 97 Wausau, Wisconsin MSA 125,834 $20,703 98 Fort Wayne, Indiana MSA 502,141 $20,701 99 Wichita, Kansas MSA 545,220 $20,692 100 Toledo, Ohio MSA 618,203 $20,565 101 Knoxville, Tennessee MSA 687,249 $20,538 102 Davenport–Moline–Rock Island, Iowa–Illinois MSA 359,062 $20,464 103 Miami–Fort Lauderdale, Florida CMSA 3,876,380 $20,454 104 Evansville–Henderson, Indiana–Kentucky MSA 296,195 $20,439 105 Lancaster, Pennsylvania MSA 470,658 $20,398 106 Charleston, West Virginia MSA 251,662 $20,378 107 Norfolk–Virginia Beach–Newport News, Virginia–North Carolina MSA 1,569,541 $20,328 108 Memphis, Tennessee–Arkansas–Mississippi MSA 1,135,614 $20,327 109 Kalamazoo–Battle Creek, Michigan MSA 452,851 $20,324 110 Saginaw–Bay City–Midland, Michigan MSA 403,070 $20,320 111 Boise City, Idaho MSA 432,345 $20,280 112 Little Rock–North Little Rock, Arkansas MSA 724,294 $20,263 113 Elkhart–Goshen, Indiana MSA 182,791 $20,250 114 Jackson, Michigan MSA 158,422 $20,171 115 Salinas, California MSA 401,762 $20,165 116 Canton–Massillon, Ohio MSA 406,934 $20,154 117 Buffalo–Niagara Falls, New York MSA 1,170,111 $20,143 118 Tulsa, Oklahoma MSA 803,235 $20,092 119 Decatur, Illinois MSA 114,706 $20,067 120 Albuquerque, New Mexico MSA 712,738 $20,025 121 Bellingham, Washington MSA 166,814 $20,025 122 Asheville, North Carolina MSA 225,965 $20,010 123 Syracuse, New York MSA 732,117 $20,002 124 Tallahassee, Florida MSA 284,539 $19,990 125 Springfield, Massachusetts MSA 591,932 $19,976 126 Benton Harbor, Michigan MSA 162,453 $19,952 127 Lawrence, Kansas MSA 99,962 $19,952 128 Myrtle Beach, South Carolina MSA 196,629 $19,949 129 Chattanooga, Tennessee–Georgia MSA 465,161 $19,944 130 Fargo–Moorhead, North Dakota–Minnesota MSA 174,367 $19,910 131 Daytona Beach, Florida MSA 493,175 $19,888 132 Columbia, Missouri MSA 135,454 $19,844 133 Richland–Kennewick–Pasco, Washington MSA 191,822 $19,798 134 Tucson, Arizona MSA 843,746 $19,785 135 Ogden, Utah MSA 211,277 $19,781 136 Charleston–North Charleston, South Carolina MSA 549,033 $19,772 137 South Bend, Indiana MSA 265,559 $19,756 138 Greenville–Spartanburg–Anderson, South Carolina MSA 962,441 $19,716 139 Champaign–Urbana, Illinois MSA 179,669 $19,708 140 Eugene–Springfield, Oregon MSA 322,959 $19,681 141 La Crosse, Wisconsin–Minnesota MSA 126,838 $19,649 142 Cheyenne, Wyoming MSA 81,607 $19,634 143 Dubuque, Iowa MSA 89,143 $19,600 144 Bismarck, North Dakota MSA 94,719 $19,572 145 Medford–Ashland, Oregon MSA 181,269 $19,498 146 Jackson, Mississippi MSA 440,801 $19,435 147 Glens Falls, New York MSA 124,345 $19,368 148 Oklahoma City, Oklahoma MSA 1,083,346 $19,366 149 Billings, Montana MSA 129,352 $19,303 150 Muncie, Indiana MSA 118,769 $19,233 151 Spokane, Washington MSA 417,939 $19,233 152 Bangor, Maine MSA 90,864 $19,194 153 St. Cloud, Minnesota MSA 167,392 $19,170 154 Lafayette, Indiana MSA 182,821 $19,095 155 Tyler, Texas MSA 174,706 $19,072 156 Binghamton, New York MSA 252,320 $19,067 157 Pensacola, Florida MSA 412,153 $19,054 158 Tuscaloosa, Alabama MSA 164,875 $18,998 159 Rapid City, South Dakota MSA 88,565 $18,938 160 Casper, Wyoming MSA 66,533 $18,913 161 Montgomery, Alabama MSA 333,055 $18,910 162 Lynchburg, Virginia MSA 214,911 $18,887 163 Waterloo–Cedar Falls, Iowa MSA 128,012 $18,885 164 Eau Claire, Wisconsin MSA 148,337 $18,875 165 Baton Rouge, Louisiana MSA 602,894 $18,867 166 Jackson, Tennessee MSA 107,377 $18,863 167 Sherman–Denison, Texas MSA 110,595 $18,862 168 Lewiston–Auburn, Maine MSA 90,830 $18,848 169 Macon, Georgia MSA 322,549 $18,840 170 New Orleans, Louisiana MSA 1,337,726 $18,834 171 Augusta–Aiken, Georgia–South Carolina MSA 477,441 $18,744 172 Duluth–Superior, Minnesota–Wisconsin MSA 243,815 $18,743 173 Owensboro, Kentucky MSA 91,545 $18,739 174 Hickory–Morganton–Lenoir, North Carolina MSA 341,851 $18,723 175 Grand Junction, Colorado MSA 116,255 $18,715 176 Panama City, Florida MSA 148,217 $18,700 177 Dover, Delaware MSA 126,697 $18,662 178 Springfield, Missouri MSA 325,721 $18,611 179 Decatur, Alabama MSA 145,867 $18,577 180 Youngstown–Warren, Ohio MSA 594,746 $18,551 181 Bloomington, Indiana MSA 120,563 $18,534 182 San Antonio, Texas MSA 1,592,383 $18,518 183 Gainesville, Florida MSA 217,955 $18,465 184 Victoria, Texas MSA 84,088 $18,379 185 Fayetteville–Springdale–Rogers, Arkansas MSA 311,121 $18,348 186 Sioux City, Iowa–Nebraska MSA 124,130 $18,339 187 Athens, Georgia MSA 153,444 $18,303 188 Lakeland–Winter Haven, Florida MSA 483,924 $18,302 189 Mansfield, Ohio MSA 175,818 $18,284 190 Elmira, New York MSA 91,070 $18,264 191 Amarillo, Texas MSA 217,858 $18,247 192 Greenville, North Carolina MSA 133,798 $18,243 193 Scranton–Wilkes-Barre–Hazleton, Pennsylvania MSA 624,776 $18,229 194 Florence, Alabama MSA 142,950 $18,205 195 Lima, Ohio MSA 155,084 $18,137 196 Mobile, Alabama MSA 540,258 $18,126 197 St. Joseph, Missouri MSA 102,490 $18,123 198 Parkersburg–Marietta, West Virginia–Ohio MSA 151,237 $18,076 199 State College, Pennsylvania MSA 135,758 $18,020 200 Utica–Rome, New York MSA 299,896 $18,006 201 Erie, Pennsylvania MSA 280,843 $17,932 202 Biloxi–Gulfport–Pascagoula, Mississippi MSA 363,988 $17,899 203 Florence, South Carolina MSA 125,761 $17,876 204 Ocala, Florida MSA 258,916 $17,848 205 Missoula, Montana MSA 95,802 $17,808 206 Johnson City–Kingsport–Bristol, Tennessee–Virginia MSA 480,091 $17,800 207 Dothan, Alabama MSA 137,916 $17,780 208 Red |
for 2016. And if you’re going to leave your options on the table you’ve got to get around and see people.”
Widely viewed as the socially conservative candidate, Santorum nevertheless pushed back against Varney’s question about whether he would again focus on social issues. “Anybody that really travelled around with me saw that what I talked about was basic foundational values of this country,” he claimed. “And I really focused most of my campaign on Obamacare.”
In another sign he is gearing up for a run, Santorum offered a subtle swipe at Rand Paul’s Monica Lewinsky-inspired attack on Hillary Clinton.
“Having gone through that in the United States Senate, having sat in judgement of the president of impeachment, I’m perfectly willing to put that issue behind us and move onto things that are of deep concern to the American public,” he said. “And there’s a lot of things going on right now that we need to be concerned with right now, other than what happened 15 years ago.
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Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.Story highlights Coast Guard commandant warns Russia is militarizing the Arctic and accused Moscow of "saber-rattling"
Two senators also link the need for a new icebreaker ship to Russian commercial activity in the region
Washington (CNN) Faced with a growing Russian military presence in the Arctic, U.S. leaders are calling for a new billion-dollar icebreaker ship.
Sens. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, and Angus King, a Maine independent, and Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Paul Zukunft were among those calling for the advanced vessel at a recent event at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Zukunft warned that Russia was militarizing the Arctic and accused Moscow of "saber-rattling" by conducting unannounced military drills in the Arctic area involving thousands of troops.
Adm. Mark Ferguson, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Europe, expressed similar concerns about aggressive Russian activity in the Arctic, noting that Russian submarine activity was at its highest point in 20 years.
He went on to compare Russian maneuvers in the Arctic with Chinese moves in the East and South China Seas, saying "Russia is watching what China does in the East China Sea with the 'nine-dash line' and is working to define what the continental shelf looks like, to establish a claim and declare its sovereignty."
Read MoreAdvoCare V100 Texas Bowl: Texas A&M Aggies vs. Kansas State Wildcats
Date: Dec. 28, 9 p.m. ET on ESPN
Location: NRG Stadium | Houston
Kevin Sumlin and the Aggies continued their trend of struggling in November. Texas A&M lost three of its final four regular-season games after a 7-1 start. Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports
Texas A&M
Best moment: The Aggies’ 45-38 double-overtime win over then-No. 9 Tennessee was a wild one. Texas A&M led by 21 points in the third quarter and were within feet of icing the game in the final two minutes only to fumble near the goal line and open the door for a Vols’ comeback, but the Aggies got it done in the second overtime.
Pick the winner of all 41 bowl games this year in ESPN's Capital One Bowl Mania game and win $1,000,000! Play Now for Free!
Lowest moment: With its College Football Playoff fate in its hands, the then-No. 4 Aggies let it all slip away in a disastrous trip to Starkville, Mississippi, losing 35-28 to Mississippi State and virtually ending their playoff hopes. Trevor Knight was injured in the loss, and the defense gave up a season-worst 365 rushing yards, both of which sparked a November nosedive where A&M went 1-3 overall and 0-3 vs. SEC teams.
Key player: Myles Garrett is the Aggies’ best player, but Knight is the most important one. The difference in Texas A&M’s offense with him and without him is stark because Knight’s running ability adds a dimension to the offense that no other quarterback on the roster currently does. When Knight is at his best -- and to be fair, he was good, not great, this season -- the Aggies are hard to beat.
Motivation level: It might be a little higher than you think because this will be the last game for a lot of key Aggies: Knight, receiver Josh Reynolds, defensive end Daeshon Hall, safety Justin Evans and starting offensive tackles Avery Gennesy and Jermaine Eluemunor are all seniors, and Garrett is likely to enter the NFL draft and some others (perhaps receiver Ricky Seals-Jones) are likely to consider early entry. -- Sam Khan Jr.
Kansas State is led by head coach Bill Snyder, who recorded his 200th career win earlier this season. AP Photo/Charlie Riedel
Kansas State
Best moment: Though they didn’t play their best, the Wildcats defeated Kansas 34-19 on Nov. 26 to give coach Bill Snyder his 200th career win, before carrying him on their shoulders off the field. Snyder became the sixth coach to win 200 games at only one university.
Lowest moment: The Wildcats had an opportunity to get off to a terrific start in Big 12 play, taking a 16-3 lead at West Virginia into the fourth quarter. K-State, however, couldn’t hold on, and Matthew McCrane misfired on a 43-yard field goal attempt that would’ve given the Wildcats the lead again in the final two minutes.
Key player: Defensive end Jordan Willis emerged as a Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year contender after topping the conference in sacks. He moved into third place in school history and into the top 10 in Big 12 history in career sacks.
Motivation level: Snyder usually finds a way to have his team motivated. The Wildcats have also improved as the season has gone on, so ending a positive note should be a factor in the locker room. -- Jake TrotterIt’s the most wonderful time of the year and that means everything peppermint and chocolate! Last week I made my favorite Secret Ingredient Peppermint Chocolate Mousse and my craving for the combination has not let up since.
But don’t worry, I didn’t have to go long without it. I whipped up these No Bake Peppermint Mocha Brownies in no time. I added a rich, gooey fudge icing layer to make these even more ridiculously delicious. The icing is totally optional, but it definitely takes these brownies up a notch.
I typically use pecans as the base for these no bake brownies as I feel they break down easily and the oils release quickly so the brownies are much more moist than with other nuts. You could soak them or the dates for a bit as well for a smoother texture. I tried these also with half oats/oat flour and half pecans as well but I found that they were a bit more dry and so more dates were needed in the end. If you don’t want to use all nuts as the base, just add several more dates and that should help.
These brownies are ready in a matter of minutes and they will taste just like the happy holiday that is here. If you are tired of waiting in line for your favorite holiday coffee drink, these will satisfy the craving but without all of the sugar and artificial flavors!President Barack Obama (L) and Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney shake hands following the Denver Debate at the University of Denver's Ritchie Center on October 3, 2012 in Denver. UPI/Michael Reynolds/Pool | License Photo
WASHINGTON, Oct. 11 (UPI) -- Republican rival Mitt Romney picked up 3 points to lead U.S. President Obama 49 percent to 46 percent, a United Press International poll indicated Thursday.
Romney's lead, which was within the poll's 4.5 percentage-point margin of error, was based on a national survey taken by UPI-CVoter pollsters in the days following the first presidential debate.
It is the first time Romney has had the lead since the UPI poll began this election cycle.
While Romney's lead is 3 percentage points among likely voters, his net gain since the seven days immediately before the debate is 5 percentage points, UPI said. During a poll taken a Sept. 27-Oct 3, 48 percent of likely voters said they would vote for Obama and 46 percent said they would back Romney.
Obama's approval ratings after the debate dipped from before, results indicated. The week after the debate, 48 percent of registered voters said they approved of Obama's performance presidency, down from 49 percent the week before. Those who said they disapproved held at 47 percent.
Thirty-six percent of registered voters asked said they believe Republicans are better able to tackle the country's problems, including the economic crisis, unemployment, poverty, inflation, healthcare, immigration, education and the war on terror. That figure is up from the 35 percent who expressed confidence in the GOP before the debate.
Thirty-one percent of registered voters said the Democrats would do a better job, which is unchanged.
The latest results are based on nationwide interviews with 1,428 registered voters of which 1,110 said they were likely to vote in the election. The margin of error for the total sample is 3.5 percentage points and the margin of error for the likely voter sample is 4.5 percentage points.Beijing guys hitch-hike all the way to visit one’s girlfriend in Berlin
From xinhuanet:
Two Beijing guys spent 3 and a half months hitch-hiking over 16,000 km across 13 countries to see one of the guy’s girl friend in Berlin, Germany. Altogether they took 88 hitch rides, including tricycle, tractor and carriage. Their journey was dubbed “the most romantic hitch-hike in history” by netizens.
Liu Chang and Gu Yue are both born in 70s, they were first seen standing in the mist of Hou Hai thumbing for rides on June 8th last year. Carrying super heavy packs, they convinced the visa officers of 12 countries by the purpose of “backpacking travel”. Getting all visas done, they hit the road with cashes, credit cards, sleeping bags, laptop, camera and a few clothes.
The most difficult ride is actually in China from Beijing to Hebei, according to Liu Chang who recalled that they waited in vain for over an hour in Hou Hai, nobody would stop to take them. Finally they got help from one driver who took them to the entrance of the highway leading to Hebei, where they continued to wait despite the rain storm. They were asked to leave by some road maintenance workers, one of whom thoughtfully said: “not many cars go to Berlin from here.”
Hitch-hiking is far more difficult than they imagine. From Beijing to Berlin, these two swarthy, ragged Chinese guys with half long hair were turned down by 1000-some drivers. It happened a lot of times when they had to wait hours before getting a hitch, the longest one they waited for 2 days at road side.
“Countries like Uzbekistan, Kirghizstan don’t have the custom of hitch-hiking, and we don’t speak their language.” Said Gu Yue, who settled this by having someone written a few cards in Russian, saying “we need to hitch ride to Germany from China” “Could you give us a ride?” “Excuse us, we don’t have money for you but we’ve got cigarette and smiles” …
The more they hitch, the more they love it, according to Liu Chang, and meeting so many different people is the biggest reward: a Mr. Qiao, who is delivering goods from Hebei to Shanxi, decided to keep driving for 20 years in order to build houses for his two sons; a petrol truck driver in Xinjiang liked to take every hitch-hiker to kill the loneliness of the long journey; a financial officer who got fired in the financial crisis took them to Czech the day after he landed a new job; a easy-going CEO who drove a limo; a drunk driver in Georgia who played “Speed” live…
The funniest experience happened in northern Iraq, where they got on a tractor and rode for 2 or 3 km before the driver switched into a smoky village. They realized that the tractor was rushing all the way to help put out the fire, and they were brought there along. When the fire was under control the two become the scene, and treated with dinner at an Iraqi home.
Three and a half month later, they finally reached Berlin, where lived Gu Yue’s girl friend Ika (dubbed).
“I traveled in the direction of sunset for the last 3 months, because I know Berlin is where the sun sets, and that is where my Ika lives.” Said Gu Yue.
Ika, on the other hand said: “next time you want to see me, take the plane.”
Their journey was tagged “Most romantic hitch-hiking in history” “Best Valentine gift” by netizens. At the moment, Gu Yuan and Ika are on vacation in Thailand, celebrating their Spring Festival.
For more, watch the “Xing Zhe” program aired 22:30 in Travel Channel.
pictures from Netease:
Gu Yue in Turkey
On the tricycle in Aksu, Xinjing.
Pretty and kind-hearted driver.
It is common to wait for hours before get a ride, the longest one they wait for 2 days on road side.
On a truck that’s delivering Coca-cola In Uzbekistan.
The tractor that took them to the fire scene, and got them a dinner in an Iraq home.
Taking a gypsy carriage in Bulgaria
Finally they reached Berlin. Gu Yue and his girl friend Ika, who said “next time you want to see me, take the plane.”This article is from the archive of our partner.
Romneycare, that awkward reminder that Republicans tried to expand health care first, continues to haunt the party. On the same day that Massachusetts announced it was scrapping their busted Romneycare exchange, a new Harvard study shows that the mortality rate dropped in Massachusetts after Romney's version of Obamacare took effect in 2006.
The Annals of Internal Medicine study tracked deaths in the state from 2001 to 2010 and compared the rate to counties in New England with similar demographics. It found that the mortality rate dropped by 3 percent in the four years after the health care expansion, according to The New York Times. Nationwide, if the mortality rate dropped 3 percent, that would amount to 17,000 lives. Areas with poor and previously uninsured individuals benefited the most from health insurance and saw the sharpest decline in deaths.
In other words, Romneycare has made a very strong case that Obamacare will save lives. While this study doesn't definitively prove that access to health insurance improves health — it's possible there was some factor the study didn't account for — it's the most compelling argument yet. "It seems pretty clear that expanding insurance coverage will lead to gains in saving lives," Benjamin Sommers, the Harvard University School of Public Health assistant professor who led the study told Vox's Sarah Kliff. "What I don't think you can argue anymore is that health insurance doesn't matter."Cray, which has been seeking new points of entry for its supercomputing technology into the cloud enterprise arena, has struck a partnership with Microsoft and its enormous Azure customer base, a deal that Cray believes has the potential to unlock broader growth for the company. The pair announced on Oct. 23 they are offering dedicated Cray XC and CS-Storm supercomputers inside the Azure platform allowing customers to run their HPC and AI applications alongside their other cloud workloads.
It’s “cloud without compromise,” said Barry Bolding, Cray’s senior vice president and chief strategy officer. “We’ve seen a bifurcation in the marketplace. There are users who need the flexibility and elasticity of the cloud in order to meet some of their computational needs and data needs. They need those large repositories that the cloud can offer but there are a large class of users and applications for which you need a dedicated, tightly coupled architecture that doesn’t compromise on the architecture in order to get the best performance which gets you the best TCO for the application.”
Cray supercomputers integrate with elements in the Azure cloud offering that would be used to execute HPC workloads, elements such as Azure virtual machines, data lake storage, the Microsoft AI platform and Azure machine learning services, according to Microsoft, with the intent to promote rich workflows and collaboration. Customers can also employ CycleCloud for hybrid HPC management.
The arrangement broadens Cray’s market vistas by making supercomputing accessible to customers who don’t have their own datacenter and have been running HPC, AI, and advanced analytics workloads in the public cloud. Just as the cloud has been an on-ramp to HPC for many users that were too small or otherwise not in a position to own or manage an on-prem system, now there exists a generation of users who, over the past five to 10 years, came of age in the cloud and grew their requirements for scalable performance, such that public cloud is positioned as an on-ramp to dedicated supercomputing. This thesis is at the heart of the Microsoft-Cray partnership and the companies say it’s born out by their market studies.
“Utilization rates have been growing on the Azure side to the point where customers need a dedicated resource and with this partnership, [Microsoft] can point their customers to Cray and we can do this all within the Azure datacenter for them,” said Bolding.
While there is some interest in this offering from the public sector, most is coming from the private sector, where companies don’t necessarily have the floor space and expertise to operate supercomputers themselves. “Those are a lot of commercial customers. We’ve seen them in the geospatial arena, we’ve seen them in the automotive space, we’ve seen them in financial services, in the life sciences. These are all segments that have been having these discussions with Microsoft,” Bolding noted.
Cray has announced some other cloudy plays in the recent past, notably with Deloitte and the Markley Group. The company says those partnerships are driving revenue, but Microsoft with its enormous Azure customer base has the potential to unlock far broader growth for Cray.
“They have a set of services that complements us,” said Bolding. “They’ve been doing HPC they just haven’t necessarily been doing the type of HPC we do, the supercomputing. They are the public cloud provider that has the most experience building services around HPC, which is why we chose to work with them, so I am really optimistic that we’ll be able to drive a whole new level of growth over what some of our other engagements are doing.”
Azure’s investment in high-performance computing and “big compute” includes its 2012 rollout of InfiniBand-backed instances, its purchase of GreenButton in 2014, its commitment to offering high-end GPUs and its recent acquisition of Cycle Computing.
Cray says it’s a pretty easy push to start delivering to customers. Of course since these are build-to-order systems, the usual three-four month fulfillment cycles apply. It’s not on-demand, project-based or pay-by-the-sip cloud, not yet.
“We want to focus on the best engagement model for both of us and that’s where we want to start,” said Bolding. “We want to provide Cray systems without compromise of performance. To do that at scale, we don’t want to go the full virtualization route today because that does limit some of the scalability of the storage and the compute, so I think we will be working with Microsoft to determine how we could do multi-tenant type projects with them, but we want to start with this in order to get the focus and really make sure we are providing the best experience to the customers, day one.”
The Cray XC with the Aries interconnect and the CS-Storm are the first two systems that are being offered under this partnership, along with the accompanying Cray ClusterStor storage systems. Customers can also leverage the Cray Urika-XC analytics software suite. The Cray systems will be available for customer-specific provisioning in select Microsoft Azure datacenters. Cray will contract directly with customers to provide support and maintenance.On the first sitting day of the House of Commons since her defection, former Conservative MP Eve Adams kept a low profile. Anyone looking for a preview of how she would stack up in debate against Finance Minister Joe Oliver in the GTA riding of Eglinton-Lawrence will have to wait. But it will take more than a few bouts of sparring in question period to put Liberal minds to rest over the latest addition to Justin Trudeau’s caucus.
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau rolled out the red carpet for former Conservative MP Eve Adams's floor crossing. The move remains a mystery for most Liberals, writes Chantal H�bert. ( Justin Tang / THE CANADIAN PRESS file photo )
A week after the Liberal leader rolled out the red carpet for Adams’s floor crossing the episode remains a mystery wrapped in an enigma for most Liberals. On that score a weekend trip to Vancouver that featured a handful of conversations with veteran party insiders on the West Coast mostly confirmed that the move has baffled Liberals from coast to coast. Those insiders — like most observers — start from the premise that Trudeau’s team of advisers is a seasoned one. In their minds, such battle-hardened strategists would or should have expected both the editorial backlash and the internal discontent that attended the decision to bring Adams and — by the same token — former Stephen Harper confidant Dimitri Soudas on board.
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Few buy the line that Adams is so ideally placed to take on Oliver on the battlefield of the Conservative income-splitting measure as to be worth her weight in political gold. As flawed as the policy of allowing parents to split their income for tax purposes may be, it does not have the legs to move mountains of votes that a tax hike for instance would have. In the same breath, most of them dismiss the notion that Soudas has such invaluable insights on what makes a now-familiar prime minister tick on a debate podium — as suggested among others by former Conservative minister Stockwell Day — as to make signing up his fiancée an irresistible proposition. If anything, Adams’s inclusion on the Trudeau team has more to do with a dogged Liberal quest for deterrence on the field of dirty tricks than with making inroads in voting intentions. Conservative spin doctors have been quietly bragging about having collected dirt on Trudeau ever since he ran for the leadership.
Coming as it does from a take-no-prisoners rival camp, the threat has certainly been preying on the minds of Liberal strategists. Pre-emptively mitigating potential damage is a part of their job description that they have been taking to heart.
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The swift ousting last fall of two Liberal MPs from caucus over allegations of improprieties involving two female NPD MPs was partly based on the (wrong) assumption that if Trudeau did not act quickly Thomas Mulcair would crucify him for turning a blind eye to sexual harassment. Trudeau also defused a potential landmine when he admitted to taking tokes of marijuana around the family pool and — in the same breath — endorsed a Liberal resolution to legalize the practice. In a competitive election every campaign day that is spent putting down a fire instead of spreading the party’s message is a lost one. Allegations that would be laughed off the front pages for their flimsiness over a couple of news cycle in between elections take on a life of their own in the pressure-cooker atmosphere of a five-week campaign. The NDP got a taste of that at the tail end of the 2011 election when Sun News cited unnamed sources saying police found its leader Jack Layton naked in a Toronto massage parlour in 1996. His campaign was forced to go in damage-control mode at a time when it should have been building on its momentum. The Conservative war room may not have any dirt worth dishing out on Trudeau next fall. If he is privy to embarrassing secrets, Soudas may draw a line at sharing every detail of the inside knowledge acquired over years spent at the prime minister’s side with the Liberals. But the fact that Trudeau has brought under his tent — at some political cost to himself and his party — a backroom operator he would have been expected not to touch with a ten-foot pole speaks to the potential for the upcoming election war to go nuclear. -30-
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ALEX GOLDMAN: From Gimlet, this is Reply All. I'm Alex Goldman.
PJ VOGT: And I'm PJ Vogt.
ALEX: This week we have a story that is not by me and PJ but by fantastic Reply All producer Phia Benin who is in the studio sitting right next to me. Phia.
PHIA: Ok. I'm telling you about my friend, right?
ALEX: Right.
PHIA: So I was hanging out with this friend of mine and she told me that I really had no idea how difficult it is to get breast milk if you want it and how expensive it can be. She had recently had a baby, and she needed some breast milk. And she ended up--she lives in Brooklyn--she ended up going to Harlem, driving up to Harlem to get breast milk. And when she got there, this stranger handed her some breast milk and she handed the woman a bottle of champagne. And it seemed absolutely nuts, that that’s the --
PJ: That’s the exchange rate? Like, something that comes out of your body for free and like the most expensive stereotypical liquor?
PHIA: Yeah, it also seemed like, "How could that be the store? The store is going to a stranger’s house for breast milk?”
PJ: Right.
PHIA: But yeah, she said that’s how difficult it is. And I was telling my mom about this, I was telling my mom how hard it is to get breast milk, and she said to me that is crazy because she had enough breast milk that there were times she ended up having to pour it down the sink and if she had known that there were other moms who just needed her milk...
PJ: She would have gotten so much champagne.
PHIA: She would have gotten so much champagne, and she would have like wanted to given it to them. She would’ve...
PJ: Right.
PHIA. If, if there was an easy way for her to do that, she would have done it. So you have a person who has too much of something and a person who wants that something--there should be a market that’s connecting those two people. So all I wanted to know is why doesn’t that exist, why don’t we have that?
PJ: Is it like a one sentence answer and we can just get out of here?
PHIA: No, it’s so hard to figure out. I’ve been talking to so many people about breast milk and and the first person I want to introduce you to is this woman named Diane Weigley. She lives in Dalmatia Pennsylvania. It’s this tiny little town in the middle of the state.
PHIA in Pennsylvania: Oh look at you two. Hi, Diane, it’s so good to meet you.
DIANE WEIGLEY: Good to meet you.
PHIA: Hi, James. Good morning.
PHIA: So Diane has a 1 year old baby...
PJ and ALEX: Uh huh.
PHIA:...named James and he’s very cute and he has big blue eyes.
PHIA in Pennsylvania:...so good. You’re just taking it all in.
DIANE: Yeah.
PHIA: You’re quiet.
DIANE: He is right now.
PHIA: James was born January 2015. He was 11 weeks premature, so at first they put him in the intensive care unit, and Diane immediately went to work trying to breastfeed him. But she wasn’t producing enough milk and at first that didn’t seem like a huge deal.
DIANE: When I didn't get to do that I thought, "Well, he can, he can grow up on formula. He'll be ok. I grew up on formula. But never thought that that kind of source of food would betray me in the end I guess?
PHIA: Diane and her husband would feed James and he would just wail cry. He developed rashes and he was wheezing after they fed him and he would projectile vomit after they fed him.
ALEX: Oh.
PHIA: Even at night they were having to stay up with him and keep him in his carseat so that he would be like slightly vertical so he wouldn't choke on his own vomit.
PJ: Oh.
PHIA: And each formula she tried, like, it would either be the same or worse.
DIANE: It was just making things like a living nightmare. Nothing, nothing seemed to be working out. And we loved our son and you know, he's ours and we'll always take care of him but we thought that we were kind of... that we were insufficient for him.
PHIA: And after 3 or 4 months of this, a friend of hers who was breastfeeding her own baby says, “Why don’t you try giving James some of my milk?” Diane gives it to James, and just like that, he’s calm.It was like a miracle drug.
So now Diane knows what she needs to keep her baby healthy. Breast milk. But the problem is her friend has to cut her off--she needs that milk for her own baby. And so Diane calls a milk bank. She can buy milk there, but it will be $4 an ounce, which is way too much money. It would amount to, like, $600 a week.
So the next thing Dianne tries, she goes into work, goes up to co-workers and says, “I know you recently had a baby. This is what’s going on in my own family. Do you have any extra milk you could give me.”
PJ: Which is really uncomfortable.
PHIA: Which is super uncomfortable.
ALEX: Yeah, that’s a tough conversation to have.
PHIA: And then they all said, "Sorry I'm not pumping anymore. I don't have any extra.“ No luck.
PJ: God.
PHIA: Then, she does the thing that I think either of you would do which is she starts to look online.
PJ: Oh. Right, right.
ALEX: That is the thing either of us would do.
PJ: Cuz. Yeah, basically I would just go to craigslist.
PHIA: She doesn’t do that actually because craigslist prohibits the sale or even the donation of breast milk. But there are Facebook groups where women exchange breast milk. They have names like Eats on Feets and Human Milk for human babies--and moms are posting, like, "I have extra milk, do you want it?" And other moms are posting saying "I need milk, can I have it?"
PJ: And it's just like an exchange? Like do they charge each other?
PHIA: You're not supposed to pay. It's just giving it to each other. So Diane starts writing these women--these total strangers. She’s asking if they have extra milk
PHIA in Pennsylvania: You’re gonna turn left here.
PHIA: But to get that milk means driving all over Pennsylvania. Which is what Diane has been doing for the last 9 months.
PHIA in Pennsylvania: We're 6 minutes.
PHIA: She’s been to Harrisburg, Elizabethtown, York, Wilmington. The day I was there, she was headed up to State College about two hours away...
DIANE: Is it this stoplight?
PHIA:...to meet a woman at a Taco Bell.
PHIA in Pennsylvania:...still going.
PHIA: James was sleeping in the backseat.
PHIA: So we get to Taco Bell. We’re super late,
WOMAN: Nice to meet you.
DIANE: Thank you so much for your patience.
WOMAN: You're welcome.
PHIA: The woman Diane’s meeting is in her late-20s, looks business professional.
PHIA in Pennsylvania: I'm Phia.
PHIA: She’s wearing a green wool coat.
PHIA in Pennsylvania: Nice to meet you.
WOMAN: Do you have a cooler?
DIANE: I do in my car.
WOMAN: That's good. How’s your son doing?
PHIA: The woman hands Diane 3 or 4 bags of milk. The whole thing is nice and pleasant and polite and a little bit like a first date.
DIANE: Is there a later date that I could maybe meet with you again?
WOMAN: Sure. So, Jake's 4 months now. Still, I'm still figuring out all... my supply seems good and all is well at daycare.
PHIA: Even if this Mom decides to meet up with Diane, again, decides to give her more of her milk. Diane has a bigger issue. Which is, Is this milk safe?
Every mom she meets, she has to decide, based on her gut, does she trust this milk?
DIANE: Am I always worry that there's a chance that my son is getting cross-contaminate with, you know, like blood borne pathogens? Yes. I am. But it's that or he doesn't eat. It's very tough and I will be forever heartbroken if I know that I've given my son something that he can't come back from. Not that I believe any of the mom's that have give milk have AIDS or hepatitis. That's a real, a real struggle. But I have no choice.
PHIA: Diane’s meeting up with these women from the Facebook group thing for a while, and then one random week last summer there’s just no more milk available. And Diane’s supply has gotten really low. She’s down to, like, one grocery store brown paper bag of milk.
DIANE: I probably had a day and a half's worth of milk leftover.
PHIA: Which means, in a day and half, Diane can’t feed her baby.
DIANE: I searched in Missouri because I had family in Missouri. I searched in Tennessee because I had family in Tennessee and perhaps they could pick that milk up for me. And it just seemed like every post that happened, within 20 minutes somebody had already claimed the milk.
PJ: Wow! It's like... there's something very modern about the fact that she's using the internet, but like, it's so weird that there's...anything else it would be like Amazon. Like, like it's so weird that she has to, like, enlist her family and look in these specific states. Like it feels...there's something olden-times about it.
PHIA: Yeah.
PJ: You know what I mean?
PHIA: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like, you can get Amazon to ship anything within, like, today.
PJ: Yeah, and you're not like, "Do you know anybody in your hometown that has, like, cloth for diapers and like, if so, like on Sunday, like, grab it and come in a caravan," like it's just very... it's so far away from modern or convenient. It's so nuts.
PHIA: Yeah. Yeah.
PJ: So what did she do?
PHIA: She goes to a site that’s more like the Wild West of breast milk. It’s called Only the Breast. It’s a lot more like eBay or craigslist. It’s a place where you pay for the milk.
PJ: And what does it look like? Like, does it look like-- an you actually, can we see it?
PHIA: Yeah. I in fact have username and password. Here’s Only the Breast.
ALEX: Pretty nice.
PHIA: Like, there's an area for selling, there's an area for buying. You can list how old your baby is. There's a section for like if you want milk from a vegan mom.
ALEX: Oh wow.
P: If you want...
PJ: "Willing to sell to men" is its own category?
P: Yeah. So this is the other thing about this site. There are lots of families that don’t the the person in the family who produces breast milk, like, there’s families with two gay dads or a single dad. There’s families with surrogates or people who have adopted.
ALEX: Right.
PHIA: And then there are also people looking for milk not for babies.
PJ: Like?
PHIA: There's a few different categories. There's some people who are bodybuilders who...
PJ: No. No.
PHIA:...want it.
PJ: No.
ALEX: For what purpose, do they think that it grows muscle in a way that...
PJ: Haven’t you ever noticed that babies are the most muscular form of human?
PHIA: So, so yeah so they think it's gonna to increase their muscle mass. There are people with certain medical illnesses like irritable bowel syndrome and cancer. Or I talked to one guy in Wisconsin who has this disorder that has been, so far, totally incurable and he says breast milk is the one that’s been able to resolve it. It’s like his muscles contract and shake all the time and he says it totally calms his muscles. And then there are also just people with fetishes.
PJ: Like in a sex way?
PHIA: Yes, exactly. So anyway, Diane goes to the site. She asks for help. and she she there was like nothing for a day and then one woman wrote back and the woman said, “I’ll give it to you for free, but you need to pay for shipping. And she was based in, I think, North Carolina.
PJ: Uh huh.
PHIA: And, you know, Diane lives in Pennsylvania.
ALEX: So does she...
PJ: You have to like, it’s like overnight and frozen and...
PHIA: Right. Exactly. And then the milk didn’t come. And then the woman wrote again and said, “Oh, it was held 'cause you didn’t fill out some form right. You need to send $300 more dollars...”
PJ: Oh no.
PHIA: “...to get the milk released and then that money will be returned.” And in her desperation...
PJ: No.
PHIA: Diane and her husband decided to send that again.
ALEX: And it never came?
PHIA: And it never came.
PJ: God, what a low life.
PHIA: And so then you |
bid by Mulcair to recast the NDP’s image on economic issues. On the Senate, he shows no sign of letting up. His aim is obvious: bringing as much of the blame as possible down upon Harper’s own head. The core questions swirl around how much the Prime Minister knew about plans spearheaded by his former chief of staff, Nigel Wright, and other Tory insiders, to secretly pay back expenses dubiously claimed by Sen. Mike Duffy. It’s a complicated affair, but Mulcair insisted voters are not yet tiring of it. “As I travel across the country, Canadians have been coming up to me in all sorts of situations and saying, ‘Keep going. You’re asking the questions we’d like to ask. Keep holding their feet to the fire,’ ” he said.
Yet, if Canadians are so enthusiastic about Mulcair’s prosecutorial zeal on Senate spending, why don’t the polls show him reaping the benefits? Last September, Harris-Decima pegged NDP support at 24 per cent, the Conservatives at 29 per cent and the Liberals at 33 per cent. After a fall dominated by more Senate-spending revelations, and with Mulcair unrelenting on the matter, the polling firm last month found the NDP stagnant at 23 per cent, Conservatives slipping at 26 per cent, and the Liberal ascendant at 36 per cent. Harris-Decima chairman Allan Gregg says Mulcair’s best hope is that his intensity on the issue will allow him to bank valuable credibility with reporters and pundits. “Those performances have an indirect effect on public opinion through the filter of the media,” Gregg says. “The media looks at QP every day and thinks, ‘This guy is really, really competent.’ And that, in turn, changes how they cover him.”
Beyond the Senate story, Mulcair was talking up economic files—oil pipelines, pensions and taxes among them. Conservative strategists argue that, when the fixed date for the next election rolls around in the fall of 2015, Harper’s economic record will count for more than his handling of the spending foibles of a few senators. Mulcair’s challenge is to sell himself as moderate enough to ease the concerns of centrist voters, but still progressive enough to keep the NDP’s base energized. A key test will be the Canada-European trade agreement, slated to be finalized sometime in 2014. Mulcair is cautiously holding back on taking a position for or against the deal until the full text is finally released. Supporting it would risk alienating core NDP supporters, including many union leaders. But opposing it would tend to confirm doubts among uncommitted voters about the NDP’s understanding of what drives economic growth.
He is more decisive on the controversial question of oil pipeline projects—a core element in Harper’s vision for Canada as an “energy superpower.” He opposes the Northern Gateway proposal for a pipeline linking Alberta’s oil sands to a new Pacific port, calling the prospect of supertankers plying B.C.’s rugged Douglas Channel a “non-starter.” On Keystone XL, Mulcair argues against the proposed pipeline to siphon Canadian crude to refineries in the southern U.S., in favour of instead upgrading that oil in Canada. Tellingly, he singles out Trudeau’s support for Keystone—more than Harper’s—for missing the chance to create jobs in Canada. The pipeline proposal Mulcair does support is the so-called West-East project, which would see more Alberta oil refined in Quebec and New Brunswick.
Energy politics matter a lot in Harper’s Ottawa, but tax issues likely resonate with more voters. Conservatives are eager to portray Mulcair as a dangerous tax-hiker. That’s how the government portrays the NDP’s policy in favour of expanding the Canada Pension Plan—both the paycheque deductions that fund CPP and the benefits paid to retired Canadians. It’s a concept backed by most premiers, some financial experts and the Canadian Labour Congress. But, in a year-end interview with Global News, Harper dismissed any proposal to “raise CPP taxes” to solve the retirement-income woes of Canadians who have “affluent lifestyles but just don’t save.” Mulcair cited studies showing that millions of Canadians face a serious decline in their standard of living in retirement unless something is done. “Once again, we see the Conservatives taking a very bleak, short-term view—we can’t afford this, we can’t do that,” he said. “Frankly, it’s shameful, it’s shocking.”
While Mulcair’s CPP position finds support that crosses party lines, his enthusiasm for a federal corporate tax hike is more clearly a left-wing policy preference. The average combined federal-provincial corporate tax rate is now about 26 per cent, well below the comparable U.S. rate of about 40 per cent. The Conservatives accuse Mulcair of plotting to eliminate the entire difference, warning that an NDP government would impose a “50 per cent tax hike on job creators.” Mulcair denied that, saying the NDP would narrow the gap, but still leave the Canadian rate lower, although he wouldn’t say by how much. “The combined rate in Canada can be brought closer to the American rate without any ill effects to business or to the economy in Canada,” he said. “The only people not paying their fair share are corporations. They’ve been given a massive tax cut under the Conservatives.”
That’s a message bound to sell well with the committed NDP base. But pollster Gregg questions how well it will resonate with other Canadians, who tend to accept the idea that companies create jobs and shouldn’t be overburdened. “The context has shifted over the last 15 years,” he says. “There’s an orthodoxy today around tent-pole Conservative positions. Small government is better than big government. Trade is better than protectionism. The private sector is better than the public sector at creating jobs.” That leaves the NDP and Liberals facing the same task, Gregg concludes, of “defining a new progressivism that acknowledges those orthodoxies but establishes itself as different.”
But the Liberals’ reconnection with voters has come thanks to Trudeau’s personal appeal, not any fresh policy he’s staked out. David McGrane, a University of Saskatchewan professor of political studies, who is working on a book about the NDP, says only in Quebec does Mulcair’s solid background in provincial politics translate into a clear edge over Trudeau in the polls. In the rest of the country, Mulcair’s image as competent seems to be trumped by Trudeau’s as likeable. “If you had to choose between competency and likeability, choose likeability,” McGrane says. “That’s what gets you places. Layton broke through because people liked and trusted him, not because they viewed him as extremely competent.”
Still, Mulcair is too formidable a politician to be counted out, with all of 2014 and most of 2015 stretching out before the next election. McGrane points to Liberal Premier Christy Clark’s upset win in last year’s B.C. provincial election, and Conservative Premier Alison Redford’s come-from-behind victory in Alberta the year before, as reminders of voter volatility and the decisive importance of election strategy. “The NDP can be heartened, in the sense that things can swing quickly,” he says. Gregg agrees, noting that more voters than ever feel no loyalty to any party and remain wide open to campaign-trail persuasion. In previous eras, going into an election several points behind other parties in the polls was usually insurmountable. “Today,” Gregg says, “that means nothing, nothing.”
To give the NDP a chance of reaping the benefits of voter volatility, though, Mulcair needs to stay competitive. In 2013, he looked as if he found a way, on the Senate file at least, to battle Harper. Trudeau is another matter. Mulcair’s assessment of the Liberals combines partisan loathing and professional respect. “Liberals are willing to say anything to get elected and then, once they’re in office, do just the opposite. That’s their history,” he said, adding, “I’ll give them credit for one thing: They are extremely able at decoding what they think people want to hear.” And with that phrase, Mulcair might have, no doubt unintentionally, touched on his own challenge. Last year, he found his voice in question period. This year, he needs to find a message Canadians will hear beyond the House.Downtown Abey Feb 14, 2002
Salutations, Pfiffer! Because you decided to ask for help with your homework like an illiterate community college student, you are now the next victim of the Moderator Challenge!
You have 72 hours to complete one of the following:
1) Phiffer more like Michelle Pfeiffer
For this challenge, you will need to illustrate, sculpt, compose or write an Epic Love Song for Michelle Pfeiffer. Before you go about writing some lovely haiku or limerick about banging the teacher of Dangerous Minds, let's go over the definition of epic:
Epic: very imposing or impressive; surpassing the ordinary (especially in size or scale); "an epic voyage"; "of heroic proportions"; "heroic sculpture".
So, for this challenge you may
Write an Epic Love Poem
Draw an elaborate web comic
Paint an impressive portrait
Compose & Sing a beautiful love song
If your entry sucks, you will be banned or probated. If your entry is awesome, you might even be rewarded. You only get one entry, so make it count.
2) ROWSDOWER!
For this challenge, you are required to dress up and post a picture of your best ROWSDOWER! impersonation. I understand it has absolutely nothing to do with the thread, but I am Mad With Power and I'd like to see some Rowsdower imitations.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRTbW98v8ys - A Brief History of Rowsdower
Do not gently caress this one up - if you don't have a mullet, a mustache, a Canadian Tuxedo and look comfortable in a pile of random garbage, then don't bother posting or else you will be banned. Bonus points if you manage to show off the tattoo, alcoholism and other Last Sacrifice cult members in the shot.
3) The Internet Wants To Know About Your Dick For Science
For this challenge, you are going to have sex with an Erlenmeyer Flask, and then post a Lab Report of how effective it was for pleasuring yourself, and document the experiment with photographs & a write up.
Now let's be absolutely clear: no one here wants to see your junk in an Erlenmeyer Flask. The experiment must remain work-safe at all times, so as not to compromise the validity of your field work. Again - you have to manage to gently caress A Flask but keep it professional and PG-13. You also must keep exact measurements (metric only), and follow the following steps:
Observation
Hypothesis
Experiment (with a control group and a experimental group)
Results
Conclusion
Failure to do so will be in a ban. I sincerely doubt anyone will do this challenge, but I am morbidly curious if GBS will actually commit to such an atrocious act.
Phiffer: If you do not successfully complete a challenge, you will be banned. If you do a half-assed attempt at this challenge, you will be banned. However, if you successfully complete the challenge, you may give any poster in this thread after this post your choice of an avatar.
However, you will be competing with GBS! If anyone else successfully completes a challenge before you do, they may decide your fate! However, if another Goon does a lovely entry, it will backfire and they will be punished!
Normal GBS rules apply, especially the ones about threadshitting, trolling, attention whoring and being creepy. Good luck!
EDIT BY HOODROW TRILLSON:
abraham: if a goon actually fucks a flask for this challenge ill eat my hat
You heard him, folks-- in an IM with me, he said he'd eat his hat if a goon hosed a flask. Get going, people. Abe has just been COUNTERCHALLENGED.Okay, perhaps I defoliate too much. Maybe or maybe not. I can admit it before an audience. And, of course, there are those bonsai professionals out there who say, quite reasonably, that to cut off all a trees leaves might not be the best thing, horticulturally speaking. It seems, from a common sense view, a reasonable position to take. I mean, even an astrophysicist can deduce that a tree without leaves isn’t functioning very well, you know, photosynthesis and junk. But I have observed the results of well timed defoliation on healthy trees and can attest that it works (obviously we are doing this on broadleaf trees, not conifers like a juniper…). And it doesn’t bother me when I’m denigrated by these professionals because my trees show results, and other bonsai artists work gives credence to the defoliation technique. But recently I got a message from a Reddit user from Australia who was in a heated debate on one of the Australian forums about a specific technique of partial defoliation for elongation and thickening of a branch. I didn’t have the sciencey words to help him out so, in my “asking why” way, I decided to visit the scholarly articles facet of Google and get those answers (interesting place, the realm of “Scholarly Articles” it’s like the “dark web” where, if you find yourself in it, it’s probably best to back yourself out slowly, because if you stay, you might learn something that you didn’t want to know, like, say, all things are chemicals, even dirt…or we live in a heliocentric planetary system, and your worldview will change)
This post will be a talk about hormones (not the teen spirit kind, but the plant phytohormone kind). And, with my Google University diploma in hand, load up on guns, bring your friends, we begin. (See what I did there?)
As usual, my homilies contain trees I’m working at the time, so…….
I’m massaging some podocarpus today (the massage is the message). This is my second year on them. There are three, to be precise. But I only have two with before pics.
Yup, podocarpus macrophylla. Which means toe-fruit big-leaves.
So you’ll have to wait until the end to see tree number three. Don’t worry, I’ll mesmerize you so with my English language mastery and with staggering use of scientific jargon that you’ll forget my lackluster photography for this post. And it’s lacking, trust me.
Here’s the after pic of the second tree: You can read all about its history Here. It’s come a long way but I’m still not liking it much. That’s all the photos on this tree. A before and after. Time to get fancy with the science speak. Let’s turn our jaded gazes to this podo:
Everything you wanted to know about it (and podocarpus) is contained in the blogpost herein. It’s progressed quite a bit from when I first got it from my friend Reggie. In case you didn’t know, there are several podocarpus leaf sizes out there. This one is a big leaf variety. These two pics are from the blog post up there hyperlinked with the word “herein” you should read it. I’ll wait. I’m going to perform two defoliation techniques on this tree to get smaller leaves. The first is to cut the leaves mostly off and to nip the growing tip. Which is what I did totally to the 2nd tree. I’m pushing for ramification on it.
The second technique is to increase length and girth (send me $19.99 and I’ll send you these wonder pills to do just that!)…….this involves defoliation but leaving the growing tip intact.
I know that both techniques work. I didn’t know why. I was a shame to my name because I never asked “why”. Well, let’s name names now, shall we?
There are five main plant hormones, they are: auxin, cytokinin, gibberelins, abscisic acid, and ethylene gas. There are others and there are actually several different variants of each hormone (except ethylene). But I’ll only be talking about the ones that matter. Or the ones that help my argument, I am as susceptible to confirmation bias as the next guy, or gal. Or whatever he/she/they pronoun you prefer.
Auxin-everyone knows this one, right? It’s the hormone responsible for apical dominance and phototropism. It’s synthesized in the growing tips and travels downward (using energy, I should add). It activates the process of differentiation of vascular tissues. It also, in conjunction with cytokinin, is responsible for wound healing.
A quick aside, when we are talking plant hormones, we are talking minute amounts. In example, if we use two different auxins mixed together, and spray a forest or jungle in massive amounts, we don’t get a monster super tall tree jungle, we call that mixture Agent Orange and we get a wasteland. It’s actually toxic to plants in high concentrations (and birds and mammal and soldiers, women and children) even though it’s made by plants. Next!
Cytokinins– they come from the root tip and travel upward the same way water does, using no energy. They promote cell division. But they need auxins to work in tandem with. More on that when I present my grand thesis.
Gibberelins– they are like a cross between auxin and cytokinin. They promote cell division and cell elongation. Usually stem growth between nodes. They are in leaves and bud tips.
Abscisic Acid-technically, all the hormones are acids, so I’m not sure why they add acid to this one. Maybe it’s the alliteration. Scientists surely sling stupid sing-songy and sometimes salacious soliloquys sometimes. It forms in the bud tips but it’s job is to inhibit cell growth, say, when it’s time for a tree to go dormant. It also works in conjunction with ethylene to close stomata when a tree is dry or to abort leaves under stress conditions. It also stimulates root growth when water is scarce.
Ethylene Gas- if you know about tomatoes and green bananas, then you know about ethylene. It’s what’s responsible for fruit ripening. But, in our case, vegetatively, it stunts growth. It’s created when trees’ leaves are damaged someway, either through mechanical trauma, bugs, disease. More on that later too.
Before I go further I need to add a picture for those who are just skimming the words. My notes for today’s post:
See, I studied.
A few pics of the tree:
This one is all authoritative looking and stuff with my hand posed holding the scissor. That pic was before I cut off all the leaves. That’s the one branch that’s younger than all the rest. It’s an important branch needed to fill in that area on the and mature fast. The way I accomplish it is to defoliate everything but the terminal buds. It works; here’s how: By not pruning the terminal bud, it keeps the auxin intact, pushing length, I am not touching the roots, so the supply of cytokinin is stable, which keeps the ratio to auxin in an ideal stasis and encourages cell division and, therefore, girth. The damage (pruning) releases ethylene gas, which, with the presence of auxin, suppresses side growth. The lack of gibberellins (which are in the leaves, now defoliated) keeps the internodes shorter. Ethylene decreases gibberellins too. I learned the technique from Jim Smith, and it’s been confirmed by generations of tree farmers trying to get taller, thicker trees as fast as they can.
Now, to my regular defoliation technique. On a healthy tree, at the right time (all depending on species) I will defoliate and cut the terminal buds. What does this do? It increases ramification, it decreases internode length, it makes leaves smaller. How? Why?
Here we go, either on to the greatest explanation in the history of bonsai or the most facile, ignorant defense ever presented, of my technique. Here’s a very poorly illustrated diagram of our green hormone factory.
Here’s what happens when one defoliates, and tip prunes, without a repot.
First, the growing tip is gone, so the action of auxin is stopped, no more branch elongation, but, since we have roots still producing cytokinins, they do their job and push cellular division. Backbudding, so to speak. The effects of ethylene (stunting new growth) is also lessened with the lack of auxin. Gibberellins, which cause elongation of stems (the spaces between internodes) are also lessened because of the defoliation, therefore you get shorter internodes, what we want on the branches.
Abscisic acid, which is created and causes dormancy in leaf buds, have been lessened from the defoliation, and that action is halted. But that abscisic acid in the roots is untouched. As well as the cytokinins, which are also synthesized in the roots. They can now do their job in pushing cell division and backbudding, since auxin isn’t blocking its action.
The ethylene gas slows the growth, and you get smaller leaves.
For those Internet goobers who put the tl;dr (which means, too long; didn’t read): defoliation causes back budding, shorter internodes, smaller leaves.
Here is where I put some caveats: the tree should be healthy, the tree will try its best to do what the hormones are telling it to do, but if it is unhealthy or lacks the energy, it will grow (or not grow) itself to death.
Defoliation should be done at the right time, and the frequency matters. For example: a deciduous tree should be done mid summer, after the spring leaves have hardened off. Usually only once a summer unless you do it early summer and then late summer, but only if your growing season is long enough and the winter dormancy is great enough.
A broadleaf evergreen should be done in early spring after a repot (wait, a repot?! Don’t worry, I’ll get to that in a bit) and mid summer, then, depending on your climate, early fall (I can get away with it, but maybe not you. Winter begins in mid January for me and lasts through late February).
With tropicals, I might get four defoliations a year. You all in the frozen north, maybe only two or three. Come to la Florida, the livin’s easy.
I mentioned repottting with broadleaf evergreens on the first defoliation session. By cutting the roots at that time, we slow the synthesis of cytokinins, which slows the cellular division, but also it reduces the effects of ethylene and therefore the action of abscisic acid (which is created in both roots and leaf buds). Basically, you are keeping the hormones balanced. This mitigates stress to the tree and let’s it grow normally after the repot.
Here’s tree number one after the work on it. You can see the lonely, thin spot on the top right. That’s where I’ve cut mostly all the tips except on that branch.
And tree number three after the work on it: Told you I’d show it. I just did the normal pruning for ramification.
It’s a little hard to see what I did on those podocarpus so here’s a ficus to make it easier to see. It’s a tree that belongs to my niece. Earlier in the spring we trunk chopped it and repotted it. As you see it now, it is after branch selection and partial defoliation. I left all the growing tips but I need to slow the growth on some branches. Some wire and branch shortening. If you notice, I bent the tips up. This helps the auxin know which way is up.
This branch is getting thicker than the others so a snip will put it back in its place.
A few more things about hormones. They are influenced by temperature and light. Auxin is responsible for phototropism, a plant growing towards the light (or away from the dark. The plant scientists aren’t quite sure the how or why yet, mainly because the amounts or hormones in a plant are so low it’s hard to study. Most of what they know is from studying mutant plants that may lack the capability to make a certain hormone and adding it to the plant. A good example is a dwarf plant that lacks gibberellins, and by spraying them on one, it will grow normally). Low or high temps slow the action of hormones as well. Drought conditions also influence hormones, especially abscisic acid.
Speaking of dwarf plants, this is a ficus macrocarpa “melon seed”. Not much to look at yet, needs a wiring job and another year or so. It has short internodes, dense backbudding, and doesn’t like to thicken branches or the trunk. It was grown by Erik Wigert and when I got it it was in a 3 gallon pot and was about 8 feet tall. I chopped it and put it in this pot about a year ago or so. Maybe two. It backbuds like a ficus salicaria and it’s been a struggle to keep the fungus off it and keep it green. It’s almost always yellow. I’m curious to learn if the plant is a mutant or if it was selectively bred over successive generations for its dwarf properties.
Look for a post on the above tree explaining branch placement, for different effects, soon.
So, after reading all those words (and you read them all, right?) what did we learn with all this science? Well, if you’re a reader of the blog you knew what those techniques were, but now you know the what and why of the hormonal battle going on Behind The Green Door (heeheehee) of our trees’ leaves and branches. The terms and phrases are really superficial to the causes and effects for most people who do bonsai, though it helps when you are writing a blog or giving a demo to amaze and confuse the audience with technical jargon. This is what you should take away: Defoliation, with and without growing tip pruning, has definite and measurable effects upon the plants we work with. Care must be taken as to the timing, the frequency and the health of the plant. It is a valid technique in bonsai training that works, predictably, if the above cautions are taken into consideration.
Phew, that was some deep shit there, am I right? Speaking of which, maybe I should do a fertilizer post soon……
If you liked this post or any of the other close to 400 of my other ones, please hit the like button. Comment, share it far and wide, I’m aiming for world domination. If you haven’t yet, go check out the YouTube channel, Adamaskwhy for more of my wackiness, and consider becoming a patron of my work at Patreon.com/adamaskwhy
I’ll be making two appearances next week, one, November 5th, in Cocoa Beach, for the Brevard Bonsai’s annual Multi Club Auction (Bonsaisocietyofbrevard.com) wandering around like a fool. And in Ft Myers, as a headliner at the Bonsai Society of Southwest Florida’s Annual show, Sunday November 6th (Show Schedule). See you all there!
Thanks!Back in June, down on Lafayette Street, Lin-Manuel Miranda stands on the lip of a stage, bent at the waist, rapping hard, spitting, sweating, pigtails flying, bouncing three rhymes in two couplets off the word “ceviche.” On a rare night out while Hamilton: An American Musical moves uptown, he’s—¿Cómo se dice?—freestyling.
Freestyle Love Supreme is the comedy/improv rap troupe he’s been part of for years. Hamilton’s George Washington, Christopher Jackson, has been too, and tonight they’re taking audience suggestions and turning them into laughs. It’s a downtown porkpie crowd heavy on the mustache wax, seersucker and loggers’ boots.
Joe’s Pub is a small cabaret across the lobby from the theater where Hamilton began. This close to Miranda, a young 35, you can watch the mind at work, hear it, feel the wheels turn, see the poet and performer up close. His gift radiates, creates a kind of heat. The quickness of his invention is remarkable, but more remarkable is the completeness of it. The sense of a finished line in the instant he’s made it. That’s the poet. The performer dares you not to love him, dares you not to be charmed, a terrible strategy for almost anyone but him. Instead he’s magnetic. In fact, his is the rarest gift of actors or singers or comics anywhere: Not only do you like him immediately, you want him to like you back. Stranger yet: He’s a better writer than he is a performer. Slender and big-eyed and tired in jeans and beautiful shoes. His energy fills the room. His T-shirt reads, “Mr. Write.” And as is often the case in Hamilton, no matter who else is center stage, he’s the one you look at.
After the show Miranda plays the room for a few minutes, shaking hands, table-hopping, cracking wise with friends. He sits with his mom and his sister as the place empties. But there’s another seating after this one, another performance he’s not part of, so they shoo him toward the door. On his way, a young man reaches out a hand. “I just wanted to thank you,” he says. That’s it. That’s all.
Miranda pauses, looks, shakes the hand. “You’re welcome,” he says like he means it and walks on.
Do I run or fire my gun?
Or let it be?
There is no beat
No melody
Burr, my first friend, my enemy,
Maybe the last face I ever see
If I throw away my shot
Is this how you’ll remember me?
What if this bullet is my legacy?
**********
The show was a hit before it ever opened.
It was the hottest ticket on Broadway before it even got to Broadway, so by the time the motorcade roared up Eighth Avenue—a block-long line of lacquer-black SUVs and limousines behind a flying wedge of motorcycle cops and siren noise—the advance ticket sales were climbing fast toward $30 million.
At the corner of 46th Street, the limousine slowed and turned and the familiar silhouette of the president of the United States leaned forward in his seat and waved to the crowds at the sidewalk barricades. In the high July heat tourists on their way to Times Square squinted and waved back and raised a small, confused cheer.
“I guess he’s here to see a show.”
“Which?”
A patrolman pointed up the block.
“Hamilton,” he said.
The limousine stopped in front of the Richard Rodgers Theatre, ringed with Secret Service agents and blastproof trucks filled with sand, and our first black president stepped inside to see our first president, black. Asked later about the show, Barack Obama said, “It is phenomenal.” It was a moment of perfect American history for those lucky enough to share it, of sharp historical clarity in our summer of Hamilton, the runaway multiracial hit.
The origin story has already hardened into legend. Lin-Manuel Miranda, precocious Tony-winning playwright and composer, lyricist and actor, takes a well-deserved vacation from his hit musical In the Heights. This is 2008. He is not yet 30 years old. Looking for a beach book, he buys Ron Chernow’s immense 2004 biography of Alexander Hamilton. In a white hammock under a blue sky beneath a hot yellow sun he reads the defining work of popular scholarship about our most mysterious founding father, and long before he’s 50 pages into it he’s wondering to himself who might have already made this extraordinary story into a play. Into a musical. He searches. Finds nothing. No one.
Alexander Hamilton A New York Times Bestseller, and the inspiration for the hit Broadway musical Hamilton! Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Chernow presents a landmark biography of Alexander Hamilton, the Founding Father who galvanized, inspired, scandalized and shaped the newborn nation. Buy
He takes up his keyboard and his laptop and a few months later he’s rapping what will become the show’s opening number at the White House. The YouTube video goes viral.
The next we hear of him it’s January 2015 and he’s opening a finished musical at the Public Theatre downtown with a cast as young and brash as Miranda—or Hamilton—himself.
**********
On the morning of July 11, 1804, at the foot of the bluffs in Weehawken, New Jersey, Alexander Hamilton was fatally wounded in a duel by Vice President Aaron Burr. They fought over an insult. Of the founders, Hamilton burned brightest and briefest, dead before he was 50 years old. By then he had been a war hero and aide to George Washington, authored most of the Federalist Papers and the nation’s first political sex scandal, founded the Coast Guard and the New York Post, devised and implemented a national banking system, imagined a U.S. Mint, eased America out of postwar bankruptcy and served as our first Secretary of the Treasury. He feuded with the most powerful politicians of his time, and suffers for it two centuries later. He opposed slavery. He imagined the United States as a manufacturing powerhouse and world financial leader, as a great nation of great cities with a strong, pro-business central government. Alexander Hamilton, immigrant, is the architect of the America we stand in today and the biggest star on Broadway.
You know the boilerplate biography, even if you don’t know you know it. The illegitimate son of a Scots merchant and a woman separated from her husband, Alexander Hamilton was born on the island of Nevis in the Caribbean in 1755 or 1757. His father abandoned him, his mother died, and at the age of 11 he found a job as a clerk at a trading company on St. Croix. So taken were his employers and neighbors with the boy’s intelligence and potential, they paid to send him to study in America. At 16 he enters King’s College, now Columbia, and takes up revolutionary politics. By 20 he’s a lieutenant colonel, friend to the Marquis de Lafayette, frenemy to Aaron Burr, and George Washington’s right-hand man in the fight against the British. He weds Elizabeth Schuyler, marrying into one of New York’s most distinguished families. The war won, he practices law and fights for a strong central government over the objections of men like Thomas Jefferson. To swing the debate after the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Hamilton writes at least 51 of the 85 Federalist Papers, and overwhelms the remaining naysayers and objectors with his public oratory. When Washington appoints him first Secretary of the Treasury, he is 32 years old. By his mid-30s, he is one of New York’s great men, famous everywhere in the new nation. But his limitless ambition is undone in 1797 by the lurid scandal of his affair with Maria Reynolds. Adrift in history, he loses his eldest son, Philip, to a duel in 1801. Three years later, for redress of a minor insult and under the same indifferent sky, Alexander Hamilton is mortally wounded in a duel with Aaron Burr.
Almost directly across the Hudson River from 46th Street and the Richard Rodgers Theatre are the Weehawken dueling grounds.
How does a bastard, orphan,
son of a whore
And a Scotsman, dropped in
the middle of a forgotten spot
In the Caribbean by Providence, impoverished, in squalor,
grow up to be a hero and a scholar?
**********
Long before he ever sang those words at the White House, Lin-Manuel Miranda sang them in Ron Chernow’s living room. Chernow is a Brooklyn kid who lives in Brooklyn still, but has in the meantime won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He is one of America’s great biographers, in a very small class with the likes of Robert Caro and Edmund Morris and David McCullough. He is 66 years old.
His books on J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller and George Washington are definitive. It took him five years to research and write his biography of Hamilton, and in doing so, Chernow rescued him from a period of recent relative obscurity and cynical misappropriation. Modern politicians find ways to blame Hamilton for the rise of Wall Street and the failure of Jefferson’s model America, a nation of picturesque villages and doughty yeoman farmers.
There’s even the question of whether or when Hamilton will come off the $10 bill. While everyone agrees it’s time for an American woman on our paper money, very few think the father of our paper money is the guy to replace. Better bloody, bloody Andrew Jackson, who killed a lot of folks—and sold many fewer tickets on Broadway.
It’s taken Miranda six years to write his own Hamilton, with Chernow checking accuracy at every draft and in every song. They’ve become close in that time, but if you want to make a person uncomfortable, ask them if someone they know is a genius.
“I’m not sure if Lin’s a genius. Hamilton was a genius,” Chernow says. “But Lin’s made a masterpiece.” (On September 28, Lin-Manuel Miranda was awarded a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant.)
I am not throwing away my shot
I am not throwing away my shot
Hey yo, I’m just like my country
I’m young, scrappy and hungry
And I’m not throwing away my shot.
**********
And if that sounds very much like the promise of a young playwright to himself, a goad to ambition and purpose, it should. There’s as much Hamilton in Miranda as there is Miranda in Hamilton.
He’s the son of high-achieving parents from Puerto Rico, his mother a clinical psychologist and his father a political consultant. He grew up on the uppermost tip of Manhattan, near Broadway. Thirteen miles and 28 stops south on the A Train, Alexander Hamilton is buried on the same street, in the Trinity Church graveyard.
Miranda was raised in two languages and two cultures. And he grew up in a house full of music, including Broadway cast albums. So his musical influences range from Gilbert and Sullivan to Rodgers and Hammerstein, to Kander to Sondheim to Biggie and Tupac. The whole American prayer wheel from the Beach Boys to Springsteen to Willie Colón and Eddie Palmieri and Tito Puente. His influences are everything that floats through the culture. Everything. He absorbs it all—the |
atory lap! If you’re unable to make the event in person, the next best thing is to get the NBA Championship Parade stream from home. Find out how below.
Watch the NBA Championship Parade Live Stream via DIRECTV NOW
DIRECTV NOW is a streaming service that lets you watch live TV without cable. It offers over 60 channels in the basic package alone, and costs only $35 per month. No contract is required, either! And, obviously, you can watch Warriors Parade online using this service.
For local fans living in the Bay Area, DIRECTV NOW offers CSN Bay Area, the regional sports network that will cover the parade. For everyone else, ESPN and NBA TV are included, which will cover the parade as it unfolds. Plans start from $35 per month, with regional channels being offered in the $50 plan and up.
You can use DIRECTV NOW on nearly any device, including streaming players, smartphones, tablets, computers and more. Check out our DIRECTV NOW review to learn more.
You can also start a free 7-day trial to watch Warriors Parade online free!
Watch Warriors Parade Online via Sling TV
Sling TV is another great method you can use to stream the Warriors Parade this week. The service, priced from just $20 per month, offers a very affordable way to watch live TV. No contract is required, and the service works on most streaming devices, mobile devices and more.
Like DIRECTV NOW, Sling TV offers ESPN and NBA TV nationwide, which will cover the event. For the full NBA Championship Parade live stream, local fans will also get CSN Bay Area. For more info, check our Sling TV review.
If you’re a recent cord-cutter in need of a device, keep in mind that Sling offers great deals on devices for new customers.
There’s also a free 7-day trial to test out!
Watch Warriors Championship Parade Online via PlayStation Vue
PlayStation Vue is another viable option for NBA Championship Parade streaming. It offers much the same options as the services we’ve already discussed, with CSN Bay Area offered to locals, and ESPN/NBA TV offered nationwide. Plans start from $30 per month, with no contract.
If you’re interested in learning more, we recommend checking out our PS Vue review. Or, test it out for yourself with a FREE 5-day trial!
Stream Warriors Championship Parade via fuboTV
fuboTV is a streaming service that’s similar to the ones we’ve already discussed, but it’s more focused on sports. It offers around 60 channels to subscribers for $35 per month (with no contract). CSN Bay Area is offered for local fans, and NBA TV is available nationwide. ESPN is not included, unfortunately.
fuboTV works on most devices, and offers a great selection of channels for sports fans. Check our fuboTV review to learn more.
You can get the NBA Championship Parade live stream free thanks to the FREE 7-day trial of fuboTV!
What Channel is the NBA Championship Parade On?
If you’d like to stream the NBA Championship Parade this Thursday, you may be wondering what channel is set to cover the action. For local fans, the parade will be covered on CSN Bay Area, which you can watch via the above services. If you don’t live in the area, both ESPN and NBA TV should cover some of the parade, but won’t stream the full event. The action kicks off at 1:00 p.m. ET/10:00 a.m. PST.
With officials expecting between 1.5 and 2 million people to flood the streets of Oakland for the parade, it’s bound to be a crazy day. Don’t miss it!I first became a conservative by listening to Rush Limbaugh as a teenager, a habit I picked up from my mother. Those were exciting times, and I remember Limbaugh, the fiery outsider, supporting renegade Republican Pat Buchanan and his presidential challenge to incumbent George H.W. Bush in 1992.
Four years later, I supported Buchanan’s 1996 presidential campaign, which Rush would have no part of, and as the years went by I would continue to support conservatives who challenged the status quo — while my one-time radio hero seemed to become more comfortable with it. For the next decade I spent my time looking for the next Buchanan, while Rush would reflexively defend George W. Bush and constantly praise Donald Rumsfeld. He even broke his no-interviews rule for an hour-long interview with Karl Rove.
In 2007, I found my new Buchanan: Ron Paul. After the GOP presidential debate in Iowa last week, Limbaugh said the following about Paul on his program: “I’m sorry, but this Ron Paul is going to destroy this party … this is nuts on parade …” Limbaugh criticized Paul’s foreign policy and particularly the Texas congressman’s hands-off position towards Iran. But Limbaugh did not criticize the positions taken by the other candidates — many of whom strongly implied that war with Iran would be necessary to prevent its regime from promoting terrorism or producing weapons of mass destruction.
Launching full-scale wars with Middle Eastern nations to fight terrorism or to find weapons of mass destruction? Haven’t we been there before? It was the Iraq War and the foreign policy of George W. Bush that destroyed the Republican Party. Why did Barack Obama try to fashion himself as the “peace candidate” in 2008? Because he knew the war was unpopular with the American people. Now that Obama’s wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya are just as unpopular, why would it destroy the Republican Party to oppose them?
Bush’s foreign policy not only destroyed the Republican Party, it all but obliterated conservatism. Why did Republicans go along with Bush’s big-government agenda, which nearly doubled the size of government and the debt? Because at the time foreign policy was the only thing Republicans cared about: “Bush kept us safe,” we were told. When critics asked why Bush spent so much money, even self-described conservatives would say, “Well, we were fighting two wars.”
Now that “Obama keeps us safe” by fighting three wars, Republican presidential candidates from Rick Perry to Rick Santorum want a fourth war with Iran.
Who, exactly, are the “nuts on parade” again?
The Seattle Times’s Bruce Ramsey explains what Republican sanity might look like:
“I don’t like the idea of Iran having a nuclear weapon any more than I like the idea of Pakistan having one. But Pakistan does have one. India has one. China has one. Russia has one. Israel has one. If Iran has one, maybe it won’t feel so threatened, and it will have a good effect on its government’s behavior. Maybe not. Anyway, if the leaders of Iran want a nuclear weapon the president of the United States is not in a position to guarantee they won’t get one, short of starting a war … Santorum is saying he’ll start a war with Iran.”
Ramsey then notes the soberness of Paul’s position:
“Paul begins by allowing that Iran has militants, but says lots of countries have militants, and the Iranian ones are not much different. Then he says: PAUL: ‘Iran does not have an air force that can come here. They can’t even make enough gasoline for themselves…’ People like Santorum, he said, are ‘building up the case just like we did with Iraq. Build up the war propaganda! There was no al Qaida in Iraq. And they had nuclear weapons, and we had to go in! I’m sure you supported that war as well. It’s time we quit this. It’s trillions of dollars we’re spending on these wars.’”
Like Pat Buchanan, Paul was one of the few conservatives who opposed the Iraq War, saying Saddam Hussein didn’t threaten the U.S., had nothing to do with 9/11 and the evidence for weapons of mass destruction was shoddy at best. Most conservatives called both Buchanan and Paul crazy. Those “conservatives” were quickly proved dead wrong.
Buchanan and Paul now make similar predictions about the supposed threat posed by Iran, and the same Republicans — from Limbaugh to Santorum — are still calling them crazy. Based on what? Certainly not history, experience or facts.
As the Tea Party continues to prove, any genuine move toward substantive limited government necessarily requires a major and even unconventional reassessment of government policy. When Paul notes that “it’s trillions of dollars we’re spending on these wars,” any true fiscal hawk worth his salt would at least give pause to consider whether these expensive wars are really worth it. Cost-benefit analyses are inherently conservative. Blind and reckless wastefulness is not.
But like Democrats’ attitude toward welfare, too many Republicans refuse to be the least bit reflective about foreign policy — even though their reflexive zeal to support any war despite the cost is exactly what enabled the GOP to become the party of big government throughout the last decade.
Limbaugh says listening to Ron Paul will destroy the GOP. But Rush Limbaugh and George W. Bush already did that. If conservatism is to survive, Rush needs to start listening to Ron — and so does the rest of the Republican Party.
Jack Hunter writes at the “Paulitical Ticker,” where he is the official Ron Paul 2012 campaign blogger.Donald Trump delivers an April 27 speech in Washington, D.C. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
So Donald Trump has been running around television saying that the judge overseeing a lawsuit against Trump University, Gonzalo Curiel, is biased against Trump because “he’s a Mexican.” Curiel is a Mexican American from Indiana whose father came to the United States years before Trump’s mother did, so what Trump is doing is being a racist, and everyone, including many of his endorsees, are telling him to back off.
That resoundingly uniform reaction—OK, maybe this line of attack should be dropped?—is apparently one with which his communications people agree. As Bloomberg reports, a Trump aide had circulated talking points to campaign surrogates that instructed them to dodge this issue. “The best possible response is ‘the case will be tried in the courtroom in front of a jury—not in the media,’ ” the memo read.
But Donald Trump disagrees with this memo, now that he knows it exists. He learned of the memo on a conference call with surrogates including former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. According to Bloomberg, he told everyone on the call to “take that order and throw it the hell out.”
Told the memo was sent by Erica Freeman, a staffer who circulates information to surrogates, Trump said he didn’t know her. He openly questioned how the campaign could defend itself if supporters weren’t allowed to talk.
“Are there any other stupid letters that were sent to you folks?” Trump said. “That’s one of the reasons I want to have this call, because you guys are getting sometimes stupid information from people that aren’t so smart.”
So what should these surrogates instead say about the case? “The people asking the questions—those are the racists,” Trump proffered. “I would go at ‘em.”
Saying that people who call out racism are the Real Racists is not a … strong … retort for those defending a person committing hourly acts of racism, but it’s also a roughly mainstream conservative retort in such situations.
Read more Slate coverage of the 2016 campaign.Around the world, a lot of people rely on their mobile devices as their only point of access to the internet and don't have a WiFi connection or router at home. For many of those people, using a Chromecast would have been impossible if it weren't for one small logical workaround: creating a hotspot with their phone that the Chromecast can connect to. Unfortunately, that workaround is no longer, uhm, working right now and it sounds like the latest Google Play Services is to blame.
If you were relying on your phone's hotspot to take your Chromecast online, you may have noticed that ever since Play Services 11.0.55 rolled out, you can't cast from your phone to the Chromecast anymore. The issue was reported on the Chromecast Help Forum and hasn't received any reply from a Google employee or forum moderator yet. However, it does seem that hotspots were never officially supported by Chromecast since they may not count as "secure wireless networks" so Google can easily say, "well, we never said it'll work." But it did work until a few days ago and going back to an older version of Play Services (all of which you can find on APK Mirror) does bring the option back.
So technically speaking, this was possible before. It's just that now, it no longer is, and those affected are understandably up in arms. They'll need to get another router and another internet plan to create a connection so they can cast from their phones, which isn't the least bit ideal. Or they'll have to go through several steps (described in the Help Forum thread) to keep Play Services on an older version, which won't be without its repercussions.
All in all, if you were using your Chromecast over your phone's hotspot connection, you're probably screwed. We'll let you know if an official answer is provided by Google or if the feature comes back in a future Play Services update.Copyright by WTEN - All rights reserved
TROY, N.Y. (NEWS10) - A South Troy man is asking for the public's help in identifying a bikini bandit that's stolen more than a dozen swimsuits from the family backyard.
Hidden security cameras captured the mystery thief in the act Tuesday morning. The video shows a man sneak up to a clothesline and grab items off of it.
The homeowner's son Jeff Belschwinder is a police and fire scene photographer, who posted a video on his Sidewinder Facebook Page, in the hopes that the public can help police identify the thief.
"This is very disturbing in what's going on here in my own backyard," Belschwinder said. "There's kids in that neighborhood. If this person needs help he really needs to be caught and given the help he needs. We are asking the public for that assistance."
Belschwinder says the bikini burglaries happen at a duplex he shares with his parents and sister. The swimsuits hang on the clothesline next to their hottub and keep disappearing.
"Only the women's suits, my mom and my sisters."
A total of 17 swimsuits have been swiped since May.
Troy Police say they are following up on leads in the video. If arrested, the man faces petit larceny and trespassing charges.Author’s Note: There’s a lot of information to cover here in one article. There are tremendous amounts of cross-references and sources. Some of these items you are undoubtedly familiar with; the report’s objective is to compile important details, dates, statements, and actions to present an overall view. This is to provide you with a “compendium” of actions taken and information gathered to refer to this real and imminent threat of a North Korean (or other nation’s) capabilities to strike the U.S. with an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) weapon.
For many years, now, the U.S. has been initiating actions with nations through its aggressive policies and military buildups and creating a “Second Cold War.” This is not the topic of this article. The U.S. military is spread thin: the number of forces on active duty have been reduced significantly, and our defenses are showing deeply-disturbing signs of wear, neglect, and loss of readiness. This too is a topic of discussion for another article, but some pertinent facts on U.S. reductions will be mentioned later in the article.
I wish to present the caveat that I have been mentioning in other articles:
The next world war will be initiated by an EMP weapon detonated over the continental United States, followed by a limited nuclear exchange and conventional warfare.
North Korea is going to be either the key player or the key “puppet” used by one of the other nations, and one of those nations may very well be the United States, a false flag operation surreptitiously commenced by the Obama administration. Obama may either provoke North Korea into starting it, or carry it out with an American missile and blame it on them. North Korea does have the ability to strike the U.S. with an EMP weapon. This excerpt was taken from a press briefing at the Pentagon:
“I believe they [the North Koreans] have the capability to have miniaturized the [nuclear] device at this point, and they have the technology to potentially, actually deliver what they say they have.” (General Curtis Scaparrotti, U.S. Military Commander, S. Korea, 10/24/2014)
The North Koreans tested an engine for an ICBM (Inter Continental Ballistic Missile) in April of this year, and in May of 2015 they also tested an SLBM (Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile). This year, on March 23, 2016, they successfully tested another SLBM:
“After previous launch attempts by Pyongyang failed, this one seems to have gone much better, one U.S. official noted. “North Korea’s sub launch capability has gone from a joke to something very serious,” this official said. “The U.S. is watching this very closely.” Asked whether the test was successful, another U.S. official told CNN, “essentially yes.” (CNN, from Don Melvin, Jim Sciutto, and Wil Ripley)
There is an excellent, in-depth article by Stefan Stanford entitled The Problem from Hell: ‘Doomsday’ Passes Over America Several Times Almost Every Day – Experts Warn: There’s Nothing We Can Do to Stop It.
Here are some very important portions of that article (the entire article is a “must read”) to be able to understand the concepts of a North Korean EMP attack:
“Several times almost every day, many times every week, North Korean satellite KMS 3-2 passes over North America and the US. Capable of carrying a hydrogen bomb as detailed in the video below, we can see this satellite’s continuous passes over America in the screenshots seen in this story. Called by one expert ‘the problem from hell‘, we see this satellite often sneaking up on America from the south where we’re told we’re quite vulnerable as that is our ‘blind side’. Back in 2004, members of the Congressional EMP Commission met with two Russian generals, Russia’s top experts on EMP technology. The generals disclosed that Russia had a ‘decisive new nuclear weapon’, a ‘ Super EMP warhead’. The generals also disclosed that the design information for this weapon had ‘accidentally’ been ‘leaked’ to North Korea. Ballistic missile defenses (BMD) of the sort that we are half-heartedly pursuing are largely ineffective against an EMP caused by a simple nuclear weapon in a small satellite launched into low- Earth orbit. One reason for BMD’s lack of effectiveness is that our defensive systems face north and the Russians have admitted to us that they have not only developed, but have passed on to North Koreans, the approach towards launching satellites or missiles called a “fractional orbit bombardment system.” This is simply launching a satellite to the south into orbit instead of on an arcing ballistic trajectory over the North Pole, so the satellite’s first approach comes at the U.S. from the south, and would hit us with a surprise EMP attack from our blindside. The United States has no Ballistic Missile Early Warning Radars or missile interceptors facing south. Whether it is a ballistic missile targeted on the U.S. and designed to proceed immediately toward a target on land, or is the first orbit of a satellite carrying a weapon able to be detonated whenever the launcher wants, our defensive systems are not focused on such a southern-hemisphere bound launch.”
Keep in mind: Stefan Stanford wrote this in January of this year. The North Korean Kwangmyongsong-3, Unit 2 satellite was placed into orbit December 12, 2012, about 3 years before the article. Then less than one month after the article came out, the North Korean Kwangmyongsong-4 satellite was successfully launched into orbit February 7, 2016. Here is one more excerpt from that amazing article:
“…a Super-EMP weapon would have a low-yield, like the North Korean device, because it is not designed to create a big explosion, but to convert its energy into gamma rays, that generate the EMP effect. North Korean overt nuclear tests in 2009, 2013, and now in 2015 all had low yields, in the neighborhood of 3-10 kilotons.”
The North Koreans have been experimenting with low-yield nuclear tests and have had two more since the above article came out. Their fifth, and most recent test was conducted on Friday September 9, 2016 right after Obama left the G-20 summit held in China. Dr. Peter V. Pry, the chairman and foremost expert on the North Korean EMP threat has repeatedly warned the Congressional Commissions and the public that North Korea’s low yield nuclear tests fall within the requirements for a weapon to generate a Super-EMP. You can see Dr. Pry’s testimony as to how such an EMP can instantly render the U.S. “dark” and without power in this video.
Bottom line: there are two North Korean satellites in orbit that cross over the United States each day that may each be armed with a miniaturized Super-EMP weapon that can be detonated at will by North Korea.
In their own words, the North Koreans are telling us what they will do, as reported by their state news agency after the successful test of September 16, 2016, verified as being 20-30 kilotons by Western intelligence and giving off a shockwave of 5.3 on the Richter scale as measured by the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) with a seismograph:
“We successfully conducted a nuclear explosion test to determine the power of [the] nuclear warhead. We will continue to strengthen our nuclear capabilities to protect our sovereignty. We have now standardized and minimized nuclear warheads … We can now produce small nuclear warheads any time we desire.” North Korean State Television
I recently wrote an article entitled An EMP Attack and Nuclear War: Our Biggest Security Threat is Not from North Korea, Russia, or China. I stand by that title: the biggest threat is from the deliberate complacency and the deliberate weakening of our defenses by Obama and his administration that place the U.S. in a debilitated readiness stance if an attack should occur.
The reason for referring you to that article is so you can read how on September 7, two days prior to the North Korean nuclear test of September 9, a DoS (Denial of Service) attack crashed the website of the Project on Crowdsourced Satellite Imagery based in California. So what?
So, this project is the one responsible for continuously monitoring North Korea for nuclear tests and missile firings, and hackers shut down their computer systems, preventing satellite image transfer.
And if that doesn’t cause concern, maybe this fact will.
It wasn’t determined whether the hackers were North Korean, Russian, or Chinese, and on October 1, 2016, control of the Internet passed into the hands of ICANN, a multinational firm with the Russians and Chinese holding ownership interests in it.
Meanwhile as written in previous articles, our armed forces are forced to scrap parts for aircraft from junkyards and museums, as explained to Congress on MArch 22, 2016 and also reported here:
“…an F/A-18 based at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort that flew in the raid against Libya in 1986 needed a part. The part is no longer made and there were none on hand. Crew and pilots checked the F-18s on display at Beaufort to see if they might find a part. No luck. A lieutenant colonel visiting the USS Yorktown aircraft carrier about two hours away in Charleston, South Carolina. saw an F/A-18 of the same model, a HASC staff member told me today. They scrounged the part from what would appear to be the A D model on the carrier’s deck. (It’s the only F-18 at the Yorktown. They got the part, but sadly, it didn’t work.” Breakingdefense.com, article by Colin Clark, March 23, 2016, “Marines Scrounge Yorktown Museum F-18 for Spare Parts”
Here’s another chilling fact. Mac Slavo wrote a piece a few years back detailing the removal of TARS (Tethered Aerostat Radar System), which was basically a string of balloons with radar sensors that added about 10 to 15 minutes of time to U.S. missile defense early warning systems. Obama had them all removed and mothballed.
Bottom line: TARS ran along the Gulf of Mexico and was our first line of warning from any missile attack coming from the south…the very type of south-to-north launch or orbital pattern outlined earlier in the article that the North Koreans could use against us.
Here’s some more from Dr. Peter V. Pry that really clarifies the threat North Korea poses that I presented in an article for SHTF on February 2, 2016 entitled Super-EMP Missile Launch Window Approaches: ‘A Mortal Nuclear Threat to the United States’ Right Now:
“… North Korea is a mortal nuclear threat to the United States – right now. North Korea has already successfully tested and developed nuclear weapons. It has also already miniaturized nuclear weapons for ballistic missile delivery and has armed missiles with nuclear warheads. Any nuclear weapon detonated above an altitude of 30 kilometers will generate an electromagnetic pulse that will destroy electronics and could collapse the electric power grid and other critical infrastructures – communications, transportation, banking and finance, food and water – that sustain modern civilization and the lives of 300 million Americans. All could be destroyed by a single nuclear weapon making an EMP attack. A Super-EMP attack on the United States would cause much more and much deeper damage than a primitive nuclear weapon…North Korean nuclear tests look suspiciously like a Super-EMP weapon. A Super-EMP warhead would have a low yield, like the North Korean device, because it is not designed to create a big explosion, but to convert its energy into gamma rays, that generate the EMP effect. Reportedly South Korean military intelligence concluded, independent of the EMP Commission, that Russian scientists are in North Korea helping develop a Super-EMP warhead. In 2012, a military commentator for the People’s Republic of China stated that North Korea has Super-EMP nuclear warheads. A Super-EMP warhead would not weigh much, and could probably be delivered by North Korea’s ICBM. The missile does not have to be accurate, as the EMP field is so large that detonating anywhere over the United States would have catastrophic consequences. So, as of Dec. 12, North Korea’s successful orbit of a satellite demonstrates its ability to make an EMP attack against the United States – right now.” Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, December 19, 2012, Washington Times, “ PRY: North Korea EMP attack could destroy U.S. – now.”
On March 9, 2016, Kim Jong-Un of North Korea stated for the first time that North Korea had accomplished the miniaturization of nuclear warheads that are deliverable by ICBM. On March 10, 2016, Admiral William Gortney, Commander, U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM), briefed a Senate Committee regarding Un’s statement, and he said the following:
“It is prudent to assume Pyongyang has the ability to miniaturize a nuclear warhead and with an ICBM they can actually strike the continental U.S.”
It probably wouldn’t go that far. Current U.S. (Obama) doctrine with a nuclear strike is to respond, but with an EMP there would not be a nuclear response. This gives a “free ticket,” tying the U.S.’s hands by taking both the preemptive strike and the threat of a nuclear response in the event of an EMP off the table. Where are we in the meantime? After the G-20 summit this September, the U.S. imposed more sanctions on North Korea, after a “juvenile” display of flying two B-1-B nuclear bombers along the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) separating North and South Korea. The North Korean response was not entirely unpredictable:
“The group of Obama’s running around and talking about meaningless sanctions until today is highly laughable, when their ‘strategic patience’ policy is completely worn out and they are close to packing up to move out.” North Korean KCNA news agency citing a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman
These words clearly show that the half-measures taken by the Obama administration are viewed in utter contempt by North Korea. Kim Jong-Un has repeatedly threatened the U.S. and South Korea with nuclear war. He has the time: the sanctions are ineffectual and (in light of the continued threats and ongoing developments) show a weak stance. It is just a matter of time before North Korea carries out its threats, and it has the resources, technical acumen, time, and patience to perfect the EMP capabilities that military and civilian experts in many nations believe it already has. In stark antithesis to the Rolling Stones’ song, time is not on our side, and a combination of Obama’s complacency and treason may soon prove this to be true when the lights go out in the U.S. …for a long time.
Jeremiah Johnson is the Nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces (Airborne). Mr. Johnson is also a Gunsmith, a Certified Master Herbalist, a Montana Master Food Preserver, and a graduate of the U.S. Army’s SERE school (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape). He lives in a cabin in the mountains of Western Montana with his wife and three cats. You can follow Jeremiah’s regular writings at SHTFplan.com or contact him here.
This article may be republished or excerpted with proper attribution to the author and a link to www.SHTFplan.com.
Related:
Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear: Are You Ready For An Attack On U.S. Soil?
A Step-By-Step Guide To Prepare For Any Disaster
Predictive Programming: New “Designated Survivor” Series Foreshadows Continuity Of Government Emergency
Four Flash Points That Could Trigger World War III: “We Have Not Been This Close To Nuclear War In A Long Time”
The Next World War Will Be Initiated By A First Strike Utilizing An EMP Weapon
How an Attack on America Would Probably Begin: Possible Courses Of Action By Foreign Military PowersDRESS. FOR YOUR F**KING. SHAPE.
You can't copy the outfit of someone that is a COMPLETELY different shape than you and then whine that it doesn't look at nice. WELL NO FREAKING S**T. You need to take into consideration YOUR shape when you pick out clothes. What do you think will look nice on YOUR shape. I'm sure BOTH of them expected not to like how that bodysuit would look on them. You can't dress in something like a bodysuit that's meant to be worn on it's own -- Something that requires BOTH the figure AND the confidence to pull off -- And expect it NOT to bring attention to the parts of your body that you're insecure about. That's just pure idiocy. The skinny one -- Who's name I can't be arsed to go back and search for -- She'd be better off with a jumpsuit that flared out at the bottom. As flared pants are better suited for those that don't have much in the way of hips. Wear-alone bodysuits that have a skinny fit at the bottom are more ideal for women with a more curvy figure. And yeah -- They do show a lot... They're bodysuits. TF did you expect? If you have an issue with clothes that can be revealing, why TF would you choose a bodysuit? And THEN she kept going on about the color. FN clothes aren't a completely different color on the site than they are IRL. I even went on the site to find the jumpsuit. IT'S THE EXACT SAME COLOR AS IN THEIR PICTURES. Is she retarded? I mean that literally. Does she have a mental handicap? Because who TF gets clothes in a color they don't like and then goes on to complain about how they don't like the color? They HAVE to be doing this on purpose. And out of ALL the thigh-high boots they could have chosen off the site, they chose the ones that one would feel the most concern about whether it'd fit well or not. Not to mention you can see inside them, so you'd be able to see that they didn't fit well. This is why I feel like they were TRYING to pick things that wouldn't be as complimenting on them. Everyone with any level of common sense knows you can't dress two completely different shapes the same and expect them to both look very nice. Especially with clothes that conform to your figure.MONTREAL — This is a big loss for the Montreal Canadiens, no matter how you spin it.
Andrei Markov, who has spent 16 years with the franchise and is prominently featured among its leaders in games played (990), points by a defenceman (tied for second with Guy Lapointe at 572) and assists (ranked sixth with 453), will not be returning to Montreal. Instead he’ll be plying his trade with a KHL team next season, having made the decision to return to his native Russia where his career as a pro hockey player began in 1998.
"I guess now it’s time to move on," he said in a statement before answering questions during Thursday afternoon’s conference call. "It is sad for me to leave. This organization was a big part of my life and always will be, but I’m looking forward to the next opportunity."
Markov’s departure leaves a gaping hole on the left side of the Canadiens’ defence that can’t be filled by any of the remaining free agents on the market. It’s a hole that also can’t adequately be filled by lefties Mark Streit, David Schlemko or Karl Alzner, who were all recently acquired by the Canadiens.
You can reference the near $8.5 million in cap space the Canadiens have to play with as a positive for the team, or you can point to Markov’s age—he’s 38—as a reason for being satisfied general manager Marc Bergevin didn’t offer him a considerable portion of that space to remain for another year or two. But you can’t argue the team is better off losing him for nothing.
Markov was Montreal’s most effective puck-mover and its second-most efficient defender; a minute-munching power-play specialist who could turn the game with a blind breakaway pass from the corner of his own end or a perfect one-time setup for any of the team’s shooters at the opposing blue line. He scored six goals and 30 assists and finished plus-16 in 61 games this past season, averaging 21:50 in time on ice per game. He offered a level of play that was congruent with what he had shown throughout his tenure, giving every indication he could sustain it moving forward in spite of his age.
Even if some Canadiens believed offering him a two-year contract worth as much as $12 million was too big of a gamble to take; even if they believed offering him one year at $6 million was too risky, this can’t be the ending most were hoping for.
It’s certainly not the one any party of this negotiation was angling for.
It was in April, during the Canadiens’ locker cleanout day, that Markov had expressed his desire to retire with the only team he’s ever played for in the NHL. Bergevin had said on July 2 that he was still holding out hope he’d return on a deal that fit with what the club could afford.
"To make a deal, it always takes two people," said Markov. "I’m not going to go through the numbers, all the conversations, all that stuff. It is what it is right now."
On Thursday, Markov confirmed he was seeking a two-year contract for the financial security of his family, and he also admitted he’d have been willing to accept a one-year deal to remain with the Canadiens. But it’s clear now that he and Bergevin couldn’t find middle ground on a salary that would’ve satisfied him.
It’s a sad reality.
"Arguably one of the best defencemen in franchise history, Andrei was a model of dedication to the great game of hockey," read a statement from Canadiens owner Geoff Molson. "Andrei’s commitment to our franchise was second to none," Molson added.
Markov showed it in saying that, despite entertaining discussions with other clubs, he couldn’t see himself pulling on another NHL team’s jersey.
Instead he’s moving with Sonya Sonechka, whom he married on July 13, his twin boys and newborn daughter, and rejoining his 15-year-old son Danii in Russia. He’ll have a chance to win the Garagin Cup and likely be able to compete in the 2018 Winter Olympics.
"For the athletes, it’s a great experience; it’s a great feeling to represent your country in such a big tournament," said Markov. "It’s huge. It’s something special."
He listed winning a Stanley Cup with Montreal as another special something he had always wanted to achieve. It didn’t happen and doesn’t appear likely to in the future, regardless of his willingness to one day return to the Canadiens.
Now the focus shifts to how Bergevin will spend Montreal’s remaining cap space. He’s got holes to fill at centre, and Markov’s departure leaves the team in need of a defenceman (or two) that can transition the puck from defence to offence efficiently and contribute on the scoresheet.
It’s not an enviable position to be in for a team that’s aiming to improve on its first-round dismissal from the Stanley Cup Playoffs in 2017, but that’s the one the Canadiens find themselves in.Trump: Pipeline to Mexico will further boost exports, will go under wall 5:07 PM ET Thu, 29 June 2017 | 03:09
President Donald Trump on Thursday announced a number of energy initiatives, including a review of U.S. nuclear energy policy and efforts to make sure new coal plants are built overseas.
The announcements came during a speech on achieving American "energy dominance."
The position is similar to previous administrations' goals of achieving "energy independence," dating back to the 1970s. President Barack Obama paved the way for Trump by lifting a 40-year ban on exporting U.S. crude oil and by approving about two dozen liquefied natural gas export licenses.
On Thursday, Trump said his administration will attempt to expand the nuclear energy sector by launching a "complete review" of current policy to identify ways to revive the industry.LONDON — A 15-year-old boy has died after colliding with a bus in northwest London on Thursday.
See also: How to avoid buying a hoverboard that might explode
Metropolitan Police confirmed to Mashable on Friday that the teen, who has not yet been identified, was on a hoverboard at the time of the incident in Alperton |
to unionize without intimidation -- at all the industry’s top players at once.
It’s a strategy that’s drawn notice across the labor movement. While the key player in staffing, funding and directing the effort has been the Service Employees International Union, a July report on local pre-convention forums organized by the AFL-CIO (a union federation that doesn’t include SEIU) suggests that fast food strikes came up over and over. Daniel Gross, who helped found the Industrial Workers of the World’s decade-old Starbucks Workers Union (a union without recognition from Starbucks), told me the spread of strikes had vindicated his group’s view that “you don’t need to wait for recognition, workers are ready to fight,” but noted, “We didn’t know workers were willing to strike across the country – that’s a new learning.” The campaign has also sparked segments on "The Colbert Report" and full-page industry-backed ads warning of robot takeovers.
Indeed, the fast food effort can tout a rash of bad press for top corporations – especially McDonald's, which has made news both for workers’ strikes and for its advice they pray more often and budget zero dollars for heat. Organizers say the strategy has also shaken loose real gains at particular stores, from schedule fixes to $2 raises. Perhaps most significantly, organizers claim that tactics like a picket and occupation of a Wendy’s have largely succeeded at averting or reversing retaliatory firings of strikers (in contrast, over twenty workers fired by Wal-Mart after joining a June strike are still out of a job).
So where will it all go?
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University of California at Santa Barbara labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein last month told me he believes fast food and Wal-Mart strikes have proven “successful” in that they’re “having a big impact on public policy at the local level” -- echoing other academics who’ve argued the strikers’ ultimate impact will be through spurring policy change rather than securing collective bargaining. Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Raul Grijalva told Salon it had been “huge” and “very powerful” to see how fast food workers “risked everything” by striking, and that the $15 they demanded should be the federal minimum wage. Local SEIU president David Rolf and Seattle Council member-elect Kshama Sawant credited the strikers with helping lay the groundwork for the $15 minimum wage law that passed narrowly last month in the airport town of SeaTac. And someone present at an August gathering SEIU held with allies in Las Vegas told Salon that, along with a national deal with the top three burger corporations to facilitate unionization, strategies under serious consideration included a move to pass state and local laws mandating $15 fast food wages (asked about that account, SEIU characterized those discussions as preliminary and hypothetical).
But fast food workers and SEIU officials have repeatedly rejected suggestions that their ultimate focus is on passing new wage laws. “The minimum wage stuff is not really central to the campaign – I think more than anything, they are an effect of the campaign,” said Kendall Fells, an SEIU coordinator serving as organizing director for Fast Food Forward, the New York arm of the fast food effort (on-the-ground organizing efforts there have been backed by SEIU and largely spearheaded by the ACORN offshoot New York Communities for Change).
“The workers have decided that the way to win this campaign is to continue to grow,” Fells told Salon, “continue to strike, continue to get more community residents involved, more community leaders to the rabble, more press” on worker activism and management insults, all “exposing these companies for what they are.” Given the past year’s growth, he said, “It’ll be even bigger six months from now, and eventually the pressure will bring these organizations to the table.” He noted SEIU had “done this with janitors when people thought janitors would never have a union … We did this for hospital workers and nursing home workers … So we’ve seen this story before, and the way that you win is you stick to the script.”
Given the vicissitudes of labor law and the franchisee structure of the industry, any prospect of sustainable fast food unionization would require the effective -- presumably coerced -- consent of national corporations. Per recent labor history, could that mean a deal in which industry giants pave the way for franchisees to recognize unions and bargain collectively, and the union agrees in exchange to restrictions on how much labor costs could go up, or how many stores could be affected? When I asked SEIU president Mary Kay Henry and key SEIU strategist Scott Courtney that question in an August joint interview, Courtney answered “It could be something like that”; Henry said, “I think anything you know about traditional collective bargaining is possible, and then things we haven’t imagined.”
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Asked this week if he’d accept a compromise in which SEIU agreed to leave some workers out of unionization or pre-restrict what gains could come out of contract talks, Fells answered, “I mean, I think it’s hard to say, because it really comes down to what the workers decide.” He said a committee of worker delegates representing cities with pre-August strikes decides the course of the campaign. (In an interview with In These Times, a source identified as an activist Chicago cashier charged that the campaign’s decision-making process amounted to “going through the motions” to get workers to agree to staffers’ pre-determined plans.) Asked about the delegates’ decision-making process, Fells said, “There’s banging around, banging around, and then we’ll land at something that everyone feels comfortable with.”
Would an agreement from that group be a pre-condition for SEIU to make a deal with fast food corporations? “Yeah, I mean the workers are going to be involved on every level …” answered Fells. “Workers are involved in every decision that may happen on the fast food campaign nationally and locally.” Asked in August about Henry and Courtney’s comments, Rev. Martin Rafanan, the community director for St. Louis’ fast food effort, also emphasized the importance of democracy, telling Salon he was “for any tactic or strategy at this point which can move us forward … But from where I’m standing, I’m a community ally, so my goal is to stand with workers. I believe that workers should make decisions about how they’re going to organize their industry.”
So far there aren’t any signs that McDonald's, Burger King or Yum Brands is poised to come to SEIU or anyone else with a deal. What started as a strike of 200 in one city, and is expected to today turn out thousands in a hundred cities, may need to grow exponentially again before such a prospect is truly conceivable. “I know it’s not going to be, you know, next month or next year that our raise[s] go up,” Crystal Travis told me before going on strike. “But at least we’ll be heard. And it might make a lot more people next time go, ‘Well, I’m going next time,’ or ‘I need to find out about this,’ like I did.”
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If that does come to pass, and labor’s challenge to America’s fast food leviathans proves lasting and muscular enough that bosses seek a deal, what kind would be good enough to take? Last month (on a panel at Demos – video below), I told KFC worker-activist Naquashia LeGrand, one of the original fast food strikers, about my conversation with Henry and Courtney, and asked what level of compromise she’d be willing to accept. “Honestly,” she answered to applause, “compromise is not in my book. It’s more – it’s winning. I’m a winner, you know. So I would want to win our $15 and a union.”It always starts innocently enough: You thought you’d grow red peppers, a half a dozen green chiles, maybe a Fresno chile or two, and of course you wanted to try to grow chocolate habaneros — oh, and you love poblanos, so put a few of those in, too. They’ve grown and grown — and you’re staring at more than a peck or two of peppers. Now what? The standard preservation choices are freezing, dehydrating, or canning, but you could also freeze-dry them with the right equipment.
Let’s talk about canning. Some vegetables confound even the most seasoned canner, and peppers are one of them. Before discovering fermentation, I was that girl who canned everything. I really did try to roast and can green chiles to make our own homegrown Hatch-style chiles. Because peppers are a low-acid vegetable, they require 45 minutes in a pressure canner. They looked beautiful through the jar, but they disintegrated into mush when I went to make my first chiles rellenos. If you want to can your peppers, you must pickle them first. You have to submerge the peppers in vinegar (as the key to safe preservation is to acidify, the definition of pickling) and then water bath can them. And while they’re certainly delicious, one can only eat so many jars of canned peppers.
Benefits of Lacto-Fermentation
Enter another preservation option: Create the right environment for an entire team of microbes to do the work for you (without handling hot pots full of boiling water). With lacto-fermentation, you can acidify any combination of peppers, spices, herbs, and other vegetables to make a variety of chutneys, condiments, pickles, or hot sauces. The microbes acidify everything equally, which gives you flexibility to explore and create the flavor you desire. After the fermenting vegetables reach a pH level of 4.6 or below, they’re safe and stable for a long time. Shelf life depends on the vegetable, but pepper ferments can last unrefrigerated for a year or more in anaerobic conditions, as long as the ferment is sealed and not in active use. It’s best, however, to store ferments in a refrigerator. This slows down the bacteria, stabilizes the ferment, and keeps the flavors intact and delicious.
Lacto-fermentation has become a lot of things to a lot of people in the past few years, but at its core it’s a simple, inexpensive process that has been used reliably for thousands of years to preserve food. Here we are at the beginning of the 21st century, circling back to our roots. Now fermented foods are considered artisanal, using a combination of traditional methods and scientific knowledge to preserve food for its flavor, color, and nutritional value.
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Lactic acid fermentation of vegetables is simply the best way to preserve the fresh bounty from your garden — it not only retains nutrients but also increases nutrients (and their bioavailability) and produces amazing flavor. When you place chopped, diced, or shredded vegetables and a little salt in an anaerobic environment inside a vessel and give it a little time, the lactic acid bacteria already on the vegetables will go to work. They’ll consume the vegetable’s carbohydrates — starches and sugars — and convert them into acids, digestive enzymes, and carbon dioxide while producing nutrients, such as B vitamins, including folate and riboflavin. And I can’t neglect to mention the probiotics themselves, which do tend to get most of the attention with all the new research about the microbiome. How incredible, really, the process is — easy, safe, and effective at preserving vegetables in a healthy, tasty way.
Fermentation Tips
Equipment and weighting. For the recipes here, you’ll need very little equipment to get started. If you’ve never fermented before and aren’t sure you want to invest in any special equipment, rest assured, you can do this with just a jar and zip-close bag. You can use a plastic bag as a water-filled weight to keep vegetables submerged in the vinegary brine for both small and very large ferments. I know a few folks who use this same method for 55-gallon drums of kraut; they just use a much bigger, tougher bag. The important thing with this method is to leave space for the bag in the jar — fill the jar about 3⁄4 full of vegetables and brine and leave the top quarter of the jar empty for the bag.Before lining up at a retail store or firing up your computer for Black Friday bargains this week, ask yourself one question: Have you ever scored a great deal from the annual post-Thanksgiving shopping bonanza?
If you were hard-pressed to think of something, you would not be alone. Black Friday, which has traditionally been the moment to flock to stores for steep discounts, and which has evolved to also include major online sales events for retailers like Amazon, Best Buy and Walmart, is not all that it is billed to be. We asked J. D. Levite, the deals editor of the product recommendations website The Wirecutter, for some data on just how beneficial the deals are on Black Friday — and the answer was not encouraging.
Year round, Mr. Levite and his team track product prices across the web to unearth discounts on goods of all types, from gadgets to kitchenware. They also look at whether the product is high quality and durable based on their own testing and other reviews, and whether the seller or brand has a reasonable return or warranty policy. By those measures, Mr. Levite said, only about 0.6 percent, or 200 out of the approximately 34,000 deals online, which typically carry the same price tags inside retailers’ physical stores, will be good ones on Black Friday.Overview (3)
Mini Bio (1)
René Murat Auberjonois was born on June 1, 1940 in New York City. René was born into an already artistic family, which included his grandfather, a well-known Swiss painter, and his father Fernand, a writer. The Auberjonois family moved to Paris shortly after World War II, and it was there that René made an important career decision at the age of six. When his school put on a musical performance for the parents, little René was given the honor of conducting his classmates in a rendition of "Do You Know the Muffin Man?". When the performance was over, René took a bow, and, knowing that he was not the real conductor, imagined that he had been acting. He decided then and there that he wanted to be an actor. After leaving Paris, the Auberjonois family moved into an Artist's Colony in upstate New York.
At an early age, René was surrounded by musicians, composers and actors. Among his neighbors were Helen Hayes, Burgess Meredith and John Houseman, who would later become an important mentor. Houseman gave René his first theater job at the age of 16, as an apprentice at a theater in Stratford, Connecticut. René would later teach at Juilliard under Houseman. René attended Carnegie-Mellon University and studied theater completely, not only learning about acting but about the entire process of producing a play. After graduating from CMU, René acted with various theater companies, including San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater and Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum. In 1969, he won a role in his first Broadway musical, "Coco" (with Katharine Hepburn), for which he won a Tony Award.
Since then, René has acted in a variety of theater productions, films and television presentations, including a rather famous stint as Clayton Endicott III on the comedy series Benson (1979), not to mention seven years on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993) as Odo. René has also done dramatic readings of a variety of books on tape. René's most recent projects have included The Patriot (2000), starring Mel Gibson, and Sally Hemings: An American Scandal (2000). In the fall of 2000, he also appeared on NBC's Frasier (1993) and ABC's The Practice (1997).
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Carolyn R. Fulton crfulton@renefiles.com
Spouse (1)
Judith Helen Mahalyi (19 October 1963 - present) ( 2 children)
Trivia (30)
Won Broadway's 1970 Tony Award as Best Supporting or Featured Actor (Musical) for "Coco". He was also nominated as Best Supporting or Featured Actor (Dramatic) in 1974 for "The Good Doctor", and as Best Actor (Featured Role - Musical) in 1985 for "Big River" and in 1990 for "City of Angels".
His mother was Princess Laure Louise Napoléone Eugénie Caroline Murat. She was born on November 13, 1913, and died on May 10, 1986.
Attended and graduated from Carnegie-Mellon University.
Taught acting at Juilliard.
On his mother's side, Rene is descended from Joachim [Napoléon] Murat, King of Naples and King of Sicily, formerly Grand-Duke of Berg and Kleve, and his wife (Marie Annonciade) Caroline Bonaparte, sister of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte of France.
Tried changing his surname very early on to "Aubert" because casting directors were unable to pronounce "Auberjonois". When he discovered that his new name caused just as much trouble, he decided to keep the real one.
Is one of only 32 actors or actresses to have starred in both the original Star Trek (up to and including Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)) and then in one of the spin-offs. His role in the original Star Trek was uncredited as Colonel West in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (a film that counts as part of the original Star Trek series).
Son of Pulitzer Prize-nominated Swiss journalist and author Fernand Auberjonois (1910-2004).
Grandson of well-known Swiss post-impressionist painter Rene Auberjonois (1872-1957).
Has appeared in two different productions which featured a character named General Hammond: MASH (1970) and Stargate SG-1 (1997).
Both he and his Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993) co-star Colm Meaney appeared in "Stargate", playing the leader of a human civilization on another planet whose population lived under the surface. In both cases, the main characters of the series in question attempted to form an alliance and arrange an exchange of technology before learning that this civilization could not be trusted. Auberjonois played Alar, leader of the Eurondans in the Stargate SG-1 (1997) episode "The Other Side"; Meaney played Cowen, leader of the Genii in the Stargate: Atlantis (2004) episodes "Underground" and "The Storm".
Outside of the original Star Trek (1966) series cast, he is the oldest Star Trek cast member.
Turned down the role of John Bosley in Charlie's Angels (2000), which went to Bill Murray
Turned down the role of Father Mulcahey on the television series M*A*S*H (1972). He had played the role in the 1969 motion picture version.
Is mentioned in "Big Lou", the biography of actor Louis Edmonds, because he and Edmonds both starred in an avant garde Broadway play that flopped after just a few performances in the late 1960s. The play was called "Fire!" and it is covered in detail in "Big Lou".
His maternal grandfather's father was a second cousin of Charles Joseph Bonaparte (1851-1921), Secretary of the Navy (1905-1906), and then United States Attorney General (1906-1909), both in the cabinet of President Theodore Roosevelt
His father was French, his maternal grandmother was an American, from Cincinnati, Ohio, his maternal grandfather's mother was a Russian noblewoman, and his maternal grandfather's paternal grandmother was also an American, from Charleston, South Carolina.
Siblings: Anne Auberjonois, Michael Auberjonois and two stepsisters named Ghislaine Vautier (author) as well as Marie-Laure Degener (opera performer).
Name is pronounced "oh-bear-zhon-wah". The French translation is "Armor-bearer".
He was awarded the 1982 Drama Logue Award for Outstanding Performance for "The Misanthrope" at the Mark Taper Forum Theatre in Los Angeles, California.
He was awarded the 1981 Drama Logue Award for Outstanding Performance for "Twelfth Night" at the Mark Taper Forum Theatre in Los Angeles, California.
He awarded the 1981 Drama Logue Award for Outstanding Performance for "Chekhov in Yalta" at the Mark Taper Forum Theater in Los Angeles, California.
He was awarded the 1983 Drama Logue Award for Outstanding Performance for "Richard III" at the Mark Taper Forum Theatre in Los Angeles, California.
His stage work includes portraying Juror #5 in the Washington D.C. production of "Twelve Angry Men". His cast-mates included Roy Scheider as Juror #8, and Robert Prosky as Juror #3.
Rene wasinducted into the Actor's Hall of Fame.
As a teen growing up in an artist colony in the Hudson River Valley along the base of the Ramapo Mountains near New City, NY, Auberjonois babysat for the family of Bill Mauldin, the cartoonist who had recently costarred with Audie Murphy in The Red Badge of Courage (1951), and whose "Willie and Joe" characters had represented and spoke for U.S. infantry "dogfaces" on the European front during the Second World War.
Personal Quotes (17)
My wife, Judith, is the best person in the world.
I'm never going to retire. I'll die with my boots on.
I do the conventions now for two reasons. To raise money for Doctors Without Borders and travel.
I just wait for something to present itself, and then I consider it.
I did a different voice for Odo. When people hear my real voice, they're often confused.
I came out of repertory theater, where I worked 50 weeks a year, and I loved working with a team.
How many times can you put together 26 different stories without running out of ideas?
I worked with my son [ Remy Auberjonois ] when he was much younger; we did L.A. Law (1986) together, where I played his father and he played a kid who was suing his father for alienation of affection. We're actually very affectionate.
I would hardly call myself an artist in that sense; I doodle, I draw, I'm not a trained artist, I couldn't sit down and do an accurate portrait of anyone.
And so I've always been fascinated by the technical end of theater, and a lot of my closest friends are not actors, but in other aspects of the business.
And my father, being a good Swiss Protestant, always insisted that if I was going to be an actor, I shouldn't just be an actor, I should know about the whole process.
The best part is the part I'm working at the moment.
It always takes a while to find out who the characters are.
If you do your job properly you usually learn a lot about yourself from any role you play.
My daughter is here in town doing a play, and her dog is staying with us. We live up in the hills, so he has access to thousands of acres of wilderness.
The mask of the character was already written into the show, but I actually lobbied for a denser and more complete mask than they initially considered.
At this point we've answered about every question you could possibly imagine about Deep Space Nine, so at conventions we do this thing called Theatrical Jazz, where we do a show of bits and pieces of things from plays and literature, poetry... stuff that we like.Sometimes social class can make a difference. Growing numbers of working-class Americans are eschewing marriage and having children outside of marriage. In a 2013 study conducted by researchers at Harvard and the University of Virginia, working-class respondents cited low wages and a lack of job security as the primary reasons for these changes.
But a high average salary doesn’t necessarily mean stable relationships. A 2013 report called “Knot Yet: The Benefits and Costs of Delayed Marriage in America” observed that young adults have gone from seeing marriage as a “cornerstone” of adult life to its “capstone,” something you enter only after you complete your education and attain professional stability. Until then, you may be better off swiping through Tinder.
Still, for all of the challenges, it’s worth noting that the gig economy has also brought some much-needed flexibility to dating and relationships. Young women today face less pressure to build their lives around marriage and childbearing than their mothers or grandmothers did. If you are gay or lesbian or if you want a relationship that is not monogamous you are likely to meet less resistance than you might have in the past. Still, as the work of dating has become increasingly flexible, it has also become increasingly precarious.
DATING itself is a recent invention. It developed when young people began moving to cities and women began working outside private homes. By 1900, 44 percent of single American women worked. Previously, courtship had taken place under adult supervision, in private places: a parlor, a factory dance or church social. But once women started going out and earning wages, they had more freedom over where and how they met prospective mates. Because men vastly out-earned women, they typically paid for entertainment.
Today, we refer to a man inviting a woman to dinner as “traditional.” At first it was scandalous: A woman who arranged to meet a man at a bar or restaurant could find herself interrogated by a vice commission. In the 1920s and ‘30s, as more and more middle-class women started going to college, parents and faculty panicked over the “rating and dating” culture, which led kids to participate in “petting parties” and take “joy rides” with members of the opposite sex.
By the 1950s, a new kind of dating took over: “going steady.” Popular advice columnist Dorothy Dix warned in 1939 that going steady was an “insane folly.” But by the post-war era of full employment, this form of courtship made perfect sense. The booming economy, which was targeting the newly flush “teen” demographic, dictated that in order for everyone to partake in new consumer pleasures — for everyone to go out for a burger and root beer float on the weekends — young people had to pair off. Today, the economy is transforming courtship yet again. But the changes aren’t only practical. The economy shapes our feelings and values as well as our behaviors.
The generation of Americans that came of age around the time of the 2008 financial crisis has been told constantly that we must be “flexible” and “adaptable.” Is it so surprising that we have turned into sexual freelancers? Many of us treat relationships like unpaid internships: We cannot expect them to lead to anything long-term, so we use them to get experience. If we look sharp, we might get a free lunch.
But for all the hand-wringing, this kind of dating isn’t any more transactional than it was back when suitors paid women family-supervised visits or parents sought out a yenta to introduce their children at a synagogue mixer. Courtship has always been dictated by changes in the market. The good news is that dating is not the same thing as love. And as anyone who has ever been in love can attest, the laws of supply and demand do not control our feelings.AV: Vegard Møller Johnsen, Broom.no
Formel 1 er en svært populær sport på TV – og blir allerede dekket bredt fra alle mulig, og noen nesten umulige, vinkler.
Men nå er det en nyhet på vei som kan ta det hele et langt steg videre – og som i praksis vil la deg som seer selv bestemme hva du vil at kameraet skal filme.
Bak den oppsiktsvekkende løsningen sitter fire karer fra Hamar.
LES OGSÅ: En av Norges råeste familiebiler
SE KLIPPET LENGER NED I SAKEN! (NB: Videoen kan ikke spilles av på mobil/lesebrett)
Seerne styrer
Det er nemlig det norske firmaet Making View som har utviklet muligheten for å bruke et 360-graders videokamera som kan festes på blant annet Formel 1-biler.
Foto: Making View AS
Det unike med dette kameraet er at det filmer i alle retninger samtidig – og at seeren kan styre hvilken vinkel han/hun til enhver tid ønsker å se.
LES OGSÅ: 10 vanvittige ombygginger
Unike muligheter
Mens Sebastian Vettel og co. suser rundt kan du altså «sitte på» – og bestemme om du ønsker å se ut til siden, bakover, forover, oppover eller kikke ned på hjelmen til sjåføren og følge med på hva han holder på med.
Og når bilen skal inn på pit stop kan du vri kameraet rundt og følge med på hvordan mekanikerne jobber med dekkskiftet.
Ustyret veier bare 600 gram – og kan festes på ikke bare biler, men for eksempel en hjelm eller direkte på en idrettsutøver.
Det ligger altså mange bruksmuligheter her.
Foto: Making View AS
Startet med bilder
Making View startet i 2005 med å sette sammen 360-graders bilder – og ble nå landets største eiendomsmegler-fotobutikk – etter å ha blitt kjøpt opp av finn.no.
Men for et par år siden bestemte daglig leder Are Søby Vindfallet og de andre i firmaet at de ville utforske mulighetene for 360-video, og kjøpte tilbake deler av selskapet fra finn.no.
LES OGSÅ: Hmmm - er disse bilene vasket i for varmt vann?
Vippet Red Bull av stolen
– Den første demoen av systemet ble gjort i forbindelse med et såkalt wingsuit-hopp av Jokke Sommer i Stryn. Vi syntes resultatet ble så rått at vi kontaktet Red Bull, som sponser Sommer, og ba om et møte for å presentere systemet.
– Vi hadde egentlig fått to timer til rådighet, men ble sittende hele dagen. De ble rett og slett vippet av stolen av det de så, forteller Vindfallet.
LES OGSÅ: Sjekk denne garasjen!
Vist 1,2 millioner ganger
Og da muligheten bød seg til å prøve kameraet på Red Bulls Formel 1-bil på Rudskogen, var gjengen i Making View raskt på pletten. Resultatet kan du se her (ikke tilgjengelig på mobil):
På kort tid er klippet vist 1,2 millioner ganger på fem dager - av seere verden rundt.
– Nå samarbeider vi tett med Red Bull – og de omtaler denne teknologien som en "game changer" innenfor interaktiv media. De har sjekket hvilke muligheter som finnes andre steder i verden, men er klare på at vårt system er det beste.
Her kan du se flere videoer/bilder fra Making View
Henvendelser fra hele verden
Den lille, entusiastiske gjengen i Making View på Hamar kan altså være i ferd med å revolusjonere måten en hel verden ser både Formel 1 og en hel masse annet på TV.
Og siden det finnes så mange andre bruksmuligheter har det blitt henvendelser fra både det amerikanske forsvaret, helsevesenet og en rekke andre.
Det svært populære, engelske bilprogrammet Top Gear har også kikket på klippet. De mektig imponert - og sier at dette viser morgendagens muligheter i dag.
LES OGSÅ: Den ultimate julegaven? Sjekk Formel 1-simulatoren
Trenger investorer
Med de uendelige mulighetene som ligger i et slikt system, merker Making View at de nå trenger å utvide aktiviteten.
– Så langt har vi vært fire entusiaster som har kunne drive og utvikle dette. Men nå er vi på investorjakt, for å ta dette et steg videre trengs det kapital, sier Vindfallet.
– Hvor raskt tror du denne teknikken kan bli tatt i bruk i Formel 1?
– Det er i alle fall stor interesse for å få det på plass. Men som i alt innen denne sporten må ting godkjennes og gjennom en lang prosess før det kan brukes. Det gjenstår også en del utvikling før det er helt klart til bruk.
Hva synes du om den nye løsningen? Si din mening i kommentarfeltet under:
Sitater fra noen som har sett klippet: “For the first time since, well, last month, we feel like we're living in the actual future - prepare to be genuinely amazed. The future’s here, people. Now” Top Gear “Call it an unfortunate side effect of growing up in the information age, but it takes some truly impressive technology to surprise us anymore. So when we say the ViewCam 360 has set our cynical hearts aglow, we want you to understand the full scope of our meaning. “ Autoblog US
LES OGSÅ: De aller viktigste Formel 1-bileneI originally published a version of this post in June 2016. This update, with the recent news, further confirms some of the assumptions I made back then.
The tweet above confirms something we’re all quite aware of, which is that there is still a lot to do before we get self driving cars onto our roads. But why is this the case? Aren’t these companies the ones with the technical know how and unlimited resources required to make our self-driving car fantasies reality? Well, it turns out there are three technical issues making this difficult.
Barring a horrible spate of autopilot accidents the self-driving car movement will continue in full swing. The technology is improving at pace with Elon Musk declaring that “worldwide regulatory approval will require something on the order of 6 billion miles (10 billion km). Current fleet learning is happening at just over 3 million miles (5 million km) per day.” Every single one of the big technology and automobile players is plowing money and brainpower into being the company that ushers us into this utopian future where there will be zero vehicular accidents caused by human behind the wheel errors. But making this happen is proving more difficult than the companies expected.
My first question here is why did these software first companies assume that they could just turn around and build cars? And why have we all assumed all that matters in this push is the actual development of the hardware/self-driving car? We forget there are a lot of aspects to the technology that is required to make that future happen. It’s never made sense that these companies would build cars.
The Tech We Now Have
There have been some mind-blowing advances in the component technologies required to build a self-driving car.
What We Still Need To Figure Out.
Edge cases that are actually the norm (Brains): Training a self driving car is possible in the US because there are enforceable and encoded rules and regulations that govern the road. While these rules might be broken, leading to accidents etc, for the most part we are conditioned to follow the rules of the road. And you can train your software to follow those rules. But this is not the case in places like Nigeria where there are no rules or consequences for breaking the few rules that exist; you need huge numbers of simulation to cater to the possibilities. The simulation requirements are further complicated by the lack of structured roads; paths become roads and fall back into being paths before you’ve had time to update your database/Carcraft. Technological challenges (Brains and Body): continuing the point above, the technological complexity of a world without rules is one that will test the limits of self-driving car capabilities. Redundant mechanical systems have to be built into the cars to ensure that the car responds adequately when these edge-but-normal cases happen. It is not about the cars, per se, it’s about the rest of us. We are truly unpredictable. Technology is not advanced enough to capture the context and mind state of a driver in another car. The time between now and when all the other cars on the road are self-driving will be an interesting one. Hardware is still pretty hard: The production and roll out delays of Tesla cars (and the death of many software enabled hardware companies) lead us to forget that launching hardware is hard. We forget the technological difficulties of putting together a vehicle and, hurriedly, rush into assuming that combining advanced software into fast changing materials hardware is a breeze. Hardware is still hard.
So what is the best strategy for a tech/software company that hasn’t traditionally built cars?
Apple Case Study
Like Microsoft/Cortana for Nissan and BMW and Waymo/Google with Honda the best approach for a software DNA company is to build the operating system for autonomous cars. And it’s what Apple is doing. Apple is building the autonomous car Operating System (OS) based on the iPhone/Apple Watch as the original portable telematic device: knowing where a car is, what condition it’s in and recording that information to make better decisions is something that will be required in every autonomous car. We all know our iPhones are already personal telematic devices (I hope you do). The phone tracks your location and your health (see images below). There are two elements to autonomous driving software, maps and driving data. Building a CarOS, for Apple, would be a natural extension of the maps and health software that is currently being captured as you and I navigate the world.
Starbucks location…and I still need to get my steps today.
Becoming the CarOS is the most strategically adjacent move Apple can make. Why would a company ignore it’s most sold asset, surpassing 1Bn iPhones sold this past week, to focus on a product that is capital intensive and not its core competence? Why would Apple enter a space where the most talked about company in |
going to change.
"Do I need an AK-47? No. But you know what? It's an AK-47!"
---
PTSD turns out to be an important part of Grisham's story, too. He lives in a modest farmhouse between cornfields and an airport, family land. The front porch is full of bicycles, including one they never move because there's a bird's nest in the basket and the bird comes back every year. Inside there's an AR-15 leaning against the door, a rack of board games, and many pictures of Jesus. Every so often his teenage daughter comes through, lying on the sofa and pretending not to listen. "This is an old Chinese SKS. I use it for hunting … this is an around-the-house AR … this is a Punisher from Spike's Tactical, so they didn't make a whole bunch of these … this is more just for fun—everybody's gotta have an AK-47."
He pumps the AK and laughs. "Do I need an AK-47? No. But you know what? It's an AK-47!"
He doesn't pause a beat at the PTSD question. He's given a lot of thought to this very topic. "I think having firearms around does, on a weird level, make me feel a little calmer. Because one of the things about guys like me with PTSD is you have this hypervigilance—I mean, in Iraq, gosh, I slept with my pistol in my sleeping bag. You had to be ready to go at all times."
This has been the subject of much of his therapy. He saw daily combat. A bullet hit his helmet; he was mortared, hit with IEDs. Three times he gave himself up for dead. Like Everard, he has PTSD acute enough (along with some minor wounds) to justify full military disability. Like many other soldiers, he's pursued high-adrenaline activities like skydiving in an effort to placate his flight-or-fight responses. But gradually, he says, he's been able to "deescalate the perceived threat" and retrain his brain. "We're in America," he tells himself. "We're in the United States. It's not as dangerous as you think. It's not a dangerous place."
And depression? Has that trauma of war plagued him too?
He continues unzipping another gun case. "This is my wife's gun. She's got the best gun in the house."
He pulls out the pink AR-15. A company called Black Rain Ordnance built it specifically for Emily, light and low-recoil with a nice Vortex scope and her name engraved on the stock. He speaks as he turns it over in his hands. "You know, I've dealt with PTSD and depression for years now, since—well, since I got back. And I never once thought about reaching for my firearm."
Then he stops. "I take that back. I take that back. Let me be honest here. Hang on, let me just finish puttin' these away."
When the guns are all zipped into their cases, he sits back on the sofa. His eyes are very clear and blue, shadowed by the baseball cap that never leaves his head. Light streams in the windows behind him. The police incident "triggered a massive PTSD relapse," he says. He had already lost his faith in the Army, the central pillar of his life. Friends and acquaintances were turning against him. His stepfather was very critical. His superior officers threatened to give him another Article 15 and he demanded another court-martial. He began to have nightmares of someone pointing a gun at his head or shooting his son, and in the dream he was always helpless—to him the worst feeling of all. It got so bad he moved out of the house and asked for a divorce. "I wanted to end my life and I kind of wanted them to hate me," he says. "If they hated me, it'd be easier to do."
On the sofa, his daughter plays with a Game Boy.
All this was happening during the early days of the movement, when he was leading the first protests at the Alamo and confronting Moms Demand Action. He went into a few restaurants he wishes he hadn't and waffled when a member from Plano posted the phone number of someone who had called the police, defending it on principle before admitting it was a bad idea. He called the Moms "thugs with jugs," and then admitted he was being childish. Once, he made plans to lead a group into a black neighborhood in Houston, though he insists he was trying to encourage them to join the movement. "I was acting most of the time, because it's really hard to lead an organization when in your mind you hate yourself."
Shortly before the verdict came down, on a country road near Temple, he unbuckled his seat belt and drove his car into a tree—but at the last minute he thought of his family and his cause. He couldn't let all those people down. He hit the brakes and totaled his car but emerged unharmed. He moved back into his house and entered an intensive eight-hour-a-day PTSD program.
And what do the therapists want him to change about himself?
He chuckles. "Well, obviously, they tell me I need to be a little calmer when I'm approached by law enforcement."
The therapists also talk about his fear of death. "There's always a question, 'Do you feel as if your life will be cut short in any way?' And I say, 'Yeah, I'm afraid a police officer's gonna shoot me.' "
And what do the therapists say to that?
"Well, we talk our way through it. And they say, 'Just don't put yourself in a position where a police officer is gonna shoot you.' "
He laughs again, and this time the joke is on the therapists, because none of this self-knowledge means he intends to back down in any way. Just two months ago, at an open-carry rally in Abilene, he greeted police officers with his AR-15 and shouts of "What the hell?" and "Tell your man to stand down!" and then lectured them on the law with a profane fury that seems almost suicidal. Rather than making him empathetic to the fears associated with approaching an armed man, his combat experience appears to have inspired the opposite feeling—he has contempt for their fear. The whole thing reeked of personal psychodrama.
Even so, one officer tried to reason with him. "Look what's going [on] around the world."
"Don't give me that crap!" Grisham snorted.
Now he sits back on the couch, grinning. "I hear this all the time: C. J., you just need to know how to pick your battles. I say, 'I do pick my battles. It's called right or wrong.' There's no degree, you know? Wrong is wrong, whether it's a little bit of wrong or a lot of wrong. Wrong is wrong."
He's making fun of himself, a little, but it's clear that driving his car into that tree did nothing to shake his confidence in his judgment. The impulse to poke him is irresistible.
How tall are you again?
"Sixty-five inches," he says with another grin. "And it's funny, because a lot of people who meet me say, 'I thought you'd be taller.' "
Maybe if you were taller you'd get into fewer fights.
He laughs. "I think that's one of the reasons why that officer thought he could bully me that day. He thought, 'This little guy is gonna roll over.' "
Glancing around the room, it's hard not to let an eye fall on all the Jesus pictures and then the AK, the SKS, the Punisher, and the AR-15.
Have you read the Bible?
"I have read the Bible," he says. "Jesus said that if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one."
He also said to turn the other cheek.
"He also turned over the money changers and drove them out of the temple. That was pretty confrontational."
But the most constant thing is Jesus' kindness. Like the people who forgave Dylann Roof.
"If somebody comes into my church and starts shooting people, does Jesus really want me to just sit there and be killed?" he asks. "Or does he want me to try and save my neighbors?"
He let himself be crucified.
"Well, he had to do that. It was part of the plan."
But there's a reason for the plan.
"There is a reason. It's for forgiveness and the atonement, so when those government officials are abusive to you and you stand up to them, God will forgive them for what they did."
---
The famous City of Belton Fourth of July Parade in central Texas, a small-town celebration of freedom and revolution and bombs bursting in air, seems like the perfect occasion for a gun rally—there are floats from the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the Maxdale Cowboy Church ("Heading to Greener Pastures"), and the Central Texas Tea Party, which changed its logo from "Taxed enough already" to "Tyrannized enough already." There's even a float from a new indoor shooting range. But they won't let Grisham and his team carry guns in the parade. Insurance, they say.
He hasn't given up. Today he starts at the police station.
"Are you C. J.?" a police officer asks. "I thought you'd be taller."
"Yeah, I get that a lot."
He finds the chief in a briefing room, surrounded by deputies. "How are ya?" he says. "You probably remember me from last year."
"Yes, sir."
"I just wanted to touch base. We're gonna have a float, but obviously no handguns or rifles, so you don't have to worry about that. Just prior to the parade, we'll walk down the sidewalks and hand out information, just like every other time."
"No problem," the chief says.
Back on the sidewalk, Grisham and his troops set up a tent and tables for their flyers, chatting about politics and guns. There are babies, a kid in a Batman hat playing a video game, a Latino from South Africa, a disabled man, a kid with a goatee. Big Jim Everard is there to drive the float. All of the adults are armed. "This corner is going to be a criminal-free zone," one jokes. "I don't think any Muslims are gonna come over here," says the Latino.
Walking the parade route, they hand out the flyers. "The flyer talks about what's legal right now," Grisham tells everyone. "If you go to our Web site, it's updated for what will be legal come January 1." He hands them as enthusiastically to blacks as to whites and greets all the veterans with "Welcome home, sir, I'm glad you made it." Some people say no in a forceful way. One says she'll just throw the flyer away. One calls guns stupid. But every third man reaches eagerly. "I follow you on Twitter," one says.
"Are you passing out guns, too?" says another.
A little boy looks at his AR-15 in awe. "Is that a real gun?"
Halfway up the route, he's out of flyers and having a long, homey chat with the elderly Mervin Walker, the mayor of Weir, Texas. "My grandpa came there in 1893," Walker says, "so he run the town and then my father run the town and I've run it ever since."
"Is your son gonna run it next?"
Walker laughs. "Ain't had but the one daughter, and she lives in Belton—those are my granddaughters with the white boots."
'Course he's carried a gun all his life, Walker says, just like his daddy and his grandpa. "I farmed and ranched and I had lots of cattle. We used to go to that old café in Georgetown every morning about six o'clock, and we had our windows rolled down, and leave our guns in the trucks, loaded, and nobody ever asked us anything."
Grisham lingers too long, listening to Walker talk about the days before factories and war and globalization and this degrading new thing called service industries. Then the parade starts and the floats from black fraternities and businesses—there goes the Illustrious Potentate of the Nubia Temple—get the same waves and applause as the Tea Party and the Cowboy Church. Close to the end, there's a float from a porta-potty company that's being pushed by hand.
"Their engine must have crapped out," Grisham says.
Soon he will announce his campaign for state senator. He's also working on a law degree. He has many goals: get rid of all gun-free zones, make the concealed-carry permit voluntary and cheaper, change the laws to make it easier for people to get their gun rights back after minor nonviolent misdemeanors, and ultimately "Constitutional Carry," in which the only gun restrictions are the ones the founders had when they ratified the Second Amendment in 1791—none.
People keep dropping by the tent. One guy says he likes the element of surprise, and Grisham patiently makes his argument one more time. "From a military standpoint, why do we make it known that we have intercontinental ballistic nukes—because it's a deterrent, right?" A couple men get details on the new open-carry law. A woman introduces her toddler and Grisham digs through his flyers and T-shirts. "Maybe he wants a pen?"
"Bubba, you want a pen?"
The woman is talking about how hard it is to conceal her 9mm in feminine clothing when Bubba interrupts. "I'm a police officer!"
"You're a police officer?" Grisham says. "You're not gonna arrest me, are you?"
Bubba hands him an imaginary ticket.
"Oh, how much do I have to pay?"
Very solemnly, Bubba answers him. "Five."
Grisham grins. "I wouldn't mind that. I'd speed everywhere."
---
As long as Americans are cranky individualists who hate to be told what to do, which is the same as saying "as long as there are Americans," the argument over guns will never end. It's also no accident that Grisham's war for gun rights is happening at the same time as Edward Snowden and the Black Lives Matter movement—there's nothing more bipartisan these days than the fear of a police state. Given all the forms of trauma plaguing our world, even his PTSD points to wider social issues beneath the surface argument, a deeper issue rooted in the physical reality of the gun and the person who holds the gun. So a few days later, Grisham brings his weapons out again, this time for a hands-on lesson.
Different people have different ideas on where you put your cheek, he begins. The Army taught him to keep his nose on the charging handle. That way, your sight picture is always the same. Line the hole in the rear sight with the tip of the front sight until it's halfway through the middle of that hole and it'll kind of disappear. Remember to keep your finger off the trigger assembly. Push in the magazine and give it a little tap to make sure it's in there, then pull back the charging handle until it catches—feel it? Keep going. There you go. "You are now loaded. There's a bullet in the chamber."
He met with his attorney today, he says. His legal bills are more than $100,000. But this isn't the time to think about that.
Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.
He's a patient teacher. When you breathe, he says, think of it as a wave with natural lulls. Shoot during that transition. Eventually you'll get into a pattern, shooting at the top lull and the bottom lull. That's when you know you're getting good.
But the gun is just a.22; it doesn't have any kick or bang. What's the big thrill?
Then he pulls out the AR-15. "It doesn't have that much kick," he says. "It's just gonna be loud."
The explosions echo, the world narrows.
Accuracy was his obsession for a while. In basic training, he used to shoot a happy face onto his targets. Now he's working on reflexive sighting, conditioning himself to bring the weapon up and shoot without looking at the sight. He closes his eyes before pulling the trigger.
"Slow squeeze. It should almost surprise you."
After a while, he shoots a few rounds himself—fast, without hesitation, like he's just setting the bullets free—and finally we are at the heart of the matter, the strangely intimate relationship between an American and his gun. What is the magic that drives so much controversy? How does it make him feel?
"That's actually a good question," he says, pondering for a moment.
"I guess I don't think, I see. I see the target. And I almost become the gun. It's almost an extension of me. I've got the target, the bullet, everything sort of flows from here and out the firearm. I guess that's the best way to describe it. I don't think about what's going on in the house, I don't hear the birds chirping, I don't hear construction in the background. All I focus on is that target. Yeah, it's a calming thing for me. I don't know why. Maybe it's just the raw power."
Emily comes out and says she's going to the mall and he has to pick up the kids, so Grisham starts packing up his guns. He makes sure each one is loaded before he zips it up. This is supposed to be the most dangerous way to store them, exposing your household to the risk of an accidental shooting, but his guns are always loaded and ready to go. Otherwise, he says, what's the point of having them?
Emily comes out again and says it's time to go, really. "Are you done yet?"
But he's not. Are you supposed to fumble for your bullets in the dark? Or call 911 and wait for someone else to protect you? He was on base during the Fort Hood shooting, and it lasted for eight minutes. Do you know how long eight minutes is? Count the seconds. Better yet, fire that gun. Let's say a magazine has seven bullets and you can load and shoot about four clips a minute. That's 224 bullets. The kids are waiting, Emily says, but he's still not finished. Isn't America supposed to be all about self-reliance? Don't we have a right to be secure in our persons and effects? These are the fundamental questions, he says, and he's not done asking them—until then, for Grisham and for all of us, a normal life is just going to have to wait.
Published in the November 2015 issue.Community College Correspondent Picks: Currently +2 Four Lokos
So last week I introduced you to my main man Matty Ice, AKA one of the hottest College Football Handicappers in the game. If you need a quick refresher, the legend of Matty Ice can be read here. If you tailed his picks last week then you should be up at least two betting units (or in Matty’s case, Four Lokos). If you happened to miss out on those picks, no worries, the Malt Liquor Maestro is back with another free pick for Thursday night’s Gasparilla Bowl which pits the Temple Owls against the FIU Panthers. Below is the inside information Matty was kind enough to send me earlier this morning. I’m relaying what he said word for word, so my apologies in advance if anyone finds themselves offended by my man’s vulgar language. Oh yeah… He also asked that I give him a WWE-esque intro…So here goes nothing.
LAAAAADYS AND GENTLEMAN, BOYS AND GIRLS, CHILDREN OF ALL AGES! Student Union Sports Proudly Presents to you, The One and Only, MONEY LINE PICKING, MALT LIQUOR DRINKING, BOOKIE DEBT SHRINKING SON OF A GUN!!! The Community College Correspondent, Matty Ice.
Whats going on team!? Shout out to Liam for the nice introduction…You really shouldn’t have! Anyways, lets get down to what makes the world go round: Money. If you tailed last week we went 2-1, but luckily we hit our 2 Unit Loko Pick, which allowed us to finish with a balance of +2 Four Lokos. But don’t worry ladies and gentleman, that was only the pregame, and I plan to get us a lot more fucked up with my picks this bowl season. So lets get right into my Free Community College Correspondent Pick of the Day hombres.
Gasparilla Bowl Pick: FIU +6.5 (1 Four Loko*) (12/21, 8pm ET)
First off, what the fuck is the Gasparilla Bowl? I always thought Gasparilla was some sort of booze-fueled pirate fest in Florida, but apparently it’s now also the name of a mediocre bowl game. If its anything like the festival, then consider my picks your buried treasure. Also feel free to get fucked up while watching, that always gives the game an extra edge…
The fact that the game is being played in Florida makes me a huge fan of FIU at first glance. On paper both teams are stacked up pretty evenly…But FIU does has one key advantage: red zone scoring. The FIU Panthers surprisingly rank first in red zone scoring percentage across the whole NCAA.
On the other end of the field, FIU is known to let up big plays, but their defense has still had success when backed up past their own 30 yard line. Anyways, lets just go ahead and face the facts, with Thursday night football gone, we’re all itching to bet on this game. So, if you choose to do so (which I strongly recommend), you should tail your boy, hit FIU +7 and win yourself some extra Loko funds.
Lets ride – Matty IceMy apologies in advance to Rodgers and Hammerstein.
Aggro on monsters that endlessly miss me
Beastmaster hunters and ghost saber kitties
Writing about bacon and bear butted themes
These are a few of my favorite things
Sons learning swimming and building toy models
Girl Genius comics and Sir Pratchett novels
Swift forms that fly and can herb on the wing
These are a few of my favorite things
Crüxshadow lyrics that scream out defiance
Kitchen spruced up with a brand new appliance
Wife of wide wonder that makes my heart sing
These are a few of my favorite things
When the PUG fails
When my work stinks
When I’m feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don’t feel so bad.
Ret Pallies feeling all uber o’erpowered
“Oh No John Ringo!” and Weber’s gal Honor
Richard with bunnies and Bitterleaf’s grin
These are a few of my favorite things
Alex playing games with his wabbit slayer antics
Pink on Pandora and Starcraft all frantic
Ramsey’s foul mouth while Collichio’s king
These are a few of my favorite things
Smooth luscious Guinness in tall frosty glasses
Bacon I’m naming twice in seperate stanzas
Playing the game when it’s Cassie and me
These are a few of my favorite things
When the PUG fails
When my work stinks
When I’m feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don’t feel so bad.
To steal a line from Ryan Sohmer….
– Because I can
AdvertisementsWe asked some of the game’s biggest players to nominate the albums which shook their world:
DJ Shadow
“I think the album that I’ve played the most in my lifetime, and that affected me the most profoundly, would be [Public Enemy’s] ‘It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back’. It was so layered, in every way, from the sound to the liner notes. The labour that went into it was unbelievable. I was able to listen to it time and time and time again, and still pick up new things.”
Cookie Pryce (Cookie Crew)
“I loved Main Source. So ‘Breaking Atoms’ by them. That is just pure hip-hop. That’s what was absorbed into our system. Ok, commercial rap was doing its thing, but you had to come back to the realness. We would have this on tape, which was played in the car over, and over again. It has a timeless quality.”
Buckshot (Black Moon)
“When a meteor hits a planet and makes a crater, that’s one thing. But when a meteor hits a planet and change that muthafucking axis, that’s a whole different thing. That’s what a game-changing album should do. That’s what Rakim did when he came in the game. Same with KRS-One, Big Daddy Kane, Wu-Tang and Black Moon.”
Ms Dynamite
“I would have to say Public Enemy again with ‘It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back’. On an international scale the whole world stopped. And what they were saying was totally revolutionary at that time in hip-hop. They didn’t really censor their feelings about being young black men in a racist system in America. They helped to empower a lot of people.”
Talib Kweli
“Public Enemy’s ‘It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back’ – my personal favourite album fluctuates, but I always come back to that. It’s just the cinematic nature of it; the Bomb Squad’s production; Chuck D at the height of his prowess; Flava Flav adding interesting aspects. And they travelled the world – they took their energy and their concept of a black-nationalistic group right around the globe.”
Sharethrough (Mobile)
Dave Pearce
‘‘‘Criminal Minded’ by BDP which was KRS-One and Scott La Rock, the early guys. This kind of had slight reggae overtones in it, it was on a label called B-Boy records which was a label in the Bronx. It was a very rough and raw album, unfortunately DJ Scott La Rock, who I came to know well, was murdered, he was gunned down. It was a really powerful record sonically, and the platonic poetry is amazing. ‘South Bronx’ was all about the territory and ‘9 Millimetres Goes Bang’ was a great record on there. It was really one of the roughest albums out there.”
Sporting Life
”Kayne West – ‘808’s & Heartbreak’. It birthed the careers of so many artists that are current today. It’s like what Nas said, ‘all I did was give you a style that you can run with’, Kayne West gave a style that people can run with, Kid Cudi, Drake, 2Chainz, every rapper that’s current today…that’s basically the progeny of ‘808’s & Heartbreak’, that combination of RnB melodies and the hard drums, even the southern element that’s in a lot of popular music today was birthed of it. It’s proven in the fact that so many artists have been able to sustain careers just off of the stuff that was influenced from that album, I mean Drake is like a baby of ‘808’s & Heartbreak’ to me.”
Roots Manuva
“’Doggystyle’ by Snoop Doggy Dogg. Mainly because of the marriage of high-fidelity sonic engineering with a kind of bedroom and street corner kinda rapping style. There was also some really freeform song structures in there as well, and it is all done with that high-fidelity touch. The attention to quality is high. This album is up there. I hear people who still go on about getting ‘A Dre-type quality’ to their productions.”
Wiki
”’Aquemini’ [by OutKast] and ‘Return To The 36 Chambers’ [by ODB], that’s still a game changer, because no one like hit it, no one’s done an album like that that raw, that’s just natural, it’s next, it’s like this dudes life. ‘Return To The 36 Chambers’ is back to that world and this one character from that world, ODB, and you see his picture on the front, and it’s like this dude is a crazy motherfucker and it’s like, nasty and It’s like ill, and he’s singing on it and he’s spitting on it and he’s talking on it, and like, it’s just sick. It held strong to the roots of Wu-Tang.”
Mark Ronson
“I’d say ‘Midnight Marauders’ by A Tribe Called Quest. That album changed the sound of East Coast hip-hop, which before was very noisy and aggressive. But Midnight Marauders just had this sheen to it – it wasn’t too cleaned-up or sanitised, the snares still had that amazing ‘crack’ to them, but it sounded like nothing you’d ever heard before. It changed everything.”Parking Meter Bill Passes, Bid Adieu to Free Sundays and Holidays
By Marcus Gilmer in News on Dec 4, 2008 7:40PM
Photo by kookybites
Earlier this week, we discussed the insane new parking meter rates that would go into effect if the City Council passed legislation allowing Mayor Daley to lease the meters to a private company. Well, they passed it by a vote of 40-5. Ald. Toni Preckwinkle (4th) opposed the measure, claiming she didn't have enough time to review it, prompting this amazing (and classic) response from Ald. Richard Mell (33rd):
How many of us read the stuff we do get, OK? I try to. I try to. I try to. But being realistic, being realistic, it's like getting your insurance policy -- it's small print, OK?
Yes, Dick, it's just like an insurance policy. Why would you need to read the entire thing? We will give him this, though: at least he's being honest. The bill also had opposition from Ald. Billy Ocasio (26th) who seems to still have something of a connect with reality, saying, "I'm sorry, but there are too many people in our city living paycheck to paycheck." Another tidbit about the new bill? Free Sundays and holidays are now a thing of the past and some meters will even require 24-hour payment. So explain to us again how the City can afford 2,000 new SUVsBreaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
March 14, 2017, 5:59 PM GMT / Updated March 14, 2017, 6:33 PM GMT By The Associated Press
Declaring "enough is enough," the top U.S. Marine on Tuesday told senators that he intends to fix the problem that led to current and former Corps members sharing nude photos of female Marines online and making lewd or threatening comments about them.
But angry and skeptical members of the Senate Armed Services Committee demanded more, saying the military hasn't done enough to combat sexual assault and harassment despite years of complaints and problems.
Gen. Robert Neller, the Marine Corps commandant, vowed to hold Marines accountable through whatever legal and other means possible. He acknowledged the scandal may hurt female recruiting and that changes have to be made in the Marine Corps culture, where some male Marines don't accept women in the ranks.
To some senators, his testimony rang hollow. He faced a particularly fierce barrage of questions and criticism from the women members of the panel.
Related: Nude Photo Posts of Female Marines Being Investigated by NCIS
"This committee has heard these kinds of statements before," said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democrat.
"It's hard to believe something is really going to be done," she said "Why should we believe it's going to be different this time than it has in the past?"
Fellow Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York said accusations of online exploitation of women by Marines came up in 2013, and victims have come forward.
Related: Who’s Policing Facebook’s Secret Groups?
"When you say to us it's got to be different, that rings hollow," Gillibrand said. "If we can't crack Facebook, how are we supposed to be able to confront Russian aggression and cyber-hacking throughout our military? It is a serious problem when we have members of our military denigrating female Marines who will give their life for this country in the way they have with no response from leadership."
Neller and the acting Navy secretary, Sean Stackley, said the Naval Criminal Investigative Service is looking into the matter. While some women victims have come forward, they said they need more to do so.
Stackley said an NCIS tip line has gotten more than 50 calls, and officials are finding and investigating more similar websites.
"This is a bell-ringer," said Stackley. "We're not going to go backwards."
He also noted the legal hurdles that make it more difficult to prosecute some online behavior that may be protected by certain privacy laws or as free speech. Questions remain, he and Neller said, about what can be done if someone voluntarily provides a nude photo or posts one online.
Lawmakers suggested possibly beefing up laws or regulations to specifically make what is called "revenge pornography" illegal under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Neller also said that while regulations can prohibit Marines from visiting certain places — such as strip clubs or other such locales — there are no similar restrictions on websites.
On Tuesday, chief of Naval operations Admiral John Richardson cautioned in a message to 3,000 Naval leaders that "we have a problem and we need to solve it."
"Really solve it, not put a band-aid on it, not whitewash over it, not look the other way," Richardson said.DRS
Cricbuzz Staff • Last updated on Fri, 29 Jan, 2016, 10:24 PM
Rajeev Shukla said discussions have begun regarding the possibility of using DRS in IPL 9 © Getty
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) which has strongly opposed the use of the Decision Review System (DRS) so far, might use it in the upcoming edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL).
Rajeev Shukla, the chairman of the IPL Governing Council, said that the discussion for the use of DRS has started, but with limited use."There is a proposal to use DRS in the IPL minus the Leg Before Wicket (LBW) referrals. We have just started discussing it," he said in Mumbai on Friday (January 29).
Earlier, Shashank Manohar, the BCCI President, too had suggested the possible use of DRS without the ball-tracking technology.
This comes as a major shift from the stand taken by Mahendra Singh Dhoni, India skipper, over the use of technology. Despite numerous key decisions going against India and a few in India's favour during the recently-concluded One-Day International (ODI) series against Australia, Dhoni wasn't too keen on the use of technology, unless it was fool-proof.One of the things that I hear frequently is that educating people, particularly strangers, about veganism, is difficult.
On the contrary, our everyday interactions with people provide us with many opportunities to discuss veganism. This essay will discuss a couple of examples. I will discuss more examples in future essays.
For example, in January of this year, I had to take Robert, one of our dogs, to see a specialist at the University of Pennsylvania Veterinary School. There was a woman—I will refer to her as “Jane” for purposes of this essay but that was not her real name—sitting with me in the waiting area. Jane had a greyhound with her. And, as always happens when two humans are in such a place with their nonhuman companions, we got to talking about what health problems had brought us to Penn. And that led to how Jane had adopted her dog from a rescue group and how our dog was found living under an abandoned car.
After a minute or two of discussing how horrible the greyhound racing industry is, I told Jane that I used to teach at the University of Pennsylvania many years ago, and that Penn was notorious for the horrible experiments, testing, and “educational” procedures that it performed on dogs and other nonhumans. She said that she had heard about Penn’s animal experiments and I mentioned how strange it was that one part of the building was devoted to the application of veterinary medicine to help the animals who were loved by humans and another part of the building was devoted to torturing nonhumans who were not members of anyone’s family. Jane made the point that it really made no sense that we treat some dogs or cats as family members and we treat some dogs and cats as “research tools.”
“How true,” I said. “But in many ways, we’re all just like these Penn vets. We treat some animals as family members and we harm others.”
She look bewildered. “What do you mean? I would never hurt a dog or cat.” I moved the conversation away from dogs and cats and starting talking about cows, pigs, and chickens, and how they are really no different from dogs and cats. There is something very strange about the fact that we regard some nonhumans as family members, as beings whom we love and whose personhood we recognize, while, at the same time, we stick forks into other animals who are no different—morally or empirically—from those whom we love.
Jane was silent for a moment and then asked, “are you a vegetarian?”
“I’m a vegan,” I replied.
“You mean you don’t even drink milk?” she asked.
“That’s right. I don’t eat eggs, or any dairy products.”
“I can understand not eating meat. But what’s wrong with dairy and eggs?”
“Everything. The animals used in the dairy or egg industry are kept alive longer than most of their ‘meat’ counterparts, are treated worse, and end up in the same horrible slaughterhouse.”
Jane looked troubled.
“But isn’t it really hard to be a vegan?” she asked.
“Absolutely not,” I replied. “It’s unbelievably easy and it’s better for you and for the planet, in addition to being the right thing to do if you regard nonhumans as members of the moral community.” I spent a few minutes talking about the health benefits of a vegan diet and the ecological disaster of an animal-based agriculture.
Our conversation stopped for about 30 seconds and then Jane asked, “could you get me some information about how to go vegan?”
“Sure. Give me your email address.” She did.
We talked for a few more minutes about the wide range of vegan foods that are now available, and Robert and I were then called in to see the vet. Jane was gone when we came out. That afternoon |
unprecedented, but it isn’t going to go away. Yesterday Obama announced retaliation from the US and Germany is already braced for interference in its 2017 elections.
Russian cyber-attacks could influence German election, says Merkel Read more
What reason is there to suppose that these events might eventually be grouped together as a single world cyberwar by historians? Well, for me, it is the idea that hostilities might formally come to an end.
You can envisage a scenario where Russia, China and the US can see a mutual benefit in de-escalating cyber-attacks between the three of them, and also begin to collectively worry about cyberwarfare capabilities being developed in a range of smaller nation states. Cue a UN summit about cyberwarfare, and the development of some code of conduct, or an anti-cyberwarfare treaty that provides historians with a neat endpoint.
It isn’t, of course, that nation states would stop electronic surveillance or building up hacking capabilities, but as with most wars that don’t deliver a decisive victory, eventually they become too expensive and too disruptive to maintain.
It is important to remember that the internet originally came from defence research, designed to provide communications capabilities in the event of a nuclear attack. It wouldn’t surprise me if in a hundred years it is the military purpose that historians mainly remember it for, and that we are living through the first time it is being used in anger.SHANGHAI: China will allow unfettered exchange of its yuan currency in its first free trade zone, a draft plan seen by AFP Thursday showed, in a bold push to reform the world's second largest economy.
The free trade zone (FTZ) in Shanghai is intended to make the city into a true international trade and financial centre and challenge the free economy of Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China, analysts and government officials said.
Premier Li Keqiang, who took office in March, is backing the zone — which his cabinet approved last month — to be one of the crowning achievements of his administration, they said.
The draft plan seen by AFP showed the FTZ goes beyond greater liberalisation of trade to take in investment and financial services — including free convertibility of currency.
“Under the pre-condition that risk can be controlled, in the zone convertibility of the renminbi on the capital account will be conducted, the first to carry out and test (it),” the plan said.
It does not explicitly state that the exchange rate will be purely market set.
China's yuan currency, also known as the renminbi, is convertible for trade but the government keeps a tight grip on the capital account on worries unpredictable inflows or outflows could harm the economy — and reduce its control over it.
A government official familiar with the plans said companies registered in the FTZ could open special accounts to freely exchange yuan, but with only a few exceptions they would be required to close their onshore Chinese accounts.
Under the draft plan, the FTZ would let interest rates be set by the market.
China currently fixes deposit rates by administrative order, but the central bank began allowing banks to decide their own lending rates in July.
According to the Ministry of Commerce, the 29-square-kilometre FTZ groups four existing areas in Shanghai: the international airport, deepwater port, a bonded zone and a logistics area.
The draft plan said the FTZ would “support” establishment of foreign and joint ventures banks and welcome privately-funded financial institutions.
At present China's banking sector is overwhelmingly dominated by state-run institutions.
“They want an offshore harbour, basically like Hong Kong,” said a financial industry executive briefed on the plans.
The government tapped commercial hub Shanghai because of the success of its Waigaoqiao bonded zone, the executive said, which allows goods to be imported tax-free, unless they are to be sold on within the domestic Chinese market.
The FTZ project as a whole “will be a bold step to escalate China's economic development to the next level”, ANZ Banking Group said in a research report this week.
“Its success could be a model for the next stage of China's economic reform, opening up and capital account liberalisation.”
But it warned such liberalisation would increase the risk of large capital flows, which could impact the economy.
For trade, the government envisions making the zone a centre for cross-border e-commerce transactions, a plan which may require cooperation with a payments provider, officials said.
The zone would create a “platform” for trading commodities such as metals, energy and farm products and “gradually” allow foreign companies to directly trade commodities futures, the draft plan showed.
Within the FTZ regulatory controls will be relaxed in 19 different business sectors, ranging from banking to culture.
But authorities have ruled out allowing casinos in the FTZ, officials said, a privilege enjoyed by Macau, another special administrative region of China.
Some Shanghai officials opposed the FTZ because ultimate authority will be in the hands of the central government, causing local resentment, the financial industry executive said.
The State Council, China's cabinet, gave the FTZ its go-ahead in August and details will be announced after the “overall plan” is approved on September 27, officials said.
China's parliament will have to approve rules for the zone at its annual meeting in March next year, but the process will be a formality.
Preparation work on the more sensitive financial reforms will take until the second half of next year, according to an official timetable.
“The free trade zone undertakes China's vigorous push for structural innovation in the new era, accelerating the transformation of economic development,” the draft plan said.Meet Ricky Emery and his incredible Toyota Soarer Drift car.
At the weekend we had heard Ricky ‘Top Gun/Superduperpro’ Emery was coming up to Teesside Autodrome for a winter skid session, so we contacted Ricky and used this opportunity to do a driver feature. After arranging to meet pretty early on Saturday evening for a mini photoshoot, Ricky found his car had a few electrical gremlins, and we had to put back the shoot until later that night. Even after a days troubleshooting and a 6 hour drive, we still managed to meet up and under the cover of darkness, we had our little stealthy ninja shoot just outside Hartlepool.
I’ve been around a few Toyota Soarers and I’m a bit of a fan, but whenever I see one, I think of weight. These cars are extremely heavy so when I asked Ricky about any weight saving modifications he had done, naturally, the list was quite long. I think the only metal panel left on the exterior is the roof. Almost everything on this Soarer is either fiberglass or carbon fiber; replacing the door skins alone dropped the weight by around 100kg, although I’m not sure how much was saved with the awesome F1 style wing mirrors.
The bodykit continues the weight savings; the front wings, bumpers, rear overfenders, side skirts, bonnet and boot lid are all made from fiberglass. The door, rear quarter windows and rear windscreen are made from polycarbonate, lowering the weight and center of gravity.
We lifted the bonnet and Ricky has opted for the (less common these days) Japanese turbo engine, the 1JZ. Just like its older brother the 2JZ, this engine has great potential, if not a little over engineered, and at 492BHP with mods, this one is more than up to the job.
At first glance the engine bay seemed very simple and uncomplicated (or at least as uncomplicated as a straight six turbo engine goes), but after looking around for a while little details began to pop out. I asked Ricky if there was anything he was particularly proud of under the bonnet, to which he responded ‘I’m just going to get a screwdriver’…
Once Ricky returned, he removed the cold air intake pipe mounted to the front of the Garrett GT35 turbo, revealing something that was a first for me; a custom turbine by Owen Developments. Now I knew these existed, but I’d never actually seen one up close and had never even heard an anodised one. If this was my car I’d be running a clear intake pipe just so I could see it. Very cool.
I spotted more anodised goodies in the form of the SARD fuel pressure regulator. There was a few out of place wires in the engine bay, but Ricky said he had literally just completed an engine loom swap so that was to be expected.
At this point the cold was getting the better of us and we decided to continue the feature at the track the next day, plus it was around 1:30am and we both needed some sleep before the drift day at Teesside, so we packed up and called it a night.
On Sunday we started bright and early, like most drifters Ricky likes to use cable ties to fit his bumpers, so they break away if clipped rather than smashing to bits as fiberglass panels tend to do. After fitting some fresh rubber and topping up the tank it was time to hit the track.
As soon as Ricky went out he ran into problems when his auxiliary belt snapped, so while we waited for a new one to be delivered I had a look around the car in the daylight. The interior is pretty much what you’d expect of a competition drift car; stripped, OMP steering wheel and a very nice rollcage. It was also cool to see he had stuck with the OEM Soarer digital dash cluster; very Knight Rider.
I also noticed the rear of the turbo matches the now out of sight turbine; the only part of the original turbo is the actual casing itself.
We’re seeing more and more of these groovy Go Pro Vector mounts which have a weighted arm and sprung axis on them which reacts to G-force in the corners, giving smooth panning movement in video footage. It’s one of those simple things that makes you think ‘I could have thought of that’. Simple but very effective.
Once the new belt was fitted it was back on track with Ricky putting down some good speed and smoke with those rear Altenzo tyres. He runs Achilles tyres on the fronts.
After a full days drifting it was time to wrap things up, the car seemed to run well all afternoon and Ricky was quite consistent with his speed, lines and angle. We will catch up with Ricky in the new year after a fresh lick of paint and a few other changes he has planned. Roll on 2014.
A few words from Ricky…
“I would like to thanks all my sponsors who have helped out this year with parts and support as without them it wouldn’t have been possible. Also thanks to Richard Clarke at Doritech Motorsport who has helped with technical and setup info. Also a massive thanks Simon Davies at EMP Performance who’s Soarer knowledge is second to none and has been a massive help with technical info and with supplying some parts for the car. They also make excellent quality exhaust systems that I hope to have on the car soon. Coming on board for next year would like to welcome Fuchs Lubricants who are supplying their excellent quality Titan Race oil and other products. Very much looking forward to working with them. Team info for 2014 coming soon.”
Full spec list:
Toyota Soarer 492 bhp 416 ftlbs.
1JZ-GTE with stock internals and ARP head studs.
Managed by a Link Xtreme ECU in a custom Alloy case recessed in the dash machined by myself.
Audi 1.8T coilpacks with internal ignitors.
650cc Siemens Top feed injectors with top feed fuel rail.
Walbro intank fuel pump feeding the custom swirl pot machined by myself and Bosch 044 external pump feeding the rail.
All braided fuel lines and fittings supplied thanks to www.torques.co.uk, excellent quality fittings and lines.
Garrett GT3582 HTA turbo supplied by Owen Developments with all their Motorsport upgrades.
Japspeed alloy radiator and Ebay intercooler.
R154 Gearbox and welded diff.
Modified knuckles and tie rods for extra lock.
CC Stage 5 Clutch and lightweight flywheel.
Vibratechnics engine mounts.
Fiberglass doors, bonnet, boot and rear overfenders.
HSD Coilovers.
Adjustable front and rear upper camber arms and rear toe and traction arms. Custom machined threaded inserts for rear camber arms to allow correct geometry.
Solid alloy subframe bushes machined by myself.
Rota GTR D’s 9.5J et 15 up front with Achilles 235/40/18 tyres and 25mm spacers.
Rota GTR D’s 10j et 15 on the rear with 265/35/18 Altenzo tyres and 25mm spacers.
Vertex copy bodykit.
Lexan rear window, rear 1/4s and door windows made by Car Media Racing.
Rear windscreen roof spoiler.
Full 6 point weld in rollcage by Nickson Motorsport with nascar door bars. Extra bracing and re welded into the new shell this year by Relentless Performance.
Corbeau bucket seats and TRS 6 point harnesses.
AEM AFR gauge and SPA oil pressure and temperature gauge.
Safety equipment including plumbed in fire extinguisher and electrical cut off.
Custom upside down mounted intercooler with short pipework and tube supporting bar designed and tigged by Ross Gregory and brackets machined by myself at R & R Fabtech.
All intercooler hoses and rad hoses supplied by SFS Performance.
Custom brake lines throughout the car supplied by Hel Performance.
Go Pro Vector Mount supplied by the UK Distributor Allstars Driving Academy.
If you’d like to learn more about the engine that powers this car then check out our 1JZ Specs article, if you would like to see how this engine fares against it’s bigger brother then check out our 1JZ Vs 2JZ feature.Here is a link to a list of U.S. troops deployed to various nations around the world: PDF. These are permanent deployments openly admitted to by the U.S. military. When U.S. Special Forces drive off a bridge in Mali, as recently happened, we discover that U.S. troops are in Mali in greater numbers than we knew, but those troops aren’t listed here or considered in the calculation below. No secret forces are considered here, no allied forces funded or trained or armed by the United States, and of course no drones.
Here is a link to the number of athletes participating in the 2012 Summer Olympics from countries around the world: Link.
Many nations have sent very small delegations. Many nations have a very small U.S. troop presence. In many nations the U.S. troop presence falls just short of or exactly equals the size of the Olympic team.
In 69 nations, there is a larger U.S. military presence than the nation’s Olympic team. This count excludes the oceans of the world, in which over 100,000 U.S. troops are stationed, but which of course don’t have Olympic teams. The count includes, however, Diego Garcia, which could have an Olympic team if we hadn’t removed all the people to make room for the military base. And it includes other nations that have been demoted to U.S. territories. It also includes South Korea, despite the U.S. military not releasing the numbers, because the U.S. military has many times the number of troops (and growing) there than South Korea has athletes on its Olympic team.
The question arises, of course, why a nation that is trailing many poorer nations in education, health, security, sustainability, and infrastructure is paying to create such a global presence of representatives with guns rather than athletes with Chinese-made sports uniforms.
Here are the 69 nations:
Afghanistan
Bahamas
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belgium
Bolivia
Bosnia Herzegovina
Botswana
Burma
Cambodia
Chad
Congo
Cuba
Cyprus
Diego Garcia
Djibouti
Egypt
El Salvador
Germany
Ghana
Greece
Greenland
Guam
Guinea
Haiti
Honduras
Indonesia
Iraq
Italy
Japan
Jordan
Kuwait
Laos
Liberia
Macedonia
Malta
Marshall Islands
Mauritania
Nepal
Netherlands
Nicaragua
Northern Mariana Islands
Norway
Oman
Pakistan
Panama
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Portugal
Puerto Rico
Qatar
Saudi Arabia
Singapore
Somalia
South Korea
Spain
Sri Lanka
St. Helena
Tanzania
Thailand
Turkey
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
United States
Wake Island
Yemen
ZimbabweLike the monster at the end of a horror movie, the lame, sluggish recovery that we thought was dead just crawled out of the grave to give us another scare.
The job market was lousy again in August after several months of decent growth. Employers added just 142,000 jobs to non-farm payrolls, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday, the worst month for job growth this year. It fell short of the 223,000 economists expected, according to a Briefing.com tally. It was also well below the recent pace of job growth, which had averaged more than 200,000 jobs per month so far this year.
The unemployment rate dipped to 6.1 percent from 6.2 percent in July, matching the lowest rate in nearly six years. But that was mainly due to the fact that 64,000 people gave up looking for work, taking themselves out of the ranks of the officially unemployed.
"These numbers should give us pause," Elise Gould, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank focused on labor issues, wrote in a blog post.
Given other signs of strength in the economy, many economists rushed to dismiss the numbers. New claims for unemployment benefits have been low, and hiring surveys have painted rosier pictures of the job market.
"I don't believe it, I don't believe this data," Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, told CNBC. "It's not consistent with anything."
It is certainly dangerous to read too much into one month's jobs report. There's a wide margin of error -- the payroll number could be off by plus or minus 90,000 jobs -- and these numbers will be revised repeatedly in the months to come. For whatever reason, August is a month that is unusually prone to big upward revisions, according to Jim O'Sullivan, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, N.Y.
Still, we have seen enough grim jobs reports in this recovery that another weak one shouldn't come as much of a shock.
The disappearance of workers from the labor force, in particular, has been a troubling feature of the job market for a long time. Here's a chart from FiveThirtyEight's Ben Casselman that shows how, for several months in a row, many more unemployed workers have given up than have found jobs:
For the 49th time in the past 50 months, more unemployed workers dropped out of the labor force than found jobs. pic.twitter.com/gV2OD8XkVj — Ben Casselman (@bencasselman) September 5, 2014
Long-term unemployment is still depressingly high, as this chart from Quartz's Matt Phillips shows:
Long-term unemployment is falling fast, but still incredibly elevated…Data back to 1948. pic.twitter.com/DgPtGKZbGM — Matt Phillips (@MatthewPhillips) September 5, 2014We discuss the outcome of this study as providing evidence for a distributed neural network associated with unwanted movements in alien hand syndrome, including brain regions known to be related to movement execution and planning as well as areas that have been linked to inhibition control (inferior frontal gyrus) and experience of agency (precuneus).
We employed functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate brain responses associated with unwanted movements in a case study. Results revealed that alien hand movements involved a network of brain activations including the primary motor cortex, premotor cortex, precuneus, and right inferior frontal gyrus. Conscious and voluntary movements of the alien hand elicited a similar network of brain responses but lacked an activation of the inferior frontal gyrus. The results demonstrate that alien and unwanted movements may engage similar brain networks than voluntary movements, but also imply different functional contributions of prefrontal areas. Since the inferior frontal gyrus was uniquely activated during alien movements, the results provide further support for a specific role of this brain region in inhibitory control over involuntary motor responses.
The alien hand syndrome is a striking phenomenon characterized by purposeful and autonomous movements that are not voluntarily initiated. This study aimed to examine neural correlates of this rare neurological disorder in a patient with corticobasal degeneration and alien hand syndrome of the left hand.
The study consisted out of two fMRI experiments. We first examined unwanted movements the way described above. The second experiment was a motor localizer scan to assess brain areas associated with conscious movements (similar to [8] ).
Here we report data of a patient diagnosed with corticobasal degeneration and left hand AHS. His left hand showed relatively preserved volitional motor functions. Although there were spontaneous movements of the alien hand, we also had the possibility to elicit alien movements of the hand in a controlled way. We were able to evoke movements of the hand by slightly pushing the hand away from the patient's body, which then resulted in a small movement into the opposite direction. This behavior is also known as “Gegenarbeiten”, meaning counteracting or working against [5]. Using this reliable behavioural effect we conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study to further examine the neural correlates of unconscious or alien movements.
The phenomenon of AHS is complex and has various clinical manifestations, possibly related to different lesion sites. AHS has been reported subsequent to lesions of the supplementary motor area (SMA), anterior cingulate, corpus callosum, anterior prefrontal cortex, posterior parietal cortex, and thalamus [3], [4], [5], [6], [7]. The neural mechanisms of this movement disorder still remain unclear. It has been proposed that unwanted movements may arise because of a release of the primary motor cortex (M1) from conscious control by intentional planning systems [8].
The alien hand syndrome (AHS) is a very rare movement disorder. Patients with AHS experience one of their limbs as alien, which acts autonomously and performs meaningful movements without being guided by the intention of the patient [1], [2], [3]. The patients find themselves unable to stop the alien hand from reaching and grabbing objects without using their other hand. Patients are aware that the limb is still part of their body, but they report the feeling as if an external agent is controlling the limb. Consequently, they often describe it in the third person.
Statistical parametric maps were calculated using multiple regression with the hemodynamic response function modeled in SPM5. For data analyses of experiment 1 we used a block-design model with a boxcar regressor convolved with the hemodynamic response function to compare brain responses elicited by stimulation of the alien hand compared with stimulation of the healthy hand. For data analyses of experiment 2 we used an analogue procedure (regressors left hand movements, right hand movements, rest). We report results corrected for multiple comparisons (at p<0.05).
FMRI data were acquired with a 3 T Magnetom Trio Siemens scanner for T2-weighted functional MR images using axially oriented echo-planar imaging (TR = 2 s, TE = 28 ms, flip angle = 90°, 32 slices, 5 mm thickness). Data were acquired in two scanning sessions. Due to T1 equilibration effects the first four volumes of each session were discarded. For anatomical reference, a T1-weighted anatomical image was obtained (3D-SPGR, TR = 24 ms, TE = 8 ms). Visual instructions (experiment 2) were back-projected onto a screen at the end of the scanner bed close to the subject's feet. The patient viewed the images through a mirror mounted on the birdcage of the receiving coil. In addition to a head strap, foam cushions were placed tightly around the side of the subject's head to minimize head motion. Data preprocessing and statistical analyses were carried out using SPM5 (Statistical Parametric Mapping, Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, University College London, London, UK). Functional images were realigned to correct for inter-scan movement using sinc interpolation and subsequently were normalized into a standard anatomical space (MNI, Montreal Neurological Institute template) resulting in isotropic 3 mm voxels. Data were then smoothed with a Gaussian kernel of 6 mm full-width half maximum.
The second fMRI experiment aimed to examine the cortical representations of willed movements of the alien as well as the healthy hand. To this end we instructed WH to perform voluntary flexion-extension movements of his left or right hand (with a frequency of 2 seconds), alternating with rest periods. The blocks were signaled by visual cues (“Move left hand”, “Move right hand”, or “Rest”). The experiment consisted of 8 blocks of left hand moving and 8 blocks of right hand moving (pseudorandomized order). Each block lasted for 16 seconds, followed by breaks of 12 s during which a fixation asterisk was shown. For both experiments the patients performance was online monitored.
The first fMRI experiment aimed to induce alien hand movements. If the alien hand was slightly stimulated, the hand immediately made a small “alien” movement in the opposite direction (“Gegenarbeiten”). If the healthy hand was touched in that way, no reaction could be observed. We made use of this effect in order to establish an fMRI paradigm with highly replicable events. The first experiment consisted of 8 blocks of left hand stimulation and 8 blocks of right hand stimulation (pseudorandomized order). Each block lasted for 16 seconds, followed by breaks of 12 s during which a fixation asterisk was shown. During the presentation of the fixation asterisk the patient was told to relax. In each block an experimenter who attended WH in the scanner room slightly stimulated WH's hand in the way described above. The stimulation was done in a repetitive way (every 2 s).
After increasing of dopaminergic medication rigidity improved but by now WH reported attacks of his left hand toward his body: the hand grabbed into his face and he could not loose the grip voluntary. When he used his right hand to release the left hand from his face the grip of the left hand became even stronger and he got scratched. He then controlled his hand during night covering up the left arm and keeping the bedside lamp turned on. Neuropsychological testing revealed intermanual conflict (the left hand did not let go objects), transitive dyspraxia using an object (i.e. hole-puncher), only slightly reduced tactile sensory, and tonic grasping. No mirror movements or synkinesis was observed.
Clinically we saw an uplifted arm and reduced arm swing on the left side, strongly left sided rigidity and intermitted irregular myoclonus of the left arm. There were no signs of sensory deficit; reflexes were obtained symmetrical. Tracer studies (DAT Scan and IBZM Spect) revealed loss of presynaptic dopamine as well as a reduction of the post-synaptic dopaminergic receptor state. Structural MRI showed increased and asymmetrical ventricles (see ). Based on the clinic and imaging we diagnosed an atypical Parkinsonian syndrome by possible corticobasal degeneration.
The 75-year-old right-handed gentleman (WH) was diagnosed with Parkinson's syndrome five years ago. Within the last six months he reported a rapid loss of control of his left hand. It became much more stiffed and lost fine motor skills. When he walked down a stair he was not able to release the railway voluntary. Playing table tennis became awful. He was not able to serve because the left hand did not loose the grip of the ball. Dopaminergic medication was not as efficient as it used to be at the beginning of disease.
The study adhered to the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the human subjects committee of the Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg. The participant gave written, informed consent to participate in the study. The patient has given written consent to the publication of this case report.
The second experiment aimed to identify brain areas activated by voluntary movements of the hands. Voluntary moving the alien hand in this motor paradigm resulted in significant activation of M1, SMA, ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), precuneus, and cerebellum (relative to rest, see and ). The active brain regions of M1 and precuneus were identical to the brain areas associated with alien movements in the first experiment. For the healthy hand the results revealed significant activations in M1, SMA, premotor cortex and cerebellum (relative to rest). The M1 activation was located relatively superior, probably due to plasticity processes.
FMRI data of the first experiment revealed that alien movements in patient WH were associated with a network of different brain areas. Stimulation of the left alien hand relative to stimulation of right healthy hand resulted in activation of M1 (36, -38, 50; z = 4.07; p<0.05, family-wise-error (FEW) corrected), left premotor cortex (-56, 4, 42; z = 3.99); precuneus (BA7, 0, -58, 72; z = 6.56), right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) (50, 30, -6; z = 6.26), and cerebellum (-20, -70, -46; z = 5.88) (see and ). The contrast right (healthy) hand stimulation relative to left (alien) hand stimulation failed to show any significant activations (p<0.05, corrected) (see ). This was expected because the stimulation of the healthy hand did not yield in any involuntary movements.
In the first experiment WH showed unwanted movements of the alien hand whenever being stimulated by the experimenter in the scanner room. Stimulation of the healthy hand failed to evoke any movements. No other unwanted movements of the alien hand could be observed by the experimenter inside or outside the scanner room.
Discussion
This study reports neural correlates of movements without conscious will in a case of AHS. Results of functional imaging revealed a network of different brain areas engaged during unwanted movements, including M1, premotor cortex, parietal cortex (precuneus), right IFG, and cerebellum. M1, premotor cortex, and cerebellum are also known to be involved when performing voluntary movements [9]. In contrast, activation of the precuneus has not been related to motor behavior, but to first-person perspective taking, experience of agency and self-processing operations [10]. Since this brain structure was activated both when alien movements took place as well as during voluntary movements of the alien hand, we suggest that this brain area may reflect a conflict of agency of the alien hand. Although the patient was able to perform the motor task in the localizer experiment, he mentioned that he needed to spend much effort and concentration to execute the conscious movements of the alien hand. Thus, we think that both in the motor localizer task as well as when unwanted movements were elicited by the experimenter, conflicts of agency may have occurred, associated with activation of the precuneus. This interpretation is supported by the lack of precuneus activation for movements of the healthy hand. Furthermore, the study by Assal et al. [8] reported similar activation of parietal areas during unwanted movements as well as voluntary movements of the alien hand.
Similar to the precuneus, the IFG is not typically activated in motor paradigms. This brain area has also been reported to be uniquely activated during alien movements in the fMRI study by Assal et al. [8]. Recent lesion studies discuss a role for the right IFG in inhibitory control over motor responses [11]. Since the IFG was active only in the condition when we elicited involuntary movements, involvement of this brain region may reflect attemptions to control and inhibit movements of the alien hand. Thus, we argue that both precuneus as well as the IFG may reflect conflicts of agency in unconscious and unwanted movements.
However, other explanations may also account for the activation of the right IFG. Since prefrontal areas are also known to be associated with resting state activity [12], brain responses in IFG may also correspond to the fact that in the first experiment the patient did not have to perform a task. Nevertheless, since the results for the healthy hand failed to reveal any significant activation in IFG or other frontal areas, we think it is unlikely that activation in IFG may reflect resting state activity.
The results of the motor localizer experiment revealed different brain activations for the hemispheres (see, for example, the activation of M1 during voluntary movements). These differences seem to reflect reorganization processes associated with the corticobasal degeneration. Those processes may also explain the bilateral activation of M1 when the patient performed voluntary movements with the left hand. Furthermore, the activation in VMPFC and striatum may be linked to an altered striato-frontal connectivity due to Parkinson's disease.
The experimental design of this study made use of a behavioral effect we observed in our patient (“Gegenarbeiten”). Although this enabled us to elicit alien movements in a controlled way, the design may also bear some disadvantages. The slight stimulation of the hand might also have elicited sensorimotor brain regions. Nevertheless, we spent any effort not to passively move the hands and to stimulate both hands in the same way. Since the stimulation procedure for the healthy hand did not reveal any significant brain activations, we think that it is unlikely that the stimulation procedure may have caused the brain activations we report.
Further, we have to consider that the alien hand movements we elicited in the experimental paradigm (“Gegenarbeiten”) are different from the more complex motor behavior we report when introducing the patient (see above). However, since these less complex movements are also not guided by conscious will, we think that they represent “alien” movements similar to the complex ones described above.
Taken together, the results of the current study extend the previous fMRI results of Assal et al. [8] by showing that at least in some cases AHS is associated with a broader network of active brain regions known to be related to movement execution and planning as well as with areas that have been linked to inhibition control (IFG) and experience of agency (precuneus).Get the biggest daily news stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
A violent loan shark who charged 4.5 MILLION per cent APR has been jailed.
Dad-of-four Thomas Johnson’s illegal money lending racket brought misery and fear to vulnerable people and families in Stockport over a period of five years.
Johnson, 41, dealt with around 100 ‘customers’ and raked in more than £200,000 over the period, a court was told, the Manchester Evening News reports.
Known as ‘JT’, he used threats of violence to ensure repayments.
Johnson, of Bank Road, Bredbury, told one debtor that he would ‘break his legs’ and ‘bury his dead body’ if he didn’t make a repayment, Manchester’s Minshull Street Crown Court heard. Other threats, sent to the same man, warned that he would be ‘put in a wheelchair’.
Johnson pleaded guilty to illegal money lending and money laundering offences and was jailed for 33 months.
The court heard Johnson ‘exploited’ his wife by using her bank account to move funds, money which would often be used for new loans. Other profit he made was spent on alcohol and illicit substances, said Judge John Potter.
Judge Potter said Johnson’s previous convictions portrayed him as a ‘dishonest and a violent man’ and described the interest rates as ‘exorbitant’.
The APR for his loans was a ‘staggering’ 4.5 million per cent.
Judge Potter said Johnson knew his debtors couldn’t afford repayments and said: “You preyed on people within your own community who were financially disadvantaged and thus vulnerable to your odious criminality.”
Simon Mortimer, prosecuting, said most loans were ‘short term’ over seven days but balances were doubled if a payment was missed.
Mr Mortimer said Johnson told one debtor that ‘nobody would get away without paying’ and that he had even ‘tracked someone down’ to Spain to pay a debt.
He claimed another ‘well-known criminal’ was behind the loans, the court was told.
Mr Mortimer said Johnson told another debtor, a single mum, over Facebook that he was a ‘loan shark’ who could also help her friends.
In excerpts from text messages read out in court, another debtor tells Johnson that she was ‘going to have to miss’ a payment because she needed shopping. Johnson replied: “Fine doubled. Your balance now £130.” He was arrested in December last year.
Adrian Farrow, defending Johnson, said any money made was quickly dissipated and the figures mentioned were based on extrapolation.
Tony Quigley, head of the Illegal Money Lending Team England, which brought the prosecution with Stockport council, said “We are pleased to have set another community free from the grasp of a loan shark. The public need to know this criminal behaviour will not be tolerated and that loan sharks can and will be brought to justice.”
To report a loan shark, call the team’s confidential hotline on 0300 555 2222.Head Of Computer Security Firm Says Anonymity Is The Enemy Of Privacy
from the you-lost-me dept
We've seen it argued that privacy is a bad thing. People like former DHS official Stewart Baker have argued that the privacy-protecting efforts of civil liberties activists are the reason we're forced to be fondled and de-shod at TSA checkpoints. Not only that, he's tried to blame the 9/11 attacks on "rise of civil libertarianism." Unbelievably, we've also had a politician recently claim that your privacy isn't violated if you don't notice the violation.
We've also seen attacks on anonymity by (anonymous) police officers and a whole slew of pundits and politicians who believe the only thing online anonymity does is provide a shield for trolls, bullies and pirates to hide behind. Efforts have been made to outlaw online anonymity, but fortunately, very few laws have been passed.
Now, try wrapping your mind around this argument being made by Art Coviello, executive chairman of RSA Security and the head of EMC's security division. According to him, anonymity and privacy are at odds with each other.
A dogmatic allegiance to anonymity is threatening privacy, according to Art Coviello, executive chairman of RSA.
Coviello cast anonymity as the "enemy of privacy" because it gives "free reign to our networks to adversaries" with "no risk of discovery or prosecution."
Customers are caught in a Catch-22. They're afraid to deploy technology for fear of violating workers' privacy" even though security intelligence tools are ultimately the best way to protect personal information, Coviello argued.
RSA executive |
. He also had a criminal history dating back decades, including multiple convictions for assault, attempted rape and armed robbery. In February 2002, the parole board granted Brossard day parole again. Shortly after his release, Brossard raped Cecile Clement, before stabbing her to death. An internal review of the Brossard case prepared by the Parole Board of Canada and the Correctional Service of Canada stated that "the board does not have any criticism to make with respect to the general management of Brossard's correctional plan" and that there was no "irregularity or weakness in the decision-making process." Pierre Etoile, Clement's son-in-law, criticized the parole board, stating that "They tell us in this report that everything is wonderful, no one did anything wrong. Except my family is still grieving." Thérèse Clément, the victim's sister stated that "The guilty party here is the judicial system. It's inconceivable that this happened because people didn't evaluate how dangerous this person was."[13][14][15]
Larry Takahashi received three concurrent life sentences in 1984 for sexually assaulting seven women (he was subsequently dubbed the Balaclava Rapist[16]). In 1997, he admitted to attacking over 30 women and was suspected by police in 120 attacks. In 2003, Takahashi was granted parole despite his own admission that he was at risk to re-offend. Randy White, a MP from the Canadian Alliance party, criticized the board for releasing Takahashi, stating that "Is there something I don’t understand about protection of the public?" It was reported that Takahashi's victims will not be told where he will live during his parole because of federal privacy laws.[13] In 2005, it was reported that Takahashi had repeatedly violated his parole by drinking, lying to his parole officer, and socializing with other sex offenders.[17] His parole was subsequently revoked in 2013.[18] In 2016, the board denied Correctional Service's request for full parole, instead granting day parole with a number of conditions.[16][19]
Eric Norman Fish was released to a halfway house in 2004 in Vernon, British Columbia. Fish had been serving a life sentence for a 1984 murder. In 2004, Fish was charged with the murder of Jeffrey Drake, whose body was found on the shore of Okanagan Lake.[20] In 2007, Fish was again charged with the murder of Bill Abramenko, a 75-year-old retired carpenter.[21] The Royal Canadian Mounted Police admitted that during the six weeks Fish was at large, no alert was issued by police or the parole board. Fish's arrest ignited a national debate on the role of the Parole Board of Canada.[20] The case lead to widespread changes for the police and the parole board.[21]
In 1995, Robert Bruce Moyes was granted day parole. He was serving a 1987 life sentence for multiple armed robberies and had a total of 36 criminal convictions, including three attempted murders and three escapes from prison. Moyes also had numerous previous parole violations. Later in 1995, Moyes and an accomplice was charged with the murder of seven people. Moyes later plead guilty to the murders.[22] A subsequent investigation by the Parole Board concluded that there was a "sound basis" for his conditional release from prison and that "It is unnecessary to offer any specific direction on change or amendment to policies, practices or procedures." Although the investigation was completed in 2003, it was not released to the public until 2006 (and its release was not announced) and only in a heavily redacted format. In support of the decision to release Moyes, the report repeatedly cited his involvement with native spirituality, despite the fact that Moyes is not a native Canadian. When testifying in court, Moyes "happily admitted that he lied repeatedly to parole and corrections officials for the past 30 years." John Vandoremalen, a spokesman for the Parole board, stated in an interview regarding the investigation that "People can lie. It would not be the first time the board has been deceived." The investigation did not (and was not asked to) determine how Moyes repeatedly managed to fool the Parole board into releasing him. Moyes will be eligible for parole again in 2027 when he is 72. [23]
Allan Craig MacDonald was paroled in late-1989 after serving 12 years for murdering a police officer and a taxi driver. In April 1990, MacDonald beat, raped, stabbed, and murdered 21-year-old Linda Shaw and set her body on fire. (Although MacDonald was not convicted for this crime (he committed suicide in 1994), his guilt was confirmed by a DNA test in 2005).[24][25]
Michael Hector received full parole after serving half of a 13-year sentence. He had an extensive criminal history, had previously violated parole and had been described in psychological assessments as "a highly criminalized man." In early 1997, approximately 18 months after his release, Hector murdered three people, including a young boy.[3]
Kevin Humphrey was granted parole although he had been sentenced to life for robbing and murdering a man in 1983 before fleeing the country. Despite three previous parole violations, Humphrey was paroled again in 2006. In October of that year, Humphrey stabbed Richard Kent multiple times with a folding knife and then slit his throat in a crack house. Although Kent survived, he still has brain injury symptoms and memory problems.[26]
Denis Lortie was granted full parole in 1996 after serving 12 years in prison for murdering three people and injuring 13 others. The decision went against the wishes of the victims relatives, although as of 2010, Lortie has not reoffended.[27][28]
Léopold Dion was paroled in 1963. He had been sentenced to life in prison for rape and attempted murder and previously violating parole by sexually assaulting a young boy. Within 18 months of being released, Dion molested 21 children and murdered four of them. Dion was subsequently killed in prison.[29][30]
Chad Bucknell was granted day parole in 2002, six years after he received a life sentence for murdering four people. Bucknell subsequently disappeared until he was recaptured in 2004. Bucknell was granted parole again in 2006 and had so far not been re-arrested.[31]
Daniel Jonathan Courchene, a known gang member, was kept on parole even though the Board knew that Courchene was repeatedly violating his parole by using intoxicants. While on parole, Courchene and an accomplice attempted to kill a police officer by shooting him in the face, stole several vehicles, and committed a home invasion in which they attempted to kill the owner.[32][33]
In early 2011 a convicted Quebec fraudster, Vincent Lacroix was released after serving 18 months of his 13-year sentence for stealing over $100 million. Sections 125 and 126 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act allow a narrow set of non-violent offenders access to parole after serving one sixth of their sentence. As a response to extensive media coverage and public outcry, the Conservative Party of Canada, at the urging of the Bloc Québécois tabled Bill C-59, a law which end early parole for non-violent offenders.[34]
The PBC said that between 1995 and 2000, more than 70% of 11,466 offenders released on full parole completed their sentence successfully while about 16% had their parole revoked for breach of conditions and 12.5% had their parole revoked as a result of committing a new offense.[citation needed]
In addition, the PBC noted that in the same five-year period, over 16,000 prisoners were released for day parole and that of these, nearly 83% were completed successfully, 12% had their parole revoked for breaches of conditions, and only 5.7% were revoked for committing new offenses.[citation needed]
Although Correctional Service of Canada insist incidents like those above are rare, a report by the Canadian Police Association revealed that between 1998 and 2003, 66 people have been killed by convicts out on early release.[3]
Gladys Abramenko filed a lawsuit after she was assaulted and her husband was murdered by Eric Fish, who had been granted conditional release to a halfway house despite serving a life sentence for murder and had been diagnosed with "criminal and anti-social propensities".[35] She reached an out-of-court settlement with several national law enforcement agencies in her civil suit, seeking unspecified financial damages from Fish, the RCMP, Corrections Canada, the Parole Board of Canada and the John Howard Society. Details of the settlement "could not be revealed".[36]
See also [ edit ]Chinxy hell yeah bro just kicking back fuck off :cryhah: christ i'm still on here
71281
Quote
http://pagesix.com/2014/08/18/kanye-west-is-secretly-recording-with-paul-mccartney/
They also reported that after his collaboration with Kanye comes out, he's retiring from music to focus on fashion, specifically saying
Quote "�After his next [collaboration] with Paul McCartney comes out, he�s going to step away from music and concentrate on clothing,� said my source.
This song could potentially be his final one, let's face it, it would be a perfect send off, and knowing the whole minimalistic vibe Ye has going on, he could have cut all the songs down into 1 perfect one, and the quote above this pretty much confirms it
http://pagesix.com/2014/11/26/money-hungry-kanye-ditching-music-for-fashion/
let's face it, this next album is probably his last (and potentially there might not be a final album, this might be a final song ) until he comes back like Jordan, wearing the 4-5
The New York Post was the first news outlet who got insider info that Kanye was working with Paul McCartneyThey also reported that after his collaboration with Kanye comes out, he's retiring from music to focus on fashion, specifically sayingThis song could potentially be his final one, let's face it, it would be a perfect send off, and knowing the whole minimalistic vibe Ye has going on, he could have cut all the songs down into 1 perfect one, and the quote above this pretty much confirms itlet's face it, this next album is probably his last(and potentially there might not be a final album, this might be a final songSource: U.S. coalition exchanged fire with rebels in Syria: spokesman
BEIRUT (Reuters) – U.S.-led coalition forces returned fire after being repeatedly shot at near Manbij in northern Syria, where they are patrolling near areas held by Turkish-backed rebels, coalition spokesman Colonel Ryan Dillon said on Tuesday.
“Our forces did receive fire and return fire and then moved to a secure location,” he said by phone.
The incident reflects the complexity of the battlefield in northern Syria, where the Russia-backed Syrian army, Kurdish forces aided by the U.S.-led coalition and Syrian rebels supported by Washington’s ally Turkey are all operating.
The coalition has told Turkey to tell the rebels it backs there that firing on U.S.-led coalition forces “is not acceptable”, Dillon said.
U.S. ground forces are in northern Syria as part of the U.S.-led coalition supporting the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a local alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias battling Islamic State.
Last year, Turkey backed Syrian rebel groups in an offensive next to SDF-held areas aimed at both pushing Islamic State from the border and quelling the expansion of Kurdish influence.
The Turkish-backed rebels and the SDF have often exchanged small arms and artillery fire in other parts of northern Syria where U.S.-led coalition forces are not patrolling.
“Our overt patrols that have been conducting patrols in that area to keep tensions down received fire multiple times over the course of the last two weeks,” Dillon said.
“We let our counterparts in Turkey know this and we continue to conduct these patrols but are always prepared and ready to defend ourselves in that area.”
U.S. forces have been filmed since last year patrolling near Turkey-backed rebel areas while clearly displaying the U.S. flag.
Russian military police have also carried out patrols in northern areas held by the Syrian army and by the Kurdish YPG militia, the main component of the SDF.
Coalition and U.S. jets have carried out operations to prevent potential attacks on local forces they support.
A year ago, they scrambled to protect U.S. special operations forces in northern Syria from attack by government jets during rare clashes between the Syrian army and the YPG.
In May, the U.S. military carried out an air strike against militia supported by the Syrian government that posed a threat to U.S. and U.S.-backed fighters in southern Syria.
Reporting by Angus McDowall; Editing by Andrew Roche
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MoreThe Supreme Court is not only a critical factor in the presidential election, it’s also a key consideration in Senate races. That’s because the Senate holds the power to confirm or deny judicial nominations. And when the issue was raised in yesterday’s debate between Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Brown’s comments were about as senseless as could be.
Scott Brown was asked to name his favorite Supreme Court Justice. Not surprisingly for a Republican who voted against confirming the highly qualified and moderate Elena Kagan, Sen. Brown named Antonin Scalia as his favorite Justice. But apparently eager to please both his base and the majority of Massachusetts voters who are Democrats, he then dissembled. According to the Huffington Post:
Brown seemed to recognize his mistake as his answer continued. "Justice Kennedy. Justice Kennedy is obviously very good. And Justice Roberts, they’re ah, Justice [Sonia] Sotomayor, there’s uh, I think they’re very qualified people there who actually do a very good job," Brown said.
Really? Scalia and Sotomayor? They epitomize the overwhelming difference in what our nation’s highest court would look like depending on who wins the presidential election. Mitt Romney says he would nominate Justices like Scalia, while President Obama nominated Sotomayor in 2009 and could be expected to nominate similar Justices in a second term.
Scalia has regularly joined highly controversial 5-4 decisions bending the law in order to favor powerful corporate interests, while Sotomayor has taken the opposite position. For instance, Scalia:
voted with the majority in Citizens United, as well as in June’s decision striking down a Montana clean elections law rather than reconsidering that severely flawed decision.
voted to let companies engaged in massive scams of their customers use a federal arbitration law to undermine state consumer protection laws across the country.
voted to address an issue not argued by the parties and craft a new constitutional rule that will make it harder for public sector unions to protect workers’ rights.
voted to deny the women of Wal-Mart the chance to join together and stand up for their rights in court, despite substantial evidence that they were systematically paid less than men and denied promotions given to men.
voted to prevent government employees from suing to enforce a key provision of the Family and Medical Leave Act.
So how could Scott Brown possibly claim both Scalia and Sotomayor as his favorite Supreme Court Justice?Getting your head opened up in a non-figurative way—that’s to say, with a bone saw and scalpel—is kind of an all-or-nothing proposition. If you and your brain surgeon are going to take the trouble, you want to get it right.
Thanks to technology like CT scanning and MRIs, brain surgeons looking for tumors don’t have to go in there without a road map. Still, as any one who’s ever used a road map will tell you, a map is still just a map. Lining it up with reality requires a lot of back-and-forth comparison.
A new bit of technology presented at the Microsoft TechFest, however, may help eliminate the need for making those side-by-side comparisons, allowing doctors to virtually “see” inside your head in 3D without ever wielding a blade. And it uses a $110 piece of technology known to gamers all over: The Kinect, for Xbox 360.
Consumers can’t peer inside their fellow gamers’ heads using a Kinect fresh out of the box, of course. To devise the tool, developers used a Kinect Sensor, which works by “observing” your gestures through three lenses that triangulate your location, registering the space you occupy and the movements you make. As “Ben,” a researcher from Microsoft, explains in the video above, they first attached it to a run-of-the-mill, USB-powered touch screen and a standard monitor, allowing them to see and adjust what the Kinect was “seeing.”
The researchers then hacked the Kinect to fuse it with images from multiple 2D MRI scans. Because of the way the Kinect is able to effectively “grab” and register objects in front of it—usually a flailing body but, in this case, a fake skull—the developers rigged it to transpose MRI data in three-dimensions onto the real-world skull in front of them. The device can then be moved around the skull to see what’s inside of it from every perspective, giving doctors the ability to effectively see inside their patient’s heads.
Using typical MRI scans “for diagnosis and surgical planning,” Ben notes, “the problem is always, ‘How do I get this information, which is 2D and mounted on a wall, for instance, into the operating theater and basically in-situ on the object that I want to perform the surgery on?’
“Now,” he adds, “the physician will have the ability to walk around the operating room and look [inside] the patient’s head from different views.”
As is, the device probably isn't too practical. Ideally a doctor needs his/her hands free in order to better examine—or even begin operating—while looking at the 3D imagery. But the applied science is encouraging. One can easily imagine technology like this fused with something like Google Glass, to give doctors the ability to simply mount the technology to their eyes—just like X-ray specs.There was a time when every Android phone had some sort of weird gimmicky feature. Kyocera was doing interesting things with foldable phones, Motorola made a phone that swiveled open, and don’t even get us started on Samsung’s many strange devices. The LG V10 and its “Second Screen” is a throwback to those strange days.
LG is not the first manufacturer to make a phone with a secondary display. The Samsung Continuum was equipped with the “ticker display,” a small section of the display located under the main display. It was used in a similar way to the Information stream on Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge phones. LG’s attempt is not quite as ambitious, but it aims to be more useful. Did they succeed in bringing the weird back to Android? AT&T was kind enough to provide us with a V10, so let’s find out.
Design & Hardware Just when you think Android phones can’t get any bigger, a new one comes along. My first reaction when taking the V10 out of the box was “holy crap this thing is big.” Most phablets make up for the big display size with small bezels, a thin profile, or a lightweight frame. The V10 doesn’t try any of these tricks. It’s big, thick, and heavy. One thing that makes the V10 seem bigger is the built-in silicone bumpers on the sides. The bezel on the sides of the display is actually very small, but the bumpers add extra width. It’s a small price to pay for more durability. Speaking of which, the V10 is not a phone you need to worry about dropping. It’s built like a tank, and thanks to the textured back cover, it won’t slip out of your hands. The overall design of the V10 is a little uninspired. I wouldn’t call it ugly, but I certainly wouldn’t call it pretty. It’s very masculine, especially the black model. The whole phone is covered in matte black, metal, silver accents, and rough textures. We don’t expect the V10 to win any fashion awards, but for the right person it’s a great-looking device. The V10 is the first (non-Nexus) LG phone with a fingerprint sensor. It’s located on the back of the device, doubling as the power button. It can be used for a few things, such as Android Pay and Google Play Store purchases, but the most common use is unlocking the phone. This isn’t the most reliable fingerprint sensor I’ve ever used, but it’s good enough that you’ll want to use it.
Second Screen The feature that sets this phone apart is what LG calls the “Second Screen.” It’s a throwback to the days when Android phones were a little weird. Unlike the secondary display on the Samsung Continuum, the Second Screen on the V10 is very small. It’s only 2-inches wide and about 1/4-inch tall. This small space is used to display your five favorite apps or people, five most recently used apps, media controls, and more. The big question about the Second Screen is does it add any value to the device? Is it actually useful, or is it just another gimmicky feature? Some of the Second Screen stuff is better than others. App shortcuts aren’t that useful, but I did find the most recent apps and media controls to be handy. The Second Screen is also useful in some stock LG apps. For example, in the camera app you can switch between the modes from the Second Screen. Another cool feature of the Second Screen is what it shows when the main display is off. You can see the date, time, battery level, and notifications at all times. It’s nice to be able to quickly glance at that info, and the effect on battery life is minimal if any. A lot of phones try to give you easy ways to glance at this info, but the Second Screen might be the best method. The Second Screen can be really handy or just wasted space, depending on how you use your phone. I like the fact that LG is dipping back into the bag of weird tricks that was so prevalent in the early days of Android. The Second Screen is one of the best gimmicky features I’ve used on a phone, but it definitely is still a gimmick.
Main Display Let’s talk about the main display, the one you will use most of the time. The V10 has a 5.7-inch LCD display with 2560×1440 resolution. As you would expect, this is a very nice display. Typically, LCD displays are not as saturated as AMOLED displays. That’s not so much the case with the V10. Colors are vivid, and blacks are very deep for an LCD. The ppi comes in at 513, which is slightly less than the 5.5-inch display on the LG G4. You’re still not going to notice any pixels. Everything is crisp and crystal clear. The display also looks really nice outdoors (at least in the gloomy Midwest light). It’s a great display, but after the unusual Second Screen, there’s really not much to say about it. You’re getting a big, bright, and beautiful display.
Performance & Battery We already talked about the exterior of the device being “built like a tank,” but on the inside it’s just as tank-like. LG has thrown in some of the best specs you’ll find today. Powering this beast is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 and 4GB of RAM. The 808 is not the new kid on the block anymore, but it’s still a powerful and trusty processor. The V10 flew through everything I could throw at it. Compared the G4, this phone feels smoother, most likely due to the extra RAM. Just like a tank, this phone is powerful. The battery life is equally impressive. You would expect a pretty beefy battery to be in a phone of this size, and you’d be right. LG has tucked a 3,000 mAh battery inside the V10. I was able to easily get through a single day without needing to stop for a charge. Getting through a day without needing to plug in might not seem amazing, but many of the recent phones I’ve reviewed have needed some extra juice before bed time.
Camera The most interesting feature of the V10 is the weird Second Screen, but it’s not the best feature. Not even close. The crown jewel of the LG V10 is the camera. LG has been doing a great job with their cameras as of late, and the V10 continues the trend. Simply put, this camera is amazing. Photos from the V10 are some of the most detailed I’ve ever seen from a phone. It’s the type of camera that just begs to be used. Recently, It snowed for the first time of the year. The first snow is always a beautiful sight, and with the V10 all I wanted to do was take as many photos as I could. Snow can sometimes be a difficult thing to photograph, but the V10 performed great.
The only problem I had with the camera is the default “Auto” mode settings. Auto mode does a really poor job in low light situations where there’s a bright light in the scene. It was nearly impossible to get a good photo at a parade full of Christmas lights. This is one area where I think the G4 is better than the V10. The good news is you can easily switch to a different camera mode and fine tune the controls.
A new thing with the V10 is manual controls for video. You can adjust things like ISO and white balance while taking advantage of the 4K video recording. All of these camera features are wrapped up in a very easy to use package. A big reason why LG’s cameras are so good is because the software is good enough to keep up.
Software The V10 is running the latest version of LG’s custom interface based on Android 5.1.1. As far as Android skins go, it’s one of the more refined and unobtrusive ones out there. The default launcher is clean and easy to use, plus you can do cool things like create folders in the app drawer. LG’s skin is all about customization. Everything from the screen-off animation to navigation bar buttons can be tweaked. The only problem is you have to dig through the settings to find the customization options. It would be nice if they were all in one place. LG has included their usual tricks. You can double-tap to unlock the phone (and even use a KnockCode to securely unlock). Dual Window allows you to run two apps at the same time. The buttons on the back can still be used as shortcuts. It can be a lot to digest if you’ve never used an LG phone before. Check out our tips and tricks list to find out how to use all of the software features. There are a few things that I don’t like about LG’s software. First, when you pull down the notification shade it always shows the Quick Settings instead of requiring an extra pull or a two-finger gesture. I don’t need to see a dozen toggles every time I want to check a notification. They’ve also buried or removed a lot of Lollipop features, but that becomes less of a problem as Marshmallow arrives.
Conclusion In the past, Android manufacturers would include strange gimmicks to set their phones apart. We look back at those times with rose-colored glasses, but it’s never as good as we remember. All of those weird gimmicks were there to hide flaws and make phones seem more exciting. The V10 is good enough that it doesn’t need any gimmicks. There are a lot of reasons why someone should buy this phone, and the Second Screen is not one of them. Buy this phone for the great camera. Buy it for the big display. Buy it for the battery life. Buy it because you like textured things that feel good in your hand. The Second Screen is like the toy that comes in a Happy Meal. You’re glad you got it, but the main event is the cheeseburger and fries.The UK advertising watchdog has launched an investigation into the Home Office's highly controversial "Go Home or Face Arrest" campaign, after dozens of complaints that it could incite or exacerbate racial tension in some communities.
The Home Office has come in for heavy criticism for the campaign, which has seen mobile vans drive through six London boroughs carrying billboards urging illegal immigrants to return home voluntarily.
The Advertising Standards Authority has received 60 complaints from members of the public concerned that the ad is in breach of the UK advertising code because it is offensive and irresponsible.
Many of the complainants believe that the ads are "reminiscent of slogans used by racist groups to attack immigrants in the past and could incite or exacerbate racial hatred and tensions in multicultural communities".
Some of the complainants – including Labour peer Lord Lipsey, a former member of the ASA's Council – have argued that the ad campaign is misleading.
The ads make the claim "106 arrests last week in your area", which complainants believe is misleading because it implies arrest is the automatic consequence of remaining in the UK without permission.
"The government is deliberately misleading the public by aggregating figures over an area which no one would describe as theirs," he said. "If the government is to mount a campaign of this nature, it is incumbent on it to ensure that it does not exaggerate or lie, in breach of the advertising code of practice".
He added: "On the face of things, this advert falls far short of the standards insisted on by the ASA. I have accordingly asked it to rule urgently on its acceptability."
A spokesman for the Home Office said: "We can confirm that we are in contact with the Advertising Standards Authority over this investigation and will respond in due course".
The deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, has said the campaign is not a "clever" way to deal with the issue of immigration and Vince Cable, the business secretary, called it "stupid" and "offensive".
The issues raised by the ASA complainants echo concerns raised by human rights organisations, which fear that the campaign is creating a climate of fear and intolerance that threatens to put race relations back decades.
Amnesty, Refugee Action and Freedom from Torture say in a letter published in the Guardian that the campaign was a cynical ploy that would foster hostility toward minority groups.
Separately, the Information Commissioner's Office said on Friday that it intends to monitor the Home Office for a three-month period following concerns over a failure to respond quickly enough to freedom of information requests.
"We should not have to order authorities to respond to requests in time," said the information commissioner, Christopher Graham. "The government has made a clear commitment towards making the UK's public sector one of the most transparent in the world. Responding to FOI requests within the time limit of 20 working days is an important means of achieving this objective".
Failure to show signs of improvement during the monitoring period, which will run for three months to 30 September, "may result in enforcement action".
• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediatheguardian.com or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".
• To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and FacebookWith six and a half months left until election day, the money war is in full swing. A few days ago, the Obama campaign said that it had raised $53 million in March, bringing its total to just shy of $200 million. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney’s campaign and a Super PAC closely tied to it raised $12.7 million, bringing his total to $87 million.
In announcing the latest fund-raising figure, the Obama campaign boasted that much of it had come from small donors. Some 567,000 people contributed to the reëlection effort last month, the campaign said. More than ninety-seven per cent of the donations were for less than $250, and the average donation was $50.78. Some were as small as five bucks. “This really is how it works,” Jim Messina, Obama’s campaign manager, said in a (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAiCyRKqswQ) that was posted on YouTube. “People building this organization five or ten bucks at a time to take on Mitt Romney.”
Mmm. Up to a point, Jim.
The Obama campaign’s grassroots fund-raising effort is certainly impressive. Heavily based on the Internet, it allows donors to create their own fund-raising pages and uses many of the tricks of online marketing. On Friday, the campaign launched an online raffle, with the prize being a seat at a fund-raising dinner that George Clooney is hosting for Obama at his Los Angeles home, on May 10th. For people who want to try and win the prize, which includes round-trip airfare and accommodation in Los Angeles, the suggested donation is just three dollars each.
Drawing on data from the Obama campaign, some media accounts have suggested that grassroots fund-raising is replacing the traditional technique of soliciting big checks from rich people. A front-page story in Saturday’s Times featured the headline: “Big Donations Drop Sharply for President: Campaign is Relying on Smaller Gifts.” That is certainly what the Obama campaign would like people to think: scrappy Barack, the defender of ordinary Americans, is relying on small donations from waitresses and factory workers to take on big bad Mitt and his fellow-members of the one per cent. But this isn’t the full picture.
Obama has certainly raised a lot more money in small donations than Romney, who has had a hard time attracting any. But soliciting donations from non-wealthy Americans is just part of the President’s fund-raising efforts—and a relatively small part. Even now, his campaign is raising most of the money it will rely on in the election from rich people. The President’s big donors haven’t disappeared for the 2012 campaign. By some measures, there are more of them than ever. You just need to count them properly.
Some accounts focus too narrowly on the fund-raising figures from individual campaigns. Saturday’s story in the Times, for example, said that “about 58 percent of Obama’s total fund-raising during the election has come in checks of less than $200.” That sounds impressive. But it ignores the fact that, these days, most of the money rich people contribute to a candidate doesn’t go to his campaign. In order to comply with campaign-finance laws, it is channelled through allied groups, such as political-action committees (PACs) organized by the two parties, or by outside Super PACs. (Under the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling, the latter groups can raise unlimited contributions from individuals and corporations.)
As is well known, Romney and the Republicans are relying heavily on Super PACs. In March, Restore Our Future, a Super PAC closely allied with Romney, raised $8.7 million, bringing its total to $51.9 million. This figure pales in comparison to the fund-raising efforts of American Crossroads GPS, a Republican Super PAC founded by Karl Rove, which said last week that it has raised $99.8 million. Since Crossroads isn’t obliged to disclose its donors, we don’t know where most of this money came from, but we do know that much of it came in big chunks. In a tax filing last week, the group said that twenty-four donations of over a million dollars have accounted for eighty-seven per cent of its total fund-raising. Two of the donations were for more than ten million dollars.
Obama is also encouraging people to donate to a Super PAC tied to his campaign, Priorities USA Action, but in raising the big bucks he is mainly relying on a more traditional tactic: exclusive dinners where well-heeled Democratic supporters pay $35,800 for the privilege of dining with the President and hearing him talk. That figure is no accident. Under campaign-finance laws, the maximum an individual can give to a candidate is $2,500, and the maximum an individual can give to a PAC legally aligned with a candidate is $5,000. But individuals can give another $30,800 to a national-party committee, in this case, the Democratic National Committee. When the dinner checks for $35,800 come in, the money is split between the Obama campaign and the D.N.C., but the distinction is moot. Practically all of it will be used to help get Obama reëlected.
While the Obama campaign has raised less money so far than it did in 2008—$196 million compared to $235 million—the D.N.C. has raised a lot more: $150 million compared to $69 million. If you combine the two sets of figures, you will find that the broadly defined Obama reëlection campaign has raised $346 million this year, which is more than the $304 million it had raised at this point in 2008. And much of this money has come in large donations.
At the top end, much of Obama’s fund-raising activity is organized by “bundlers,” wealthy individuals who donate the legal maximum of their own money and then put together contributions from their friends, associates, and co-workers. As the Washington Post ’s T. W. Farnam pointed out in an informative story on Saturday, the number of big-money Obama bundlers isn’t declining—it’s increasing. The campaign has published the names of a hundred and seventeen people who have raised at least five hundred thousand dollars. The number of big bundlers has doubled since the start of this year, and it compares with just forty-seven bundlers who raised that amount in 2008.
The list of big-name bundlers was about what you would expect. It was heavy on the media and entertainment industries—Jeffrey Katzenberg, Tyler Perry, Harvey Weinstein. But there were also plenty of rich folks from other walks of life, such as lawyers, industrialists, and real-estate developers. Despite all that has been written about Wall Street turning against Obama, there were also some financiers, including the two hedge-fund managers David Shaw and Blair Effron, and Jon Corzine, the embattled former head of MF Global.
“The lengthening list of top fund-raisers is a sign that bigger donors are coming off the sidelines as the outlines of the race against Romney becomes clear,” Farnam wrote. That sounds about right. Raising money from ordinary Americans is all very well, and the Obama campaign will continue to do it to the best of its ability. But with Democrats and Republicans both aiming to raise upwards of $750 million by the time the election is done, the President will also be busy doing what all of his recent predecessors have done: hitting up rich people for donations. And on the evidence so far, he’s rather better at it than he’s been given credit for.
Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.A supportive living and working environment for school teachers and education-related nonprofits
Miller’s Court in Baltimore is the rehabilitation of an abandoned manufacturing building into a safe |
stance on both the political dimension of the opinion piece, as well as your willingness to publish poorly-written and poorly fact-checked drek to get clicks.
But instead of using this incident to evaluate those editorial choices, the identity-verification thing is now being used as a smokescreen for their lack of interest in doing so.
There is a moral burden on the part of the spoofers too, whomever they are. It seems deeply unpleasant to me to target a publication and its editor in this way, given that you know you might cost someone their job by doing so.
We can disagree, and find each others’ views to be reprehensible, without stooping to these levels. I think it’s a known fact that HuffPo has a certain ideology, just as it’s a known fact that the Renegade Report likewise does.
You can make your choice to read or listen to one, both or neither of them on the basis of that. You can make your case that others should do likewise (whatever that is) by making that case on other platforms.
But I don’t think you should do it by lying and by running the risk of closing down dissenting voices and editorial choices, both because our commitment to free speech means encouraging more opinion, even if it’s bad opinion, and because effective communication presumes a commitment to truth, rather than being a troll.
Also published on Medium.Telltale games must have some sort of agreement with Amazon, seeing as all of its games show up in the Appstore before coming to Google play. Such is the case with The Wolf Among Us, an episodic point-and-click adventure based on the famed Bill Willingham "Fables" comic book series. It actually arrived on Amazon a few weeks ago with little fanfare, but it probably deserves some.
Telltale Games is known for making the renowned Walking Dead games, and The Wolf Among Us has a similar style. You go through the game as Bigby Wolf (the big bad wolf) tapping on various in-game elements and digging through conversation trees. There's a lot of murder and mayhem to be had in this title, but also plenty of great writing.
As with The Walking Dead games, you can download and play the first chapter for free. Chapters 2-5 are available as an in-app purchase (you still have those Amazon coins?). If it's priced like The Walking dead, it'll be about $15 for all the episodes.
[The Wolf Among Us]Police: Gunman died of self-inflicted gunshot COLORADO SPRINGS The man who killed four people at a church and missionary training center died of a self-inflicted shotgun wound, police said Tuesday. Matthew Murray, 24, was struck multiple times by a security officer at New Life Church Sunday but died after firing a single shot at himself, the El Paso County Coroner's Office concluded after an autopsy. VIDEO: Autopsy results reveal suicide The teenage sisters he killed at the church, Stephanie and Rachel Works, both were shot in the torso. Murray shot and killed four people at a missionary center in Arvada and the church 80 miles away. VICTIMS: Seven people caught in the crossfire Police said Tuesday he had been expelled from the center and harbored "discontent' toward it. Murray, who lived in Englewood, Colo., and was the son of a neurologist, arrived at the church with an assault rifle, two pistols and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition. He also wounded the sisters' father and two other church members before Jeanne Assam, 42, gunned him down, according to police documents filed in court. The documents said it was Murray who earlier that day killed two staff members and wounded two others at the Youth With a Mission training school in Arvada, north of Denver. Arvada Police Chief Don Wick said homicide detectives are "investigating the reasons for his departure from the group" in 2002. Wick said forensics tests Monday afternoon matched a handgun found on Murray's body with spent bullet shells at the missionary center murder scene. "We believe that Matthew Murray is responsible for the crime," Wick said. Police from both cities, working jointly on the cases, said they believe Murray acted alone at each scene but are investigating whether anyone else was involved in planning the assaults. The Associated Press reported that in court papers filed Monday, police said it appeared Murray "had been kicked out of the (Youth With a Mission) program three years prior and in the past few weeks had sent different forms of hate mail to the program and/or its director." Colorado Springs Police Sgt. Jeff Jensen, lead homicide investigator in the case, added that Murray "did express his discontent" with the missionary school. In a written statement, the school said "issues with his health made it inappropriate" for Murray to finish his studies there. The statement did not elaborate. It also said that Stephanie, 18, and Rachael, 16, "were involved with a summer outreach" organized by the church and a Youth With a Mission ministry that rents office space at New Life's sprawling campus on the north edge of Colorado Springs. Murray's father, Ronald Murray, is a Denver-area neurologist and multiple sclerosis researcher. Two hours after the Colorado Springs shootings, Arvada police searched a home in Englewood, a suburb of Denver where Matthew Murray lived with his younger brother. Assam has been hailed as a hero for saving hundreds of other lives. The first gunshots outside "were so loud I thought he was inside," Assam said. "There was chaos" in the church as people fled from the shooting. She said she went out into the hallway where Murray had entered the building. "I took cover, waited for him to get closer, identified myself, engaged him and took him down." Assam previously worked as a police officer in Minneapolis from March 1993 to November 1997. Assam is among a dozen volunteer security guards at the church, senior pastor Brady Boyd said. Boyd said they were a necessary precaution because of "the prominence of the church." New Life founder Ted Haggard was dismissed last year after a former male prostitute alleged he had a three-year, cash-for-sex relationship with him. After the missionary school shooting, the church beefed up security further for Sunday's service. Contributing: Patrick O'Driscoll and Carolyn Pesce, USA TODAY; Associated Press Enlarge By Kevin Moloney, AP As many as twenty bullet holes riddle the entryway of New Life Church. Jeff Jensen, of the Colorado Springs Police Department, points to an aerial photograph of the New Life Church campus, where a gunman shot and killed two teens, before a security guard "took him down."
By David Zalubowski, AP Conversation guidelines: USA TODAY welcomes your thoughts, stories and information related to this article. Please stay on topic and be respectful of others. Keep the conversation appropriate for interested readers across the map.Yves here. Some readers are likely to recoil at the idea that more inflation might be a good thing. But the flip side is that economists are still fighting the war of the 1970s. The 1970s stagflation was the result of a specific set of conditions that look very remote now: a recent past of budget deficits when the economy was already strong leading to currency depreciation (Nixon going off the gold standard) which also hurt the Saudis (who lost out because oil was denominated in dollars), leading them to retaliate with oil price increases. And because labor had bargaining power, unlike now, the combination of too much unintended stimulus (the deficits were the result of an unwillingness to raises taxes, since they’d perceived to be the result of needing to fund the unpopular Vietnam War) plus a commodities shock led not just to inflation, but an increasing rate of inflation.
What makes inflation hated now is that workers have no leverage, so stagnant wages plus inflation means a declining standard of living. Similarly, an increase in the level of inflation hurts investors. But if an inflation rate is not terribly high and doesn’t rise, bond yields and securities prices will adjust to reflect that level of inflation. In other words, what hurts workers is when pay increases lag inflation in a meaningful way, and when investment returns don’t include an adequate inflation premium.
By Laurence Ball, Professor, Johns Hopkins University; Research Associate, NBER; and Visiting Scholar, IMF. Cross posted from VoxEU
Since the double-digit inflation of the 1970s, central banks have sought to reduce inflation and keep it low. This column argues that recent history teaches us that inflation has fallen too low. Raising inflation targets to 4% would have little cost, and it would make it easier for central banks to end future recessions.
Many central banks have adopted a common policy – an inflation target near 2%. These central banks include the Fed (which calls it a ‘long run goal’), the ECB (which targets inflation ‘below, but close to 2%’) and the central banks of most other advanced economies.
A number of economists, such as Blanchard et al. (2010), have suggested a higher inflation target – typically 4%. Yet this idea is anathema to central bankers. According to Ben Bernanke (2010a), the Federal Open Market Committee unanimously opposes an increase in its inflation goal, which ‘would likely entail much greater costs than benefits’.
I examine the case for a 4% inflation target in a recent essay (Ball 2013) and reach the opposite conclusions to those of Chairman Bernanke:
• A 4% target would ease the constraints on monetary policy arising from the zero bound on interest rates, with the result that economic downturns would be less severe.
• This important benefit would come at minimal cost, because 4% inflation does not harm an economy significantly.
A Lesson from the Great Recession
Recent history has demonstrated the problem of the zero bound. In response to the US financial crisis and recession, the Fed reduced its target for the federal funds rate from 5.25% in August 2007 to a range of 0 to 0.25% in December 2008. The target remains in that range today. Yet this sharp monetary easing has not restored full employment. The unemployment rate peaked at 10% in 2009 and then stayed high; in April 2013, it was 7.6%. Unemployment of 5% – widely considered the natural rate just a few years ago – is nowhere in sight.
During past recessions, the Fed has reduced interest rates and kept reducing them until unemployment fell to an acceptable level. But cutting interest rates has not been feasible since 2008. With nominal rates already near zero, they cannot fall farther. Nobody would lend at a negative interest rate because one can do better by holding cash.
As the US recession spread around the world, many other central banks reduced interest rates to 1% or less. Like the US, their economies are stuck in the ‘liquidity trap’ described by Keynes (1936). Unemployment is high and policymakers cannot reduce it with interest-rate cuts.
In general, a higher inflation target reduces the zero-bound problem. In long run equilibrium, a higher inflation rate implies that nominal-interest rates are also higher – the Fisher effect. When a recession occurs, rates can fall by more before hitting zero, making it more likely that policymakers can restore full employment.
Suppose that central banks had been targeting 4% inflation in the early 2000s rather than 2%. Nominal-interest rates would have been two percentage points higher, allowing rates to fall by an extra two points before hitting zero. I estimate that this extra stimulus would have reduced average unemployment over 2010-2013 by two percentage points (Ball 2013).
Future Risks from the Zero Bound
Looking forward, the case for a higher inflation target depends on the risk that interest rates will hit zero in future recessions. Some economists believe that this risk is low. Mishkin (2011), for example, argues:
Although [the zero bound] has surely been a major problem in this recent episode, it must be remembered that episodes like this do not come very often. Indeed, we have not experienced a negative shock to the economy of this magnitude for over seventy years. If shocks of this magnitude are rare, then the benefits to a higher inflation target will not be very large because the benefits will only be available infrequently.
In my view, Mishkin understates the risk of the zero bound. If we look beyond the US, the crisis of 2007-2009 is not unique in recent history. A completely separate financial crisis pushed Japanese interest rates to zero in 1997. It was only around 1990 that central banks began to target inflation rates of 2% or less. The two largest economies that adopted this policy both hit the zero bound within 20 years.
More generally, history suggests that the zero bound is dangerous if central banks target 2% inflation. In my paper, I make this point by examining the eight US recessions since 1960.
We can divide these recessions into two groups:
• First, recessions with low initial inflation
Three of the eight recessions began with inflation rates between two and three percent. These episodes provide the most direct evidence on the zero-bound problem at low inflation rates. One of the three is the Great Recession of 2008-09, when the zero bound constrained monetary policy severely. Based on the Taylor rule that fits policy before 2008, Rudebusch (2009) finds that the optimal federal funds rate, ignoring the zero bound, fell to -5% in 2009.
The other two recessions that began with 2-3% inflation are the first one in the sample, which occurred in 1960-61, and the last one before the Great Recession, in 2001. These two recessions were milder than most: their peak levels of unemployment were only 7.1% and 6.3%. In both cases, the federal funds rate did not hit zero, but it came close. The funds rate fell to 1.2% following the 1960-61 recession and 1.0% following the 2001 recession.
We have seen that, with low inflation, a severe recession reduces the optimal federal funds rate to -5% and mild recessions reduce it to about +1%. Comparing these cases, it seems likely that a recession of average severity would push the optimal rate below zero.
• Second, recessions with high initial inflation
In five of the eight recessions since 1960, inflation began above 4%. With high inflation, nominal-interest rates were also high, so the Fed could cut them sharply without approaching zero. But what would have happened if inflation had started at 2%?
We can get an idea by examining real interest rates. If the nominal-interest rate, i, cannot fall below zero, then the real rate, r=i-π, cannot fall below -π. One way to interpret the danger of low inflation is that it raises the lower bound on the real interest rate.
If inflation is 2% when a recession begins, the bound on the real rate is -2% at that point. However, the recession is likely to push inflation down somewhat. In the three recessions that actually started with 2-3% inflation, the inflation rate fell to about 1% before the economy recovered. History suggests, therefore, that initial inflation of 2% will produce a bound of -1% on the real interest rate.
For the recessions that started with inflation above 4%, we can gauge the relevance of a real-interest-rate bound by examining the lowest value reached by the real rate during the recession and subsequent recovery. In two of the five cases – the recessions of 1973-75 and 1980 – the real rate fell below -4%. In these episodes, a lower bound of -1% would have severely distorted monetary policy. For the recession of 1969-70, the real rate fell to a minimum of -2.3%. For the recession of 1990-91, the minimum was -0.6%; this episode would have been a near-miss with a lower bound of -1%. Only in one case, the recession of 1981-82, was the minimum real rate above zero.
To summarise, history suggests that, with a 2% inflation target, the lower bound on interest rates is likely to bind in a large fraction of recessions.
Opposition to Higher Inflation
Would 4% inflation hurt the economy? Economists have suggested various costs of inflation, such as variability in relative prices and distortions of the tax system. But research has not shown that these effects are quantitatively important for moderate inflation. As Krugman (1997) puts it: “one of the dirty little secrets of economic analysis is that even though inflation is universally regarded as a terrible scourge, efforts to measure its costs come up with embarrassingly small numbers”.
Some central bankers acknowledge that 4% inflation does not greatly harm the economy. Nonetheless, they oppose adoption of a 4% target because they think this action may actually cause inflation to rise above 4%, or at least create expectations of that outcome.
Bernanke (2010a), for example, asserts that “inflation would be higher and probably more volatile” with a 4% target and “inflation expectations would also likely become significantly less stable”. According to Bernanke (2010b):
The Fed, over a long period of time, has established a great deal of credibility in terms of keeping inflation low, around 2%… If we were to go to 4% and say we’re going to 4%, we would risk a lot of that hard-won credibility, because folks would say, well, if we go to 4%, why not go to 6%? It’d be very difficult to tie down expectations at 4%.
Mishkin (2011) makes a similar argument, asserting that “when inflation rises above the 3% level, it tends to keep on rising”.
The Addictive Theory of Inflation
We might call this view ‘the addictive theory of inflation’. Like an alcoholic’s first drink, 4% inflation may not do great harm by itself, but it is the first step in a dangerous process.
The rationale for this view is not clear. In other contexts, Bernanke and Mishkin argue that a central bank should determine its optimal policy, explain this policy to the public, and carry it out. Why can’t policymakers explain that the zero-bound problem makes 4% inflation desirable, raise inflation to 4%, and keep it there? Mishkin points to the 1960s, when inflation rose to 4% and the Fed let it keep rising, but why must policymakers repeat that mistake?
History does not suggest that it would be “difficult to tie down expectations” if inflation rises modestly. Inflation expectations, as measured by surveys, have generally followed actual inflation with a lag. They followed inflation up during the 1960s and 70s, and after that they followed inflation down. If inflation rises to 4%, it seems unlikely that expectations will overshoot this level.
Conclusion
Since the double-digit inflation of the 1970s, central banks have sought to reduce inflation and keep it low. Recent history teaches us that inflation has fallen too low. Raising inflation targets to 4% would have little cost, and it would make it easier for central banks to end future recessions.Six "Dreamers" — immigrants brought into the country illegally as children — are suing the Trump administration over President Trump’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, Reuters reported Monday.
The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco federal court Monday, is the first to be brought against the administration by recipients of the program. DACA provided its recipients with work permits and protection from deportation.
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The plaintiffs are alleging that the Trump administration didn’t follow proper administrative procedures when deciding to end the program and that officials violated due process by revoking an enforcement promise, according to Reuters
Two of the people suing Trump are Dulce Garcia, a San Diego attorney, and Jirayut “New” Latthivongskorn, a fourth-year medical student at the University of California, San Francisco.
Latthivongskorn, who was brought to the U.S. from Thailand when he was 9, told Reuters that he might not be able to carry out his medical residency in a few months if he’s unable to work legally.
“I have all these big ideas about how I want to change the world and change systems around health care,” Latthivongskorn said. “The fact I might not be able to get there is troubling and frustrating.”
This is the latest lawsuit brought against Trump over his decision to end DACA. Several states have joined together to file a massive lawsuit to block Trump from stopping the program, and the University of California is also suing over the move.
Trump is ending the program with a six-month window, saying it gives Congress the opportunity to pass legislation to extend the protections for people brought to the U.S. as minors.
Trump and Democratic leaders appeared to reach an agreement last week about moving forward on DACA legislation, with Democrats pushing for Congress to pass a bill restoring DACA-like protections.Broadcaster Tony Veitch talks to the media after appearing in the Auckland District court in 2009.
The father of the woman who was attacked by Tony Veitch, has responded to a column written by the broadcaster, calling it self-serving propaganda.
On Sunday a piece written by Veitch was published by his employer NZME, where he said he made a "huge mistake" in abusing Kristen Dunne-Powell in 2006.
In a column published by his employer, NZME, on Sunday, Veitch says there was "no justifiable answer" for his actions, as he acknowledged his wrong-doing.
"It is 10 years since I turned from the man I'd always wanted to be, to a man I could not control," he wrote in the column.
In response Dunne-Powell's father Steve Dunne said in a statement that in the 10 years since Tony Veitch had broken his daughter's back, she had rebuilt her life completely.
"However, I wish she was not forever more connected to this man. I have witnessed her pain again today, on what should be a special day for her and our family.
The constant reminders of this public case also haunt her as she attempts to go happily about her daily life," Dunne wrote.
If this "apology" showed genuine remorse, it would have been given privately to our daughter.
She has never received one. So who gains from this public "apology"? And actually is it an apology at all? Tony, to atone for your actions, you must stand in the complete truth.
READ MORE:
* I wish my daughter was not forever connected to Tony Veitch
* Tony Veitch apologises for'stupid' Facebook post
* Social media attacks on Tony Veitch 'opportunistic'
* We need to make it easier for domestic violence victims to speak out
* Tony Veitch police file released
Veitch wrote that he took responsibility for his actions, which have seen him distanced from family and friends.
"In January 2006 I made a huge mistake, a grave misjudgment on my behalf that has impacted the lives of many people and for that I am truly sorry.
"Even though it was the only time that I have ever lashed out in my life, once was too much. I should have walked away, but instead I hurt someone and I can't ever make that go away.
"I have spent hours alone and in counselling sessions considering my actions that night and wondering why I ever allowed myself to get to that point."
"Poor judgment on my behalf changed so much that day and I apologise unreservedly for that. I live with what I did every day and as a result of my role in media, I live with it everywhere.
"My story is public and while that's hard personally, maybe it is a good thing. Perhaps somewhere it might help someone else make a better decision. Hopefully it can be a small part of the process of educating New Zealanders that family violence is not okay.
"To think of myself as a component of New Zealand's horrendous family violence statistics is appalling to me. I have embarrassed my family, my Mum and Dad who taught me right from wrong and who taught me to be a good person."
White Ribbon campaign manager Rob McCann said Veitch should be focusing on apologising directly to Kristin Dunne-Powell – not on the toll the incident took on himself.
The organisation supported ambassadors who were formerly domestic violence perpetrators themselves, and who had reformed and gone on to educate other men, he said.
Part of that process was acknowledging the blame for violence lay within, not with the target of their abuse: "We don't expect them to change in a vaccuum."
He said Veitch's column by comparison read like it was written to to protect his own image – and spent some column inches detailing his guilt over the "one singular act".
McCann pointed out it had been reported previously the police file painted a different picture to Veitch's version of events.
"It's great that he's apologised but from an outsider's point of view it looks like a PR apology. It looks like the apology you make when you're not really apologising for the things you've done."
McCann added: "If you want to make apologies and send a message you should apologise to the person you've hurt, to your former partner – not talking about the toll it's taken on yourself."
Veitch goes on to claim in the column he is a changed person, he now doesn't "live to work", and while "misinformation continues" around what actually happened, coming to terms with people's judgment of him had been a "huge part of my recovery".
"In 2009 I pleaded guilty to one singular act which Judge Doogue said was not planned and that I was not a serial offender. I was sentenced to nine months' supervision, 300 hours of community service and received a fine. Regardless, 10 years on from that misjudgment, I know and accept it will always be part of who I am.
"Regaining my career has been the toughest challenge of my life. I know there are those of you who believe I don't deserve it. I get it. Fortunately I have met some incredible Kiwis who have helped me find some inner peace to grow, live my life once more and to be a better person."
He said some people would call him a "coward" for trying to take his life, but "I have also learned until you are in that position you shouldn't judge because no one knows how you feel but you".
"Every day what I have done casts a shadow over my future; when I walk into restaurants or my local service station of course I wonder what people are thinking when they look at me.
Perhaps I will never be free from being associated with family violence. I have accepted what I did was wrong and I reiterate there is no excuse for what I did."
WHERE TO GET HELP
• Women's refuge crisisline: 0800 733 843
• Lifeline (open 24/7): 0800 543 354
• Depression Helpline (open 24/7): 0800 111 757
• Samaritans (open 24/7): 0800 726 666
Sign up to receive our new evening newsletter Two Minutes of Stuff – the news, but different.Celebrate the Winter holidays in style! This bundle includes Mirage and a host of winter themed items. —In-Game Description
The Winter Bundle includes the following items, with individual prices listed:
Bundle Cost: 600
A Winter Accessories Bundle that omits the Mirage Warframe and the Glaxion weapon is also available for 280.
Notes Edit
Introduced in Hotfix 15.5.5, this skin pack was available from December 1, 2014 to January 8, 2015.
, this skin pack was available from December 1, 2014 to January 8, 2015. Re-introduced in Hotfix 18.1.3.1 on December 18, 2015.
on December 18, 2015. The Winter Mirage, Festive Frost, Festive Glaxion skins and the Festive Imperator Syandana can be colored.
The Festive Sigil can only be acquired by buying either the Winter Bundle or the Winter Accessories Bundle.
Buying each item in the bundle individually costs a total of 790. Buying the Bundle will save up to 190.
. Buying the Bundle will save up to . Unlike other Market weapon skins that only change a weapon's color arrangement, the Festive Glaxion skin also adds Christmas lights on various parts of the weapon.
Patch History EditA former employee of Reddit has been accused of hacking into the computer systems of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and downloading almost 5 million scholarly documents from a nonprofit archive service.
Aaron Swartz, a 24-year-old researcher in Harvard University's Center for Ethics, broke into a locked computer-wiring closet in an MIT basement and used a switch there to gain unauthorized access the college's network, federal prosecutors alleged Tuesday. He then downloaded 4.8 million articles from JSTOR, an online archive of more than 1,000 academic journals, according to an indictment filed in US District Court in Boston.
“As JSTOR, and then MIT, became aware of these efforts to steal a vast proportion of JSTOR's archive, each took steps to block the flow of articles to Swartz's computer and thus to prevent him from redistributing them,” the court document stated. “Swartz, in turn, repeatedly altered the appearance of his Acer laptop and the apparent source of his automated demands to get around JSTOR's and MIT's blocks against his computer.”
Attempts to reach Swartz for comment weren't immediately successful. According to his personal website, he is a cofounder of the social news website Reddit, although many people dispute this characterization. He is also the author of numerous articles on a variety of topics including “the corrupting influence of big money on institutions.”
Members of Demand Progress, a nonprofit political action group Swartz founded, criticized the indictment.
“This makes no sense,” the group's executive director, David Segal, said in a statement. “It’s like trying to put someone in jail for allegedly checking too many books out of the library.”
When JSTOR blocked the MIT IP address Swartz used in September, for example, the Harvard fellow allegedly incremented a single digit and resumed his wholesale downloading binge, which was streamlined with a custom Python script. JSTOR at times responded by blocking huge ranges of IP addresses, causing legitimate JSTOR users at MIT to be denied access.
Eventually, MIT responded by blocking the MAC address of his Acer laptop, so Swartz allegedly spoofed the digital serial number, again by incrementing a single character of the address.
According to authorities, Swartz hid the laptop and a battery of external hard drives under a box in the wiring closet so they wouldn't be noticed by anyone who entered the enclosure. He then periodically swapped out the drives, taking pains to mask his face with a bicycle helmet to evade identification.
Of the 4.8 million documents allegedly downloaded, about 1.7 million of them were made available for purchase by independent publishers. Prosecutors said Swartz planned to dump the huge stash on one or more file-sharing sites.
Swartz was charged with computer intrusion, fraud, and data theft. If convicted, he faces a maximum of 35 years in prison, restitution and forfeiture, and a fine of $1 million. A PDF of the indictment is here. ®
This post was updated to clarify Swartz's position at Reddit and to add comments from Demand Progress.CLOSE High ranking members of North Korea's government met with South Korean officials Saturday in the rivals' highest level face-to-face talks in five years. It could indicate both sides are interested in pursuing better ties after months of animosity. VPC
Hwang Pyong So, vice chairman of North Korea’s National Defense Commission, arrives at the Incheon International Airport in Incheon, South Korea, on Saturday, Oct. 4, 2014. (Photo11: Kim Do-hoon, AP)
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea's presumptive No. 2 and other members of Pyongyang's inner circle met with South Korean officials Saturday in the rivals' highest level face-to-face talks in five years, a possible indication that both sides are interested in pursuing better ties after months of animosity.
There appeared to be no major breakthrough from the meeting that came as the North's delegation made a surprise visit to the close of the Asian Games in the South Korean port city of Incheon. But the countries agreed to hold another round of talks between the end of October and the beginning of November, according to a South Korean statement. The specific topics of Saturday's discussions weren't immediately known.
Still, just the fact that North Koreans at the highest levels visited the South was significant, allowing valuable contact between confidants of North Korea's authoritarian leader and senior South Korean officials after a year that has seen a steady stream of insults between the divided neighbors and an unusual number of North Korean missile and rocket test firings.
One analyst called it a "golden opportunity" for South Korean President Park Geun-hye to test North Korea's willingness to improve shaky ties. The South Korean statement said Park had been willing to meet with the Pyongyang officials, but the North Koreans were running out of time because they had to attend the Asian Games' closing ceremonies Saturday evening. South Korea said its prime minister, largely a figurehead but technically the No. 2 position, met with the delegation later Saturday.
The North Koreans were led by Hwang Pyong So, the top political officer for the Korean People's Army and considered by outside analysts to be North Korea's second most important official after supreme leader Kim Jong Un. Hwang is also a vice chairman of the powerful National Defense Commission and a vice marshal of the army.
Hwang and his delegation earlier had a closed-door lunch meeting with South Korean Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae and national security director Kim Kwan-jin.
The visit comes amid rumors in Seoul about the health of Kim Jong Un, who has made no public appearances since Sept. 3 and skipped a high-profile recent event he usually attends. A recent official documentary showed footage from August of him limping and overweight and mentioned he had been feeling "discomfort."
This visit of "a very high-octane group" offers Park a unique chance "to test the North Korean leadership's will and intentions," said John Delury, an Asia specialist at Seoul's Yonsei University. "Historically, North-South breakthroughs start from the top down, and if Park is serious that she wants to improve relations and jumpstart the reunification process, this is a golden opportunity."
Both sides expressed hope for better relations in comments to the media ahead of the private meeting.
It was a source of pride for all Koreans that the Asian Games were successful for both countries, which were in the top 10 for gold medals, said one of the North Korean officials, Kim Yang Gon, a secretary in the ruling Workers' Party and senior official responsible for South Korean affairs, according to the YTN TV network. Choe Ryong Hae, another Workers' Party secretary and chairman of the State Physical Culture and Sports Guidance Commission, also attended.
High-level North Korean visits to South Korea have been scarce since Park's conservative predecessor, Lee Myung-bak, took office in early 2008 with a tough line on the North. Attacks blamed on North Korea in 2010 killed 50 South Koreans.
The last such senior visit south was in 2009, when high-ranking Workers' Party official Kim Ki Nam and spy chief Kim Yang Gon, who also visited Saturday, came to pay their respects to the late liberal South Korean President Kim Dae-jung. The North Koreans met Lee, conveyed a message from then-leader Kim Jong Il and discussed inter-Korean cooperation.
Senior officials from the rival Koreas — lower-level than those who met Saturday — met at a border village in February for talks that dealt with key inter-Korean issues such as South Korea-U.S. military drills and the resumption of reunions of Korean War-divided families. In August, South Korea proposed another round of talks to discuss about the family reunions.
Specific topics for the next round of talks, which will follow up on meetings on Saturday and in February, are not known, South Korean officials said.
If no progress follows Saturday's meeting, the rivals' strained relations will likely continue until Park, who took office in early 2013, finishes her single five-year term, said Cheong Seong-chang at the private Sejong Institute. The visit could also be part of an effort to show that Kim has no problem making high-profile political decisions and has no serious health issues, he said.
Besides the North Korean test firings of about 100 rockets and missiles this year, both sides have leveled harsh criticism at each other, with North Korean state media calling the South Korean president a prostitute.
Word of the North's participation in the Asian Games was welcomed as a step forward.
North Korea boycotted the 1986 Asian Games and the 1988 Summer Olympics, both in Seoul, but attended the 2002 Asian Games in Busan, the 2003 University Games in Daegu and the 2005 Asian Athletics Championships in Incheon. Those last three came during an era of liberal governments in Seoul that were more accommodating to Pyongyang.
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1vEf3QaThe word ‘kasha’ in English was borrowed from the Russian language to name buckwheat groats, but in fact ‘kasha’ in Russian means any hot cereal normally eaten for breakfast. I like buckwheat, millet, oats, rice kasha and my favorite one is mannaya kasha (farina porrige/manka).
Mannaya kasha is creamy when it’s hot but it can become a pudding when it cools. And when it’s cold it can be cut into square pieces/cakes with some syrup poured on top or jam on the side and then it can be served as a dessert.
Mannaya Kasha Porridge
Ingredients:
½ cup of dry farina cereal
2 cups of water
½ cup of almond/soy milk
½ teaspoon of sea salt
I place ½ cup of dry farina cereal in a saucepan and pour 1 cup of cold water, mix it very well, then add another cup of cold water, stir again and put it to cook on medium fire. I stir continuously to avoid any clumping and watch it growing thicker, and thinker. I cook stirring for about 7 min. When it is ready I add ½ cup of almond or soy milk, and sea salt, mix well, turn off the burner and leave it on stove covered with a lid.
After it cools in a few minutes I serve it in a bowl plain or with some coconut oil or any other choice of oil, or garnish with seeds or nut butter.
The |
the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Another is Heceta Bank, a shallow, productive fishing ground off the Oregon coast, where nutrient-rich water wells up from the deep.
“These hot spots are sort of like crockpots, where the algal cells can grow and get nutrients and just stew,” Trainer said.
Scientists have also unraveled the way currents can sweep algae from the crockpots to the shore. “But what we still don’t know is why are these hot spots hotter in certain years than others,” Trainer said. “Our goal is to try to put this story together once we have data from the cruises.”The D.C. Council gave tentative approval Tuesday to a bill that would allow same-sex marriages to be performed in the District of Columbia.
The bill passed 11-2 and faces a final vote that is scheduled tentatively for Dec. 15.
Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, a Democrat, has said he will sign the bill, which would go into effect after a mandatory 30-day congressional review period.
If approved, the District of Columbia will join Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa and Vermont in performing same-sex marriages. New Hampshire will begin performing same-sex marriages in January.
“I don’t think it’s a giant step, it’s a final step,” said council member Phil Mendelson, at-large Democrat. “This is a civil right.”
The District’s bill redefines marriage as “the legally recognized union of two people” who meet the eligibility requirements “regardless of gender.”
Under the bill, religious officials may choose whether to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies but are not required to if doing so would contradict their faith.
Mr. Mendelson, chairman of the council’s Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary, held more than 18 hours of public testimony on the subject, which has drawn fire from religious groups, particularly local, black Christian churches and the Catholic Church.
Council members Yvette Alexander, Ward 7 Democrat, and Marion Barry, Ward 8 Democrat, cast the dissenting votes. Both have cited the will of their overwhelmingly black constituencies as the reason for their opposition.
Mr. Barry pointed to his record as a civil rights leader and said he has supported the gay community on many issues but could not vote in favor of same-sex marriage.
“This community is deeply divided on this issue,” he said, “and it to some extent cuts across racial lines, unfortunately. It’s not fair to make this one issue a litmus test as to one’s commitment to human rights — to justice.”
The Catholic Church has argued that legalizing gay marriage will prevent it from operating in the District of Columbia because the church will not extend benefits to same-sex married couples employed by Catholic schools.
The church also has said the bill would force it to offer social services, such as adoption services, to same-sex couples, which is contrary to the Catholic faith. The bill was not amended to address the church’s concerns.
Council member David A. Catania, at-large independent, who introduced the bill in October with the support of nine council members, said Tuesday he still is open to any language that could “perfect the religious freedom notion” of the bill.
“I have a deep and abiding respect for faith and the role it plays in our lives,” he said.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.Sir Tim Berners-Lee is the man credited for inventing the internet back in 1989, and he thinks blockchain technology and the world wide web will come together in a lot of interesting ways in the times ahead.
Speaking at a conference in Toronto, hosted by Ripple, the pioneering computer scientist shared his views saying:
“The blockchain and the web will connect together in lots of interesting ways.”
According to Fortune, Sir Tim Berners-Lee went on to comment about the changes users may experience in web browsers, and how they would become gateways for blockchain usage by people who are not very tech-savvy.
“At the moment there are two interfaces coming to a browser near you. One is [blockchain-based] web payments sites. You’ve got the code to do all that already. Coming down the pipe hot on its heels is web authentication. Instead of all those passwords, the browser will handle your identity.”
Blockchain technology has been nothing less of a revelation, and many compare it to the early days of the internet - an invention which virtually changed everything we knew about communication technology.
Traditionally, internet-based services require central servers and data-centers which cater to user requests, be it connecting with friends on Facebook, making payments via PayPal or buying things on Amazon.
With blockchain technology, all of these services can be moved onto a decentralized network of multiple nodes around the world, making for a much more robust, secure and efficient infrastructure.
Even though blockchain tech is in its infancy right now, banks, governments and developers are already looking into the different use-cases, from payment processing networks to land registration and even real estate sales and content delivery networks.
Some projects are also looking into blockchain-powered web hosting solutions, which could truly transform the way the internet works if they can function at scale.
However, most of these ideas are still lacking any working prototypes and while developers regularly raise funds through initial coin offerings, not all blockchain projects are completed successfully or take off.Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
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Could the fifth time be the charm for Christie Brinkley and David Foster?
The supermodel and the music hit-maker — who both are single after having been married four times each — were spotted on a date at Ralph Lauren’s Polo Bar on Wednesday night.
The burgeoning couple were such a hit that they even caught the attention of Hillary Clinton, who was dining nearby in an intimate powwow with Lauren.
“Christie and David were on a date, and Hillary came over and greeted them. She gave Christie a warm hug,” a spy told us.
Brinkley and Foster later hit horn player Chris Botti’s show at the Blue Note Jazz Club, where another source described them as “looking cozy.”
An onlooker told us that Botti pulled Brinkley onstage, where she sat behind the drums and impressively played along with the band.
Foster just divorced former “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Yolanda Hadid, who’s mom to top models Gigi and Bella. Brinkley is Billy Joel’s ex-wife and recently broke things off with musician John Mellencamp, whom she dated for a year. She met Foster over the summer at Ronald Perelman’s annual Apollo in the Hamptons benefit, we’re told. But an insider insisted that their Polo Bar dinner was “just a date.”
Meanwhile, we hear that Clinton and Lauren were in “deep conversation” about the election.
“She was spilling the beans,” said a spy, who added that Clinton had a burger, fries and an ice cream sundae. “She looked great — she looked back on form,” said a witness. Lauren is a longtime friend of Clinton’s and has designed several of her signature pantsuits.
The source said, “Hillary was blocks away from Trump Tower. The streets were blocked off, the police are everywhere. She walked out the front entrance when she left.” Trump’s ex Ivana is often spotted dining at the restaurant with numerous Trump supporters.
On Tuesday, Hillary and Bill Clinton were out at Rao’s with Harvey Weinstein, Georgina Chapman, and David and Mary Boies.Mike Goldberg (right) will call two NFL games this season. | Sherdog.com
With the NFL season quickly approaching, Fox has revealed its announcing teams for the 2014 season, and Ultimate Fighting Championship play-by-play commentator Mike Goldberg is included.Fox revealed the roster of commentators in a press release on Wednesday. While the usual suspects such as Joe Buck and Troy Aikman are prominently featured, Goldberg, along with his partners Brendan Ayanbadejo and Peter Schrager, will call a pair of regular season games.Goldberg has prior NFL experience, announcing a handful of games for the Arizona Cardinals -- albeit in the preseason. Aside from that, the 49-year-old has dabbled in National Hockey League broadcasts, calling games for both the Minnesota Wild and Detroit Red Wings.But what likely got him the new gig is his 17-year career calling the action inside the Octagon alongside Joe Rogan. With the UFC running events on Saturdays, Goldberg should be able to fulfill his NFL duties without issue.As of now, Goldberg is set for action on Oct. 19, when the Minnesota Vikings take on the Buffalo Bills at Ralph Wilson Stadium in Orchard, N.Y.Beats Electronics LLC (also known as Beats by Dr. Dre, or simply Beats by Dre) is a subsidiary of Apple Inc. that produces audio products. Headquartered in Culver City, California,[5][third-party source needed] the company was founded by music producer and rapper Dr. Dre and Interscope Records co-founder[6][full citation needed] Jimmy Iovine.
The subsidiary's product line is primarily focused on headphones and speakers. The company's original product line was manufactured in partnership with the AV equipment company Monster Cable Products. Following the end of its contract with the company, Beats took further development of its products in-house. In 2014, the company expanded into the online music market with the launch of its subscription-based streaming service, Beats Music.
In 2011, NPD Group reported that Beats' market share was 64% in the U.S. for headphones priced higher than US$100, and the brand was valued at US$1 billion in September 2013.[7][8]
For a period, the company was majority-owned by Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC. The company reduced its stake to 25% in 2012, and sold its remaining stake back to the company in 2013. Concurrently, Carlyle Group replaced HTC as a minority shareholder, alongside Dr. Dre and Iovine in late 2013. On August 1, 2014, Apple Inc. acquired Beats for US$3 billion in a cash and stock deal, the largest acquisition in Apple's history.
History [ edit ]
Formation [ edit ]
Jimmy Iovine and David Guetta
The company was formally established in 2006,[9] a time when Iovine perceived two key problems in the music industry: the impact of piracy on music sales and the substandard audio quality provided by Apple's plastic earbuds. Iovine later recalled that Dre said to him: "Man, it's one thing that people steal my music. It's another thing to destroy the feeling of what I've worked on." Iovine sought the opinions of musicians with "great taste", such as M.I.A., Pharrell Williams, will.i.am, and Gwen Stefani during the early developmental stage.[10] Beats initially partnered with Monster Cable, an audio and video component manufacturer based in Brisbane, California, to manufacture and develop the first Beats-branded products, and debuted its first product, Beats by Dr. Dre Studio headphones, on July 25, 2008.
To promote its products, Beats primarily relied on endorsements by pop and hip-hop music performers, including product placement within music videos, and partnering with musicians and other celebrities to develop co-branded products.[10][11][12][13] Beats' use of endorsements by musicians helped the company aggressively target the young adult demographics.[14]
HTC purchase and non-renewal of Monster contract [ edit ]
In August 2010, mobile phone manufacturer HTC acquired a 50.1% majority share in Beats for US$309 million. The purchase was intended to allow HTC to compete with other cellphone makers by associating themselves with the Beats brand,[15] as the purchase also granted HTC exclusive rights to manufacture smartphones with Beats-branded audio systems.[16] Despite its majority acquisition, HTC allowed Beats to operate as an autonomous company.[16] Luke Wood, President of Beats in May 2014, joined the company in January 2010, when the company was a "licensing business". Wood had previously worked under Iovine at Interscope Records.[1]
On January 19, 2012, BusinessWeek reported that Beats and Monster would not renew their production contract and their partnership ceased at the end of 2012. Dre and Iovine subsequently decided to oversee the entire operation of the company, from manufacturing to R&D,[1] and aimed to double its workforce to around 300 employees. Monster would ultimately begin marketing its own competing line of premium headphones aimed towards an older demographic.[11] At the time, neither Dre, Iovine or Wood were experienced in the operation of a company at such a grand level, but Nani Wood explained in 2014:
I didn't have manufacturing experience, but I had experience of building something from scratch … Every time we put out an album, it was basically like building a new business--a unique cast of characters, unique challenges and opportunities, and trying to figure out a unique path to market.[1]
In October 2012, Beats unveiled its first two self-developed products, "Beats Executive" headphones and "Beats Pill" wireless speakers—Iovine believed that the company would now have to "control [its] own destiny" in order to continue its growth. Iovine also commented on how other headphone makers had attempted to emulate Beats' celebrity endorsement business model (including Monster themselves, who unveiled Earth, Wind and Fire and Miles Davis-themed headphones at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show),[11] stating that "some of our competitors are cheap engineers who have never been to a recording studio. You can't just stick someone's name on a headphone that doesn't know anything about sound."[11][17][18] Following the decision to transform Beats into an autonomous entity, the company's revenues reached the US$1-billion mark, according to Iovine.[1]
HTC sale and Beats Music [ edit ]
In July 2012, HTC sold back half of its stake in Beats for US$150 million, remaining the largest shareholder with 25.1 percent.[19] The sale was intended to provide "flexibility for global expansion while maintaining HTC’s major stake and commercial exclusivity in mobile."[15] In August 2013, reports surfaced that Beats' founders planned to buy back HTC's remaining minority stake in the company, and pursue a new, unspecified partner for a future investment.[20][21]
On September 27, 2013, HTC confirmed that it would sell its remaining 24.84% stake in Beats back to the company for US$265 million. Concurrently, Beats announced that the Carlyle Group would make a US$500 million minority investment in the company.[22][23] The overall deal valued Beats Electronics at US$1 billion[7] and helped HTC turn a net profit of US$10.3 million for the fourth quarter of 2013, following HTC's first quarterly loss in company history.[24]
The appointment of a new chief operating officer (COO), a role previously filled by Wood,[1] was announced in early November 2013. Matthew Costello, formerly of IKEA and HTC, was formally appointed into the role in May 2014.[25][26]
On January 21, 2014, the company launched Beats Music, a subscription-based online music streaming service.[27] Prior to the launch of the service, Beats stated that it intends to provide a different type of streaming experience to what was available on the market at the time. Additionally, the service would only be available to consumers in the U.S. at inception.[28] Chief executive of Beats at the time, Ian Rogers, said:
We wanted to build a music service that combined the freedom of an on-demand subscription service—unlimited, uninterrupted streaming and downloads of tens of millions of songs – but layer on top features that would give you that feeling only music that moves you can give. The right song at the right time will give you a chill. Make you pull someone close. Nod your head. Sing in the mirror. Roll down the car window and crank the volume to the right.[28]
Product of Apple (2014–present) [ edit ]
On May 8, 2014, the Financial Times reported that Apple was in negotiations with Beats to purchase the company for US$3.2 billion—the largest purchase in Apple's history, ahead of its US$429 million purchase of NeXT in 1996.[29] The impending deal was prematurely and indirectly revealed in a photo and YouTube video posted to Facebook by Tyrese Gibson on May 8, 2014; the video documented a celebration in which Gibson and Dr. Dre made boasting remarks about the acquisition, with Dre declaring himself the "first billionaire in hip hop", while Gibson declared that the "Forbes list" had changed. Both the photo and video were removed from Facebook the following morning, but both remain on Gibson's YouTube channel.[1][30] Indeed, analysts estimated that the rumored deal would make Dr. Dre the first billionaire in the hip-hop music industry in terms of net worth, assuming that he held at least 15% ownership in the company prior to the deal. Dr. Dre was listed with a net worth of US$550 million on Forbes' The World's Billionaires 2014 list. It was also estimated that the Carlyle Group would receive a profit of US$1 billion from its minority stake in the company.[22][31][32]
On May 28, 2014, Apple officially announced its intention to acquire Beats Electronics for US$3 billion—with $400 million to be paid in Apple stock and the remainder in cash. Some reports suggested that the reduction in value may have been a result of lower-than-expected subscriber numbers for the Beats Music service.[1] Iovine felt that Beats had always "belonged" with Apple, as the company modeled itself after Apple's "unmatched ability to marry culture and technology." In regard to the deal, Apple CEO Tim Cook stated that "Music is such an important part of all of our lives and holds a special place within our hearts at Apple. That’s why we have kept investing in music and are bringing together these extraordinary teams so we can continue to create the most innovative music products and services in the world." Beyond stocking Beats products at its retail outlets, Apple did not provide any further indications over how Beats would be integrated into its product line at the time, and whether Beats Music, which competed with Apple's own iTunes Radio service, would continue to operate after the finalization of the acquisition.[33][34][35]
The acquisition closed on August 1, 2014; to eliminate redundancy, Apple planned to lay off 200 workers from Beats' workforce of around 700.[36][37] Beats Music was discontinued effective immediately with the launch of Apple Music on June 30, 2015.[38][39]
Bose lawsuit [ edit ]
In July 2014, Bose Corporation sued Beats Electronics, alleging that its "Studio" line incorporated noise cancellation technology that infringed five patents held by the company. Bose has also sought an injunction which would ban the infringing products from being imported or sold in the United States.[40][41] The lawsuit was settled out of court. Apple pulled all Bose products from its retail outlets, although it is unclear whether it was in response to the lawsuit, an ambush marketing conflict involving Beats and the NFL (which had recently named Bose as one of its official sponsors, and thus fined a player for displaying the Beats logo during an official activity), or as a result of Apple's acquisition of Beats.[42] However, two months later, Bose products returned to the shelves of Apple Stores. The companies settled in October 2014: details were not disclosed.[43]
Monster lawsuit [ edit ]
In January 2015, Monster Inc. sued Beats for fraud, alleging that the company had used illicit tactics to force Monster out of the venture whilst retaining rights to the technologies and products that it had co-developed, and engaged in collusion to harm Monster's own audio products business. Monster argued that the acquisition of Beats by HTC and its founders' subsequent buyback was a "sham" to take control of Monster's stake in the company—which could have been valued at over $100 million in the Apple purchase, that the company had "concealed" the role of Monster and its CEO Noel Lee in the design and engineering of its products, and that "had the partnership expired on its own terms, there would have been no transfer of Monster's years of work [onto the company]." Monster also alleged that Beats had partaken in anti-competitive practices with retailers to force those offering Beats products to not offer Monster's competing products.[44][45][46]
In June 2015, the Wall Street Journal reported that in retaliation for the lawsuit, Apple Inc. revoked Monster's membership in the MFi Program on May 5, 2015, meaning that Monster can no longer manufacture licensed accessories for iPhone, iPod and iPad products, and must cease the sale of existing licensed products that contain the certification or technology licensed through the program by September 2015.[47]
The case was dismissed in August 2016, with a Supreme Court ruling that Beats "had the right to terminate the agreement as of January 7th, 2013 or when there was a transaction resulting in a change of control of Beats", and that Monster "did not obtain the right to approve the change of control. Nor did the agreement require that any change of control had to be objectively reasonable".[48]
Products [ edit ]
Personal audio [ edit ]
Beats' original product line were Beats by Dre headphones. In promotional materials, Dre outlined the line's advantages by alleging that listeners were not able to hear "all" of the music with most headphones, and that Beats would allow people to "hear what the artists hear, and listen to the music the way they should: the way I do." In comparison to most headphones, Beats products were characterized by an emphasis towards producing larger amounts of bass, and are particularly optimized towards hip-hop and pop music.[8][49][50] In October 2012, Beats unveiled its first two self-developed products, the Beats Executive noise-cancelling headphones (to compete with similar offerings by Bose and Sennheiser) and the Beats Pill portable speaker.[11][18] In October 2015, Beats launched a new collection of speakers including the upgraded Beats Pill+ Speaker.[51]
Beats Studio 3 [ edit ]
This is currently the high-end wireless headphones that Beats offers. It connects by bluetooth and has 40 hours battery life. With sound canceling on it has 22 hours of battery life It features Apple’s W1 chip for quick connection to apple devices running iOS 10 or later, MacOS Sierra or WatchOS 4, it also features pure adaptive noise cancelling technology which uses microphones on both inside and outside the ear cups to measure sound levels based on the environment and the users hairstyle or if there is any headgear or eyewear on the users head and automatically calibrates the noise cancelling and volume level accordingly. It comes in a wide range of colours, including black and blue.
Beats Audio [ edit ]
The company has also licensed the Beats brand, under the name Beats Audio (rendered beats audio), and technology to other manufacturers. In 2009, HP began to offer personal computers equipped with Beats Audio systems, beginning with its HP Envy line.[52] The system features a software equalizer with a preset that HP marketed as being optimized for higher quality sound output.[53] Beats Electronics ceased its partnership with HP following its purchase by Apple Inc.; HP subsequently entered into a similar agreement with Bang & Olufsen.[54]
Following its acquisition of a stake in the company, most new HTC smartphones began to be released with Beats Audio software, beginning with the HTC Sensation XE/XL with Beats Audio in September 2011.[55] The software was to be included in most new HTC devices, such as the One series.[56][57][58] The Sensation XE and Rezound were also bundled with Beats by Dre earbuds, but HTC abandoned the practice on future devices. A HTC product executive claimed that despite the prominence of the Beats brand, "an accessory like the headphone doesn't factor in when someone is buying a smartphone."[59]
Car audio [ edit ]
In 2011, Beats reached a deal with Chrysler LLC to feature Beats-branded audio systems in its vehicles. The first vehicle under the partnership was its 2012 Chrysler 300S luxury vehicle, which included a 10-speaker Beats by Dr. Dre sound system.[21][60] Beats audio systems have also been included in models from Fiat Chrysler Automobiles' other marques. Automobile brands that currently have Beats audio systems available in its vehicles are Dodge, Chrysler, Jeep, Fiat, and Volkswagen.[61]
Beats Music [ edit ]
On July 2, 2012, Beats announced it had acquired the online music service MOG, in a purchase reported to have been between $10 million to $16 million. Beats stated that the acquisition was part of the company's goal to develop a "truly end-to-end music experience." The acquisition did not include the company's blog and advertising network, the MOG Music Network,[62][63] which was sold in a separate transaction to the broadcasting company Townsquare Media in August 2012.[64]
While MOG indicated that it would continue to operate independently with no immediate change in service,[63] Beats subsequently announced a new subscription-based online music service, known as Beats Music, which launched in January 2014. In comparison to its competitors, such as Spotify and Google Play Music, the service emphasizes recommendations by music professionals alongside algorithmic recommendations.[27][65] MOG was shut down on May 31, 2014, and existing users were directed to Beats Music.[66] Beats Music was in turn replaced by Apple Music in June 2015; the service also incorporates a Beats-branded online radio station, Beats 1.[38][39]
Critical reception [ edit ]
Some critics claim that Beats products emphasize appearance over quality and function, arguing that more durable and better-sounding products are available for the same price or lower.[67][68] Tests done on an HTC smartphone with Beats Audio indicated that the audio technology is a combination of audio equalization that boosts the low (bass) and high ends of the audio range,[69] audio compression, and audio amplification.[70] On accusations that Beats' products were "bass heavy", Beats current president denies it, citing that their products are not for reference, but rather for playback.[71]A member of Jordan's parliament pulled a gun on one of his critics during a heated debate on live TV, prompting the program host to desperately try to separate the two men.
The MP was identified as Mohammed Shawabka, and according to The Times of Israel he was discussing Jordan's policies toward Syria. As the verbal disagreement escalated, Shawabka reached down to toss a shoe at his critic. He then grabbed a silver gun from his waistband.
The action starts at 1:30 in the video above.
This isn't the first time this year that an MP has been caught on tape brawling. In January, an Israeli lawmaker tossed water on a colleague during a routine debate. In May, dozens of Ukrainian MPs took part in a mass fight during a parliament session.
Read more from The Times Of Israel.The Indian Coast Guard on Friday intercepted and detained a vessel belonging to a US-based firm off the coast of Kanyakumari. MV Seaman Guard had 10 crew and 25 armed security guards on board.The crew and guards have not been able to satisfactorily explain why they had entered Indian waters, sources in defence agencies have said.Semi-automatic weapons have been found on board the ship, but sources say, the crew has failed to produce the necessary documents required to carry such weapons.The ship's Captain has reportedly told investigators that the guards belong to a company which provides armed escorts, especially to merchant vessels in pirate-infested areas of southern Indian Ocean as well as Gulf of Aden.The vessel, registered in Sierra Leone (West Africa), has been towed to Tuticorin port, where investigations are on by the Indian Coast Guard, Indian Navy, Customs and intelligence agencies. Usually, ships do not carry the number of weapons as MV Seaman Guard had on board, making it a matter of slight concern to Indian authorities.Retailers are set to slash the price of the original Xbox One and Xbox One Elite models this week as part of a stock clearance in the run-up to Black Friday.
From the 8th November, the original Xbox One 500GB will be available for just £179 with a selected game of your choice. Microsoft is also slashing the price of the 1TB model to just £199, again with a selected game.
Even more surprising is the inclusion of the 1TB Elite model in the sale, dropping to its lowest ever price of just £199. The Elite model – which includes a 1TB solid state hybrid drive – also comes complete with an Elite Wireless Controller; the bundle usually retails at £299.
During the build-up to E3 and subsequent announcement of the Xbox One S, the price of the Xbox One fluctuated, with many bundles dropping below £200. It looks as though Microsoft is intending the Xbox One S to be its big seller this Christmas, and is looking to ensure the original model doesn’t cannibalise their market share.
With retailers cutting prices it seems this is the final throw of the dice to clear original Xbox One units before the Black Friday sales begin.
The limited time price drop could also prove to be an indication of what we can expect the Xbox One S to be priced at come Black Friday.
Phil Jones of console-deals.com, said, “After Sony reduced the price of the original PS4 in September to just £149, prior to the release of the Slim model, Microsoft have waited a little longer for a price drop on the original Xbox One. It will be interesting to see what effect this has on November’s market share which is a key month in the battle between Xbox and PlayStation.”
With two new consoles on the horizon, and Black Friday just around the corner, consumers may understandably be reluctant to purchase what they believe to be a dying model of Xbox One.
However, Microsoft were insistent throughout E3 on the message that “nobody will be left behind, responding to calls that owners of the standard Xbox One would be frozen out due to the release of Xbox One S and the as yet un-slated release of Project Scorpio.
Xbox Services GM Dave McCarthy said, “Will there be a range that developers will take advantage of in Scorpio? Absolutely, that’s going to be a developer choice. But, on our devices, all of your games are going to work. Period. We made that promise today: those games will work across the whole line-up. They have to work across the whole line-up.”- Warren Mayor Jim Fouts is once again under scrutiny after more offensive audio recordings were released by the independent journalist website Motor City Muckraker which are alleged to be of the mayor making disparaging comments about African American people and women.
The latest four recordings were obtained and released by Motor City Muckraker on Monday. In one of the recordings, a voice compares Black people to chimpanzees. In another recording, the voice ridicules a 60-year-old woman, calling her a "hag." You can listen to one of the recordings below. You can listen to the others on Motor City Muckraker. Click here to hear them all.
These recordings have not been authenticated by FOX 2.
Mayor Fouts was at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event in Warren to introduce a diversity coordinator for the city. Just before the event was to begin, FOX 2's Amy Lange confronted Fouts. He said he would not comment on the recordings.
Later Monday afternoon, he posted on his Facebook page that "Mark Hackel and friends attempted to hijack this ceremony by releasing more vile, vitriolic, phony tapes against me. This was timed so that they came out just before our noon ceremony. This distracted from my major announcement of the appointment of Greg Murray to be the new diversity coordinator." You can read Fouts's full statement on his Facebook page here.
Below are edited transcripts from the recordings:
"You know, Blacks do look like chimpanzees. I was watching this Black woman with her daughter and they looked like two chimps. Their mouths were elongated up, duck-ish like," one of the recordings says.
"I remember this one kid in my class, I told you, some years ago he said - we were at a party store - he says my dad had rules: only two N****** at a time," another recording says.
"You think I want to date a f****** 60-year-old hag? F*** that s***. I'm not interested in any old ugly hag. I think after a certain age, they're all dried up, washed up, burned up," another recording says.
"They are p****** when they are young, and when they get older, they're just mean, hateful dried-up c****," he allegedly said.
Listen to the first recording for yourself in the embed below, courtesy of the Motor City Muckraker:
The other recordings have been deemed unfit to publish on our site. CLICK HERE to hear them on the Muckraker's site.
FOX 2 has placed a call to the mayor's office, seeking response. We have not heard back from the office.
Last month, the mayor was alleged to have been caught on tape saying disparaging things about mentally challenged people.
In those recordings, a voice says, "Tonight I am going to meet a bunch of retards. Tonight is retard night." In a second recording, a voice that sounds like Fouts says, "Fine I guess, what good are they, they are dysfunctional human beings. They are not even human beings."
Fouts has repeatedly denied saying those comments, and has said the tapes are phony and were released by Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel. Many have called for Fouts's resignation, and he was fired from his weekly radio show on 910AM.
This is a developing story. Stay with FOX 2 for updates.Two glimpses of the future are grappling along the claustrophobic North Monroe Street, the choice of thousands of motorists commuting into the heart of downtown each day.
One sees the cars speeding in narrow lanes right outside storefronts and pedestrians meandering outside of few and poorly lit crosswalks transformed into the neighborhood feel of Spokane’s Hillyard and Perry districts. The other sees the gaping immense disruptions of downtown street construction last year that scared away foot traffic and left some merchants worried for their businesses’ survival.
With a 2019 deadline fast approaching to take advantage of grant money to rebuild the street, leaders at City Hall will soon have to decide whether to trust the decade of work that has led to the so-called “road diet” plan that would reduce traveling lanes from four to two on a mile-long stretch populated by dozens of businesses, or step in on behalf of proprietors who distrust the city’s reasoning and feel their legacy in the district is being neglected.
“To me, it’s not an across-the-board no,” Mayor David Condon said of the opposition to the project, which has been plastered on signs and billboards outside businesses along the corridor. The mayor said he believed those frustrated with the project felt left out of planning or were upset with the construction timetable, areas he said should improve as larger road projects funded by a voter-approved levy move to fruition.
“Both sides have their strong arguments,” said City Councilwoman Karen Stratton, who represents the district encompassing the Monroe corridor. “I sympathize with people that have put their heart and soul into a business, and they see past construction projects in the city that have gone on too long. I also see the point of the neighborhood.”
Opponents have targeted Stratton and her colleague, City Councilwoman Candace Mumm, ahead of a future vote that may never occur. City Council President Ben Stuckart said he believes a majority of his colleagues and Condon are on the same page in support of the construction, based on a planning process that began years ago, and no one has brought forward a proposal to return the money or nix the plans.
“We have to do something different,” Stuckart, who recalled at least two near-misses with cars while touring the district with then-Councilman Jon Snyder years ago, said. “The current situation, the status quo, is not working.”
No controversy
Ask those who support or oppose the so-called “road diet” that will alter lanes, sidewalks and signs along a stretch of North Monroe Street, and they’ll agree on one thing.
There should be no controversy.
“I tell people this: It’s like a pregnancy, and the baby is nine months along,” said Gina Campbell, who opened the vintage shop 1889 Salvage Co. about a half year ago on the bottom floor of the historic Lloyd apartment building. “This is going to happen.”
Spokane expects to begin construction on the project in time to take advantage of $4.6 million in grant dollars awarded to reduce crashes along the corridor. The project would reduce traveling lanes from four to two between Indiana to Kiernan avenues.
Another group of proprietors, many of whom have been in business for decades, still believe they can sway City Hall against the idea. They say it will kill commerce and change the character of a neighborhood and road that acts as a north-south arterial for commuters.
“If people perceive they can’t get here, they won’t come,” said Jan Richart, who’s operated the Vintage Rabbit Antique Mall on Monroe for 23 years.
Each day, the 1.1-mile stretch of Monroe sees anywhere from 16,000 to 19,000 motorists, based on historic traffic counts and where you’re counting from. Traffic is heavier near the base of the hill up to Garland.
Fewer drivers will make that trip after the road is changed. Supporters say traffic reduction, both during construction and after, will be justified by features attracting customers to local businesses. Opponents say those that choose alternate routes won’t pick up dinner at a restaurant, drop off their car at a mechanic or pop in to their favorite antique shop to browse without the hassle of congested roadways. They also argue that they may lack the ability to make money during construction.
Richart said she depended on her customers having an easy path to her front door.
“People don’t follow detours for products they don’t need,” she said. Several of the businesses in the area follow the boutique model.
The road is 50 feet across, with four-foot wide sidewalks branching out to 11 feet at intersections. The proposal would increase sidewalk widths to as much as 12 feet and allow more room for on-street parking.
Engineers estimate the traffic changes would cause about 15 percent of rush hour commuters to pick other routes, resulting in about 235 cars leaving the Monroe corridor each day. Almost half those vehicles (40 percent) would be diverted to Division, with the others split between the Maple and Ash couplet, Post Street and other smaller roads. Drivers would not have to wait longer than a minute at any of the intersections affected by the traffic shifts, according to city estimates.
Gary Jarvis, owner of Skippers restaurant at the north end of the construction area, disputes those numbers and believes the reported support for the project ignores the customers who walk in his |
world, including his home continent, South America. During Benedict's tenure, multiple priest abuse scandals rocked the church in several nations, and Francis will have to confront the damage done to the church's reputation. The Vatican is also battling internal political turmoil, including VatiLeaks, the scandal involving a series of confidential Vatican documents released to the media during Benedict's papacy.
Amid changing mores on sexuality, including same-sex marriage, Francis' traditional views have clashed with cultural changes in Argentina. Before the nation legalized same-sex marriage in 2010, Francis called it a “destructive attack on God’s plan.”
But Francis, who was rumored in 2005 to be the runner-up to Benedict, also brings a more pastoral sensibility to the church, said the Rev. Raymond J. Kupke, an adjunct professor of church history at Seton Hall University. As archbishop of Buenos Aires, he reportedly rode the bus to work, did his own cooking and visited the poor in Argentine slums. Instead of living in an archbishop's palace, he chose to live in a small room in a downtown Buenos Aires home.
"Francis fills the bill in many regards. Latin American with Italian background, archbishop of one of world’s largest diocese, rector of a seminary," said Kupke. "His name choice says a lot. St. Francis spearheaded a new evangelicalism and was a man of simplicity and humility."
It's unclear whether the pope's name is a reference to St. Francis Xavier, a 16th-century priest who was one of the first Jesuits; St. Francis of Assisi, a 13th-century friar who founded the Franciscan order of priests; or St. Francis de Sales, the 17th-century Bishop of Geneva.
The Rev. James Martin, one of the best-known Jesuit priests in the U.S. and the editor-at-large of America magazine, said the "choice of a Jesuit pope fills me with joy... The name Francis is a clear indication of his desire to focus on the poor."
In a 2007 address at a large meeting of Latin American bishops, Francis emphasized that belief. "We live in the most unequal part of the world, which has grown the most yet reduced misery the least," he said. "The unjust distribution of goods persists, creating a situation of social sin that cries out to Heaven and limits the possibilities of a fuller life for so many of our brothers."
At the same time, the new pope is expected to uphold church orthodoxy on sexuality, abortion, marriage and contraception. The same year he said same-sex marriage attacks God's plan, he also said gay people adopting children is an act of discrimination against children.
He has also shown compassion for people with HIV and AIDS; in 2001, he visited AIDS patients in a hospice where he washed and kissed the feet of 12 patients.
One of the concerns among church-watchers before the conclave was whether the next pope would be strong enough to reform corruption in the curia, the mostly Italian group of cardinals who run the Vatican. National Catholic Reporter correspondent John Allen Jr. is unsure Francis is the right man for the task.
"Doubts that circulated about Bergoglio's toughness eight years ago may arguably be even more damaging now, given that the ability to govern and to take control of the Vatican bureaucracy seems to figure even more prominently... Although Bergoglio is a member of several Vatican departments, including the Congregations for Divine Worship and for Clergy, he's never actually worked inside the Vatican, and there may be concerns about his capacity to take the place in hand," he wrote in a profile of the cardinal before he was elected.
Allen also noted the pope's age. At 76, he is two years younger than Benedict was when he was chosen -- significant, considering Benedict resigned Feb. 28 because of old age and declining health.
Judy Jones, an American who is associate director the Survivors Network for Those Abused By Priests, said the group is keeping a close eye on Francis and wants him to "show the world that the sexual abuse of children and cover-up of abuse will not be tolerated." Ahead of the conclave, SNAP released two lists of 15 cardinals it was "most worried about becoming the next pope." Francis was not on the list and Jones said the she knows "very little about this pope."
Terence McKiernan, the president of BishopAccountability.org, an organization that tracks bishops' records on clergy abuse, had more pointed words about Francis.
"There is some evidence that Bergoglio is well aware that rebuilding the church will entail much more work on the abuse crisis than was done by Pope Benedict. For example, last year Bergoglio was outspoken regarding the case of accused (Argentine) priest Justo José Ilarraz," McKiernan said.
But while "Pope Francis’ meetings with survivors of sexual abuse will be less formal than Pope Benedict’s pioneering encounters," McKiernan said Francis "encountered many cases of sexual abuse in the years when he was an auxiliary bishop and then the archbishop of Buenos Aires. Yet he has been content for the most part to remain silent."
Francis, whose papacy is effective immediately, will be formally installed at 4:30 a.m. EDT (9:30 a.m. CET) Tuesday, the feast of St. Joseph.
Before that, the pope will privately visit Saint Mary Major basilica to pray on Thursday in one of his first acts as pontiff. He will then have an audience with cardinals at 6 a.m. EDT (11 a.m. CET) Friday, as well as an audience with journalists at the same time on Saturday.
Papal installation typically begins with a visit with cardinals to the grottos of St. Peter's Basilica, where the first pope, St. Peter, is said to be buried. There, the new pope is expected to say, "I leave from where the apostle arrived," before a procession to the square and the installation Mass (the Mass lasted two hours for Benedict's installation in 2005).
At the installation Mass, Francis is expected to receive the Fisherman's Ring made for his papacy (the one Benedict wore was given up when he retired and purposely damaged by Vatican authorities per tradition) as well as the pallium, the woolen stole that's a symbol of his authority.
When Benedict was elected, 12 church representatives knelt in front of him at the installation: three cardinals, one bishop, a priest, a deacon, a married couple, a nun and man from a religious order, and two young people who have had their confirmations -- a key sacrament of the faith. A similar group could possibly kneel in front of Francis as a symbolic pledge of obedience.
After the Mass, the new pope customarily is driven around St. Peter's Square to greet groups of priests and laypeople from around the world. In the following days, he is expected to visit St. Paul Outside the Walls. and St. John Lateran basilicas. The first visit is usually to St. Paul Outside the Walls.
During his first few weeks as pope, Francis will live in a temporary apartment away from the official papal residence. Vatican spokesman Lombardi previously showed reporters a video of the new pope's short-term home, which has a study, a sitting area and a carving of Jesus Christ's face on the headboard of the bed. Francis will stay there while the official papal apartment is renovated. The apartment was sealed after Benedict's resignation and church rules say it can't be reopened for any reason until there is a new pope.Virgin Mobile CEO: It’s not hard to hire in KC
It’s been just over a year since Virgin Mobile USA selected Kansas City as the location for its new headquarters, relaunching as a subsidiary of the Overland Park-based wireless giant Sprint.
Since then, the firm has moved into a swanky, downtown office and hired 65 people. A handful of positions are still available.
Although finding the best talent might have been an earlier concern, Virgin Mobile CEO Dow Draper said, hiring qualified people in Kansas City wasn’t a challenge.
“I remember asking before deciding on Kansas City, ‘Is there actually going to be enough people together to pull together the right ecommerce team?’” Draper said Wednesday at the KC Tech Council’s Tech CEO Speaker Series. “That was our biggest concern, how to attract great people. It has actually been a lot easier than we thought it would be. It has not been hard.”
The Virgin Mobile team is full of “doers” who have worked extra hard preparing for the launch, he said.
“It’s all about the people. It really is,” Draper said. “This is a group that I would put up against anybody. When you hire good people, they can step up and they can do it and we had a team that stepped up. I’m extremely blessed that we have the right folks.”
The downtown location was partially responsible for the firm’s ability to attract talent, Draper added. Virgin Mobile signed a lease in January at One Kansas City Place at 1200 Main St. in downtown Kansas City.
“There are so many great things going on in Kansas City right now,” Draper said. “What’s happening downtown and in the Crossroads is so great, and if the city were to let off the gas on that, it would be a travesty.”
Although Draper touts Kansas City as a great place to be, it wasn’t his natural first pick. Marcelo Claure, Sprint CEO, told Draper that he could put the Virgin Mobile headquarters wherever he wanted, he said.
“We had some choices,” Draper said. “My first thought was that we’re going to Seattle. Then my wife and daughter were like, ‘Looks like you’re going on your own.’ They love it here, they’ll be in Kansas City forever.”
The Kansas City Area Development Council led a multi-organizational effort to attract Virgin Mobile to Kansas City. In addition to family life, Kansas City’s low cost of living closed the deal for Draper.
“It’s crazy how inexpensive it is to be here,” Draper said. “I can’t believe what we pay for the downtown building. We can’t beat the cost.”
In 2009, Sprint — then Sprint Nextel — purchased Virgin Mobile in a $483 million deal to focus on pre-paid phone sales. English business mogul Sir Richard Branson founded the Virgin Group, of which Virgin Mobile USA was a part. The conglomerate owns more than 400 companies around the world.
In efforts to establish a brand independent from Sprint, Draper said, it was important for the firm to find a location outside of the Sprint campus. Yet, he is glad the Virgin Mobile headquarters’ proximity to Sprint allows for collaboration, he said.
The firm operates more like a startup than a corporation, said Justin Scott, Virgin Mobile director of communications.
“Virgin is a disrupter brand and very much a startup,” Scott said. “We’re digital focused and digital first. We are a small but focused team, which enables us to have a startup mentality, doing things quicker and with quicker pivots.”
In September, the edgy Virgin Mobile headquarters — designed by Kansas City-based GastingerWalker& — will open its doors officially, complete with bright red paint, a Virgin Wines rack, a Virgin Mobile neon sign and a photograph of Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group.
Draper hopes to continue to tap into the growth of the Kansas City startup community, he said.
“Despite the great things going on here, there are challenges,” he said. “One thing is the diversity and equality challenge in Kansas City. Then there’s the airport terminal, schools that need to be invested in, crime rates … But Kansas City is on the right path, I think the sky’s the limit in this place.”
Facebook CommentsLike millions of viewers around the nation, I was thrilled this week when TLC renewed my television show, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, for a second fun-filled season. It fills my heart with joy to know that our raucous Southern lifestyle in rural Georgia entertained so many families and started a "redneck fever.” Heck, more people watched ‘Honey Boo Boo’ than the Republican National Convention. That’s really something!
So as me, Mama, Glitzy and eleven-fingered baby Kaitlyn gear up for the next chapter of Piggly Wiggly and pageantry, I want to take a moment to thank all of our fans out there and to remind them that this charade is, of course, going to end very, very badly.
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You know that, right? That my whole life is, sooner or later, going to wind up being a complete and utter train wreck of delusion and misery? Just want everybody to be clear on that.
Again, I’m glad people are enjoying the show. It is definitely good that people enjoy gathering around the television and laughing at my chubby cheeks, and my tacky family, and all of our hysterical antics. Just so long, of course, as people are aware that there is no possible scenario in which I will grow up to be a functional human being who is healthy and psychologically well-adjusted. Or successful. Or anything but a sick punchline, or worse. Because viewers should already know that. I mean, I’m a 7-year-old girl who regularly consumes a combination of Red Bull and Mountain Dew, for God’s sake. And who loves constantly mugging in front of a camera at an age when a human being generally shouldn’t be doing that kind of thing.
But, then again, what am I saying. Of course people know this! Of course people understand implicitly that I am going to one day in the near future develop serious health problems not limited to massive weight gain, type II diabetes, and likely drug addiction as a result of emotional maladjustment and years of unrestricted access to dangerous substances provided by television producers and sponsors. You’d kind of have to be a willfully clueless idiot not to realize that, after all. That’s something anyone who’s watched even one second of my show, particularly any moment that involves me or my family eating or speaking, would realize.
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So, assuming you all understand this, then that means you are all totally okay with gleefully laughing at me and my family, even when there is a pretty darn good chance that an act of horrific violence may very well lurk in my not-too-distant future. An act of violence that, say, 10 or 15 years from now will make people who once watched my show say, “Oh my God, that’s awful. What a sad and fucked up little life she had. Well, that’s what happens when someone is given that much attention and exposure at such an early age. It warps their mind and makes it impossible for them to develop into normal adults.”
Those are words you will speak one day. And you’re okay with that, right? You should probably be okay with that if you want to keep watching my show.
And, as any television viewer with even one shred of common sense surely knows, that’s only in the best-case scenario. In the worst-case scenario, my reckless behavior and destructive lifestyle will entangle dozens of people within an inner circle of handlers, publicists and hangers-on with whom I’m still able to surround myself due to appearances at nightclubs and adult magazines, which will pay just enough money to keep me from insolvency—that is, until I reach an age in which the public inevitably tires of me and I have to resort to pornography or prostitution.
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These things may not happen in the immediate future or even within the next few decades, but rest assured that they will more than likely happen sometime during my lifetime, a lifetime that will probably end before age 45, in large part due to years of hard partying, substance abuse, reckless driving, or some combination of those three, if not by outright suicide brought on by years of depression and estrangement from family.
Also, just to be clear, when you look at me, I do hope a series of images rushes across your brain, including a breaking TMZ alert about my possible death, a hastily-aggregated Huffington Post slideshow titled “Honey Boo Boo Through The Years—which will showcase childhood pageant photos, mugshots from multiple arrests, before-and-after shots from plastic surgery procedures, and completely staged paparazzi photos from when I needed some extra cash—and the leaked photo of my corpse that an undisclosed family member will sell to the tabloids for $15,000. You should definitely see all of that. As I’m sure you do.
But I hope I haven’t given the wrong impression. By all means, continue watching the show. After all, it’s a hell of a good time! No one who’s seen me practice a new dance routine for an upcoming pageant can argue that it’s not adorable, especially when I’m dressed up like a sex icon like Madonna or Britney Spears.
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Of course, they also can’t argue that years of participating in pageants that shamelessly exploit young girls’ bodies could possibly lead to anything other than my developing a horrible relationship with my body and view of female sexuality, causing me to either overeat, starve myself, cut myself, undergo regular liposuction, become pregnant accidentally, and generally destroy myself trying to fill the hollow void left by the deceivingly glamorous and fun-filled stardom of my youth. Definitely can’t argue that.
Anyway, love y’all! Thanks for watching!International survey shows reading skills of Irish pupils has improved significantly since 2011
The Minister for Education and Skills, Richard Bruton T.D., today launched the 2016 PIRLS (the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) report, which shows that Ireland’s primary school children are best in Europe and OECD countries for reading skills.
PIRLS is an international study which examines fifty countries every five years and reports on the reading achievement of pupils in Fourth Class. Fourteen of these countries, including Ireland, last year also took part in a new component (ePIRLS), which assesses reading in an online environment.
Minister Bruton has set the ambition to make Ireland’s education and training service the best in Europe within a decade. Today’s results show that the reading skills of our primary school children, both in the paper based and online assessment are among the best in all European and OECD countries.
Key Results
No country in Europe is better than Ireland for reading skills at primary level
Irish pupils’ overall reading achievement score has improved by 15 points since the last cycle of the study which was in 2011
The gender gap in Ireland is smaller than that the gap internationally. Furthermore, this gap has narrowed significantly between 2011 and 2016 in Ireland
Since the last study in 2011, the number of pupils in Ireland with only basic reading skills has dropped significantly
The percentage of Irish pupils who have advanced reading skills rose from 16% in 2011 to 21% in 2016, which is much higher than the international average in PIRLS
Irish pupils also performed exceptionally well on the new online reading assessment in ePIRLS. Only one other country (Singapore) outperformed Ireland on this test
PIRLS 2016 data does not compare pupils’ performance in DEIS and non-DEIS schools. However, the most recently available data from the Educational Research Centre indicate that the reading achievement of pupils in DEIS primary schools has continued to improve from 2007 onwards. Much of this improvement has been among lower achievers.
Commenting on the report, Minister Bruton said:
“I would like to pay tribute to all principals, teachers and all those who made these fantastic results possible.
“I have set the ambition to make Ireland’s education and training service the best in Europe by 2026. There are many aspects to achieving this ambition but few are more important than the ability of our education system to equip our children with exceptional literacy skills. I am delighted with the results of this internationally recognised, in-depth study, which shows that no country in Europe is better than Ireland for reading performance at primary level.
“I am also very encouraged by the significant improvements that have been made since the last cycle of PIRLS which was in 2011. These findings are consistent with a number of other recent, major reports including the National Assessments of English Reading and Mathematics 2014 and PISA 2015.
“Being literate is a fundamental skill. It enables our young people to confidently participate in education and fulfil their full potential in life. The basic aim of this Government is to sustain our economic progress and use it to build a fair and compassionate society. Ensuring our children are highly literate ensures they are given the best start in life..”
He commended the report’s authors and thanked all of the pupils, teachers, principals and parents who took part in the study and responded to the questionnaires.
Eemer Eivers, one of the report’s authors, said that “The results of the online reading assessment – ePIRLS – are particularly interesting. This is the first assessment of its kind at primary level and it is encouraging to see that most Irish pupils had little or no difficulty navigating through the complex online scenarios they encountered. Equally, they seem able to evaluate information in a digital environment – for example, identifying the more reliable sources of information and integrating information from multiple web pages.”
Lorraine Gilleece, another of the authors, noted that “A positive feature of the results is that the improvement in performance since 2011 is very balanced. We see improvements on all aspects of reading and types of texts, and both boys and girls have improved. Also, in Ireland boys have slightly narrowed the gender gap on what we call Literary style texts. Perhaps contrary to popular perception, boys here are well able to engage with and to enjoy literary texts.”
Note to Editors
Among all countries included in the study, only two out of fifty significantly outperformed Ireland in reading in the paper based assessment, compared to five out of 45 countries in PIRLS 2011. Only pupils in the Russian Federation and Singapore statistically significantly outperformed Irish pupils in 2016. On ePIRLS, the online component, only Singapore obtained a significantly higher mean score than Ireland’s mean of 567 in 2016.
A note on mean scores and scales
All PIRLS scores are reported on a scale which is set to a ‘centrepoint’ of 500 set during the first PIRLS assessment in 2001. This is not the international average for PIRLS 2016. It is a constant reference point against which countries can monitor changes in their performance over time. Thus, we can directly compare Ireland’s score of 567 in 2016 with our score of 552 in PIRLS 2011, and say that Ireland has improved by 15 points.
About PIRLS 2016
PIRLS is organised by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), a non-profit organisation based in The Hague, Netherlands. At an international level, the study is managed by the PIRLS & PIRLS International Study Centre in Boston College, USA. In Ireland, the Educational Research Centre (ERC) manages PIRLS on behalf of the Department of Education and Skills (DES), and provides the national report on PIRLS 2016.
As well as reading achievement, PIRLS provides detailed comparisons of home activities, teaching practices and characteristics of education systems in the various participating countries. The study operates on a five-year cycle, with the first administration taking place in 2001. Ireland has taken part in PIRLS once previously, in 2011.
Altogether, 50 countries participated in PIRLS, while 14 took part in ePIRLS. Approximately 340,000 pupils in 50 countries/regions (and 11 benchmarking participants) took part in PIRLS. Benchmarking participants are sub-national regions or entities which must follow the same procedures and meet the same data quality standards as countries in order to participate (e.g., the province of Ontario, Canada, or the city of Madrid). As well as pupils, 330,000 parents, 16,000 teachers and 12,000 schools took part.
In Ireland, PIRLS and ePIRLS took place in schools in April 2016. The PIRLS assessment preceded the ePIRLS assessment, and both were conducted on separate days. In total, 4,607 pupils completed PIRLS, while a randomly selected subset of 2,473 pupils also completed ePIRLS. The assessments were administered by teachers in participating schools. Each test was allocated 80 minutes, with a short break in the middle. After the PIRLS tests, and generally on the same day, pupils completed questionnaires, which took about 30 minutes.
Current and forthcoming national reports
The report released today – Reading achievement in PIRLS 2016: Initial report for Ireland – describes the reading achievement of pupils in Fourth Class, for both paper-based reading and reading in an online environment. It focuses on the results of the tests, and contains information on mean (average) performance, the distribution of performance (e.g., how higher- and lower-achieving pupils in Ireland compare to their peers in other countries), the percentage of pupils reaching each of four internationally-defined Benchmarks of achievement, and areas of relative strength and weakness in the performance of pupils in Ireland.
In 2018, a number of contextual reports will be published by the Educational Research Centre that will examine the educational context in Ireland more broadly, together with associations between contextual factors and pupil achievement. In particular, it will examine the relationship between performance on the online assessment and on the paper-based assessment.
More information
The report is available for free download from www.erc.ie. More information about PIRLS is also available from http://www.erc.ie/studies/pirls/. The authors and report title are as follows:
Eemer Eivers, Lorraine Gilleece & Emer Delaney. Reading achievement in PIRLS 2016: Initial report for Ireland. Dublin: Educational Research Centre.
On DEIS schools
Report on DEIS schools from the Education Research Centre: Kavanagh, Weir & Moran,. The evaluation of DEIS: Monitoring achievement and attitudes among urban primary school pupils from 2007 to 2016 (2017)Materials. B. Tsao-Nivaggioli (Avicena Group, Palo Alto, California, USA) provided the cGMP-grade cyclocreatine used for this study. All other chemicals were reagent grade.
Generation of Slc6a8–/y mice. A Cre-lox system (51) was used to generate a conditional Slc6a8 knockout in the brain. We first generated Slc6a8 floxed mice. Homologous recombination in C57BL/6N cells was carried out by transfecting a targeting vector containing a loxP site within intron 1 and a positive selection cassette containing the neomycin phosphotransferase gene (neo) flanked by Frt sites and the second loxP site within intron 4 (Figure 2A). Neomycin-resistant ES cell clones were screened for homologous recombination by PCR, followed by Southern blot analysis of ES cell genomic DNA using probes located outside the 5′ and 3′ homology arms. Correctly targeted ES cell clones were injected into MF-1 blastocysts. Male chimeras were crossed with C57BL/6J females to produce N1F0 offspring, which was confirmed by Southern blot and PCR analysis. The conditional allele was generated by breeding the heterozygous mice to a germline Flp deleter strain (Jackson Laboratory) to delete the neo cassette, leaving a single loxP and Frt sites in intron 4. The resulting mice were further bred with C57BL/6J females to be free of flpase. We then crossed Slc6a8fl/fl female mice with male mice (C57BL/6J) expressing a Cre recombinase driven by the CamkIIα promoter in the brain (52) to generate Slc6a8–/y mice and Slc6a8fl/y littermate controls. We chose this Cre construct because it drives expression throughout the mouse brain, but shows particularly dramatic expression in the hippocampus and cortex, areas controlling cognitive function, which is an important aspect of the human phenotype. It is also known that Slc6a8 is highly expressed in that area in mice (53). We did not observe problems with the floxed mice, so we used Slc6a8fl/y animals as control littermates. This minimizes the influence of genetic background on the observed phenotype. A total of 29 Slc6a8–/y mice and 28 male Slc6a8fl/y controls were used in this study. At 6 months of age, baseline assessment was performed for all mice. To assess the efficacy of cyclocreatine treatment, 17 of the 29 Slc6a8–/y mice and 15 of the 28 Slc6a8fl/y controls were further used for 9 weeks of treatment.
Experimental design. Mice were maintained on an ad libitum standard pelleted diet (Teklad irradiated standard diets; Harlan animal research laboratory) and on ad libitum water intake with 12-hour dark/light cycles in 70°F ± 2°F through the study. At the conclusion of the study, mice were analyzed for Slc6a8 mRNA levels. Other tests — such as baseline values for working and reference memory, novel object recognition, Morris water maze, body composition, home cage locomotor activity, rotarod, hanging wire grip, and beam walk tests — were done before and after treatment. At 12 months of age, Slc6a8–/y and Slc6a8fl/y mice were randomly assigned to groups and started on 1 of 3 treatments for 9 weeks: (a) cyclocreatine (n = 7 [Slc6a8–/y]; 5 [Slc6a8fl/y]), (b) creatine (n = 5 per group), and (c) maltodextrin as placebo (n = 5 per group). Each treatment compound was supplemented in the drinking water, and the concentration was adjusted to deliver 0.28 mg/g body weight/d. This is a standard creatine dose for human subjects (20 g/70 kg body weight/d), intended to induce maximum creatine or phosphocreatine concentrations inside the body. Body weight and water and food intake volumes were monitored every other day throughout the treatment period. After 9 weeks of treatment, each parameter was evaluated and compared with baseline values or between groups.
Genotyping. Genotyping of the conditional allele was performed by PCR with primers that flank the position of the loxP-Frt insertion with genomic DNA from mouse tail and brain templates (VS747 in intron 4, 5′-AGGTCCAGACAGTAACTACCCTTC-3′; VS584 in intron 4, 5′-TGGGTTTGCAGCTTGGTGTTATTGC-3′; Pnew in intron 1, 5′-TCCTACACCAATACCCCCATAAGC-3′) under the following conditions: 40 cycles of a reaction consisting of 30 seconds of denaturation at 94°C, 30 seconds of annealing at 58°C, and 1 minute of elongation at 72°C, followed by a final extension for 10 minutes at 72°C. The expected product sizes were 422 bp for the WT allele, 548 bp for the floxed allele, and 346 bp for the knockout allele. PCR for Cre recombinase expression was performed with genomic DNA from mouse tail templates (Cam k1, 5′-GGTTCTCCGTTTGCACTCAGGA-3′; Cam k2, 5′-CCTGTTGTTCAGCTTGCACCAG-3′; Cam k5, 5′-CTGCATGCACGGGACAGCTCT-3′) under the following conditions: 30 cycles of a reaction consisting of 30 seconds of denaturation at 94°C, 30 seconds of annealing at 67°C, and 1 minute of elongation at 72°C, followed by a final extension for 10 minutes at 72°C. The expected product sizes were 350 bp for Cre recombinase and 300 bp for the internal control. PCR products were separated by electrophoresis on a 1.5% agarose gel and visualized by ethidium bromide staining; images were taken with a Universal Hood II (Bio-Rad Laboratories).
Semiquantified RT-PCR. Total RNA was extracted from brain tissues of Slc6a8–/y and Slc6a8fl/y mice at 6 months of age using TRIzol reagent (Invitrogen) according to the manufacturer’s instruction and was quantified by determination of absorbance at A260. Then, total RNA was treated with RNase-free DNase (Ambion). RT priming with oligo (dT) primers (Invitrogen) was performed to generate cDNAs from 1 μg total RNA using Superscript II (Invitrogen) following the manufacturer’s instructions. Equal amounts of cDNA from all samples were subjected to PCR. PCR primer pairs were as follows: Slc6a8 forward, 5′-CCATGAAGACTGTGCCAATG-3′; Slc6a8 reverse, 5′-CCCCTTCCACACACAGAAGT-3′; Actb forward, 5′-GTGGGCCGCCCTAGGCACCAG-3′; Actb reverse, 5′-CTCTTTGATGTCACGCACGATTTC-3′. Reactions were performed in 25 μl total volume with 25 pM of each primer. Amplification conditions were as follows: 95°C for 10 minutes, followed by 28 or 25 cycles (for Slc6a8 or Actb, respectively) of 95°C for 30 seconds, 60°C for 30 seconds, and 72°C for 30 seconds. The expected product size was 202 bp. Amplified fragments were separated by electrophoresis on 2% agarose gels and visualized by ethidium bromide staining. The intensity of each band was measured by Scion Image (Scion Corp.), and the intensity of Slc6a8 was expressed relative to that of Actb.
Cyclocreatine and creatine assay. Animals were deeply anesthetized with 1%–2% isoflurane delivered with oxygen. Whole blood was harvested with a 1-ml syringe and 27-gauge, 0.625-inch needle from the heart and centrifuged at 3,000 g for 20 minutes; serum was subsequently placed in Eppendorf tubes. Brain, liver, heart, kidney, lung, bladder, and soleus and gastrocnemius muscles were rapidly removed and frozen in liquid nitrogen. Urine and hair samples were also collected. The samples were each dropped into 250 μl boiling water and boiled for 20 minutes to remove protein and lyse cells. The total creatine content of the protein-free extract was assayed using the fluorometric method of Conn (54). Total cyclocreatine content of brain and hair was assayed using the method of Griffith (55). All chemicals were obtained from Sigma-Aldrich unless otherwise stated.
In vivo MRS. All data were collected on a Bruker BioSpec 7T system (Bruker BioSpec 70/30) equipped with 400 mT/m actively shielded gradients. In total, 6 mice were used at baseline assessment, and 18 mice after 9 weeks of treatment. Mice were anesthetized by 1%–2% isoflurane delivered in air, and the respiration rate was maintained at 60–100 breaths per minute. Core temperature was maintained at 37°C by warm air circulated through the magnet bore. All animals’ brains were scanned with a custom-built radio frequency coil. T2-weighted axial and sagittal localizer images were acquired with a fast-spin echo sequence. A proton double-spin echo sequence was used to shim on a voxel approximately 6 mm × 4 mm × 6 mm, covering most of the brain. The water proton line width averaged about 17 Hz. After shimming, 31P data were acquired with an ISIS sequence from the same voxel using a 4-second repetition time, 2,048 complex points, 8,000 Hz spectral width, and 4 repetitions of 480 averages each. Total phosphorus acquisition time was 2 hours. Individual metabolites were identified by chemical shift. Ratios of metabolites to total phosphorus were calculated by comparing the total peak amplitude of all phosphorylated metabolites with the individual peak heights. Metabolite peak heights were averaged and reported.
Morris water maze. Before and after 9 weeks of treatment, a total of 32 mice were subjected to Morris water maze testing, a hippocampal-dependent task of spatial learning and memory. The maze consisted of a circular fiberglass pool (122 cm diameter, 75 cm high; Rowland Fiberglass Inc.) filled with water (18 ± 1°C, 43 cm deep). A clear glass platform (10.5 cm × 10.5 cm square) was submerged 1 cm below the water surface. The pool was situated in a room containing extramaze cues (42-cm × 76-cm posters printed with contrasting patterns and shapes) that provide specific visual reference points for locating the submerged platform. A video camera mounted to the ceiling, directly above the center of the pool, was used for recording the probe trial. The recording was digitized by a computer and analyzed using CleverSystem Topscan software (Cleversys) for path analysis (distance traveled and percentage of time in the target platform area). Each mouse received 3 trials in the water maze on each of 5 days. The submerged platform remained in one quadrant of the pool throughout all trials, and latency to find the platform was recorded. If the mouse failed to reach the platform within 60 seconds, the trial was terminated, and the mouse was guided onto the platform for 5 seconds. On the sixth day, each mouse received a final 60-second probe trial in which the platform was removed from the pool.
Radial maze. An 8-arm radial maze was used to test spatial working and reference memory at baseline with a total of 32 mice (n = 17 [Slc6a8–/y]; 15 [Slc6a8fl/y]). The maze consisted of an octagonal central platform (51.5 cm in diameter) with 8 radial arms (61 cm long, 12 cm wide, 10 cm high) extending outward (Lafayette Instrument Co.). The maze was elevated 70.5 cm above the floor in a room containing |
run outputs would both rank in top three on the Giants’ roster, and his WAR would rank fourth. In other words, he is an upgrade for Bruce Bochy’s club. The only department that Swisher doesn’t thrive in, is the stolen bases department, as his career total is only 12.
Assuming that most of Swisher’s action would come in left field, there wouldn’t be many bold concerns defensively. The only predictable complication could be the spacious gap in left centerfield.
Why Signing Swisher Makes Sense For The Giants
Gregor Blanco had a good stint with the Giants as their everyday left fielder after Melky Cabrera was suspended, but a more proven and consistent left fielder would seemingly be a wiser route to embark on. Blanco will come in handy, but a starting role is something that isn’t in his toolbox. He performed adequately for a fraction of games, sure, but over 150-plus games, he probably can’t replicate short streaks.
So, adding Swisher into the mix would eliminate most concerns regarding left field.
Out of the deep crop of outfielders, Swisher is probably the best fit for the Giants. He can play multiple positions, is a switch-hitter, and fits in with the group of guys that they already have. Talent-wise, he isn’t the best. Josh Hamilton deserves that honor. Frankly, Swisher barely breaks the top eight outfielders when dissecting this year’s outfield free agent class. That’s debatable, though.
But the Giants didn’t win a World Series by acquiring the most talented players. Instead, management predicated their additions based on good fits. Marco Scutaro, for example, was projected to be a meager utility infielder for San Francisco, at best. We all know how that story ends. While the Dodgers added the elite commodities, they never gelled properly.
A surplus of talent will undoubtedly win games eventually, don’t get me wrong, but only a few teams have won championship predicated on prolific checkbook. The Yankees kept that tale alive in 2009 when they practically bought their way to a championship, and the Dodgers are seeking to mirror their approach. Slowly, that trend is diminishing, though, and new straggles to winning are being the developed. In essence, the Giants are ahead of the game in that regard because they have built their team around pitching and a pair cornerstone pieces offensively.
How Would The Signing Of Swisher Affect The Giants’ Payroll?
Swisher wouldn’t come cheap by any stretch of the imagination, but he isn’t going to draw Hamilton or Upton type money. In terms of the length of a potential contract, that number shouldn’t exceed five years. At this point in the off season, it appears as if his demands are a bit lofty, but all players have to set their demands high at first. After the market takes shapes, said player’s interests generally become more realistic.
Whether or Swisher’s demands budge, the Giants can afford his services either way. Most notably, Aubrey Huff and Aaron Rowand, who both made a good sized chunk of cash in 2012, are scheduled to come the Giants’ books this off season.
This year, their opening day payroll equaled roughly $131 million. An increase is feasible, especially considering the revenue they will receive from winning a World Series and all the tidbits that come with the coveted accomplishment. Take their first World Series victory for example. From the beginning of the 2010 season to the beginning of 2011, the Giants’ payroll ballooned from $96 million to $118 million. Winning the title had a lot to do with that mighty increase.
Simply put, the Giants wouldn’t run into many problems financially if they were to sign Swisher.
*All Salaries Derived From Cot’s Contracts”A former al-Qaeda fighter who later became a spy for the British secret service says ISIS views the Britain’s European Union referendum in June with “great interest”, and is likely planning an attack in the U.K. which would persuade voters to leave the E.U.
Aimen Dean—who once swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden in person—tells TIME in an interview in London that Islamist extremists in al-Qaeda and ISIS would see the U.K.’s departure from the E.U. as a first step in the destruction of the union, which they see as a successor to the Roman Empire.
Much of the ideology of ISIS and al-Qaeda is rooted in theories of a clash of civilisation between Muslims and the non-Muslim world, which were formulated in the 7th century when Muslims fought for supremacy with the Byzantine (Roman) Empire and the Persian Empire.
Dean says that recent attacks in Brussels and Paris are also part of a strategy to destroy non-Islamic institutions and states and provoke conflict between Muslim and non-Muslims in the Middle East. This final battle, they believe, has been foreseen in religious writing and will herald the end of the world.
Whatever they [ISIS] can do to break up that empire is justifiable to them, says the former jihadist who became disillusioned with al-Qaeda in 1998 and acted as double agent until 2006, when his name was revealed in a book.
If the referendum result leads to the U.K. leaving the E.U., ISIS will take credit for having struck the first significant blow against the E.U., which it sees as representing the nations that carried out crusades against Muslim states for control of the Holy Lands between 1089 and 1390.
Dean,38, was brought up in Saudi Arabia but embarked on his first jihad in 1994 to fight with Bosnian Muslims against Serb nationalists in the former Yugoslavia. From there he went to Afghanistan where his Islamic education impressed aides of bin Laden.
Dean’s transformation came after the 1998 al-Qaeda attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which left 224 dead—all but 12 were local civilians. He disagreed with al-Qaeda’s justification for killing civilians and went from al-Qaeda activist to betrayer, with the help of the secret services of Qatar and then the U.K.
Dean, who advises both public and private sectors on terrorism from his base in Dubai, also claims that a civil war within Islam is driving the west towards further Middle East conflict.
He says Muslim communities worldwide are in conflict, similar to the wars of the Reformation in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. Militant Sunnis are against aginst Militant Shias, he explains, and Sunnis are engaged in internal conflict, such as ISIS versus al-Qaeda, ISIS and states such as Jordan and Egypt versus the Muslim Brotherhood. “The West is the side casualty,” says Dean.
Foreign Fighters from the U.K., U.S., France, Belgium and other countries suffer from a “deep identify crisis,” says Dean. He says such Muslims who find themselves looking to ISIS don’t relate to their countries of birth, and cling to Islam as an “identity rather than a religion,” which provides them a set of rules and regulations which they chose to obey zealously.
Dean says it is naive to believe that Islamic extremism has been caused by hawkish western foreign policy in the Middle East although the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq played in to the jihadists’ hands. The US-led coalition “didn’t plan enough” for what would happen after the Iraqi invasion. “They went in blind and left even more blind,” he says.
When al-Qaeda attacked the U.S. on 9/11, “they were hoping that there would be an Iraqi and Afghanistan invasion,” he says. By having more “ungoverned spaces they could gain a greater foothold.” ISIS is continuing the tactics of al-Qaeda in trying to provoke the West to deeper involvement in the Middle East in order to create chaos which will help them thrive, he says.
Dean says bin Laden’s influence is not as potent or as relevant as observers would once have predicted. “When you look at the jihadi literature, you don’t see him as revered,” says Dean. He is “one of many” jihadist leaders that lived and will ultimately be killed, “like Musab al-Zarqawi (the founder of ISIS) was killed and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi—the current leader of ISIS—will also be killed.”
One of Dean’s major messages to the West is that leaders can be killed all the time, but it is the grass roots that provide the momentum for an organization and its next leaders.
Contact us at editors@time.com.PORTLAND, Ore. — Portland police arrested 71 people during Saturday night’s anti-Trump protest in downtown Portland. Sixty-seven people were booked into the Multnomah County Jail, and five people were given criminal citations, reports Portland police.
Those arrested ranged in age from 18 to 54.
A majority of those arrested happened about 11:00 p.m. at Southwest Stark Street and Broadway. Police used a TriMet bus to transport them to Central Precinct.
Portland police say several times throughout the evening, demonstrators threw bottles and projectiles at police, at one point attacking a film crew.
“Protesters throwing burning road flares at police,” tweeted the Portland Police.
Early Sunday morning, police said an unknown suspect spray graffiti on a Portland Police unit.
Shooting in Portland
A man was shot early Saturday on the Morrison Bridge during a protest march. The suspect was believed to be in a vehicle on the bridge when a confrontation unfolded with a member of the crowd, Portland police said in a statement. The suspect got out of the vehicle and fired multiple shots before fleeing.
The victim’s injuries were not life-threatening, and he was treated at a hospital.
Two 18-year-old men were arrested and charged with attempted murder and unlawful use of a weapon, police said.
Seventeen people were arrested in Friday night’s protests, police said.
Portland has been the site of the most violent anti-Trump demonstrations. Thursday night, a small group broke away and smashed the windows of businesses and a number of vehicles at an auto dealership.
On Saturday, police began tweeting photos of protesters and asking people to identify them so arrests can be made.
45.523062 -122.676482It appears that the Reinhart-Rogoff battles over their faulty data about government debt have flamed out. Even the inventors of the 90% debt cliff are now anxious to portray themselves of cautious supporters of expansionary fiscal policy. This should mean that sober policy types everywhere can turn to the immediate problem of reducing unemployment with more expansionary fiscal policy.
Unfortunately, this does not appear likely to happen. Even though the case against fiscal policy has been blown to smithereens, there is little impulse in the United States or Europe to change course. The counter-argument appears to have two sides. First, growth has picked up so that we don't really need it. Second, we really wouldn't know what to spend money on in any case.
Neither of these arguments deserves to be taken seriously on its merits. But they nonetheless must be taken seriously because of the prominence of the people who say them.
The argument that the economy is picking up in the United States stems from the April jobs report that showed a slightly better than projected 165,000 jobs added. (In the United Kingdom, celebrations broke out over the fact that GDP grew at a 1.2% percent annual rate in the first quarter). These reports provide a rather flimsy basis for optimism.
If we accept the 165,000 number at face value, it means the economy is generating roughly 65,000 jobs a month more than is needed to keep the unemployment rate constant. Given that the economy is still down almost 9m jobs from its trend growth path, we would make up this shortfall early in the next decade at this pace.
Furthermore there are good reasons that job growth may prove slower going forward. Excluding inventory fluctuations, the economy grew at just a 1.5% annual rate in the fourth quarter. It has grown at less than a 1.8% rate over the last year. This is well below the pace that would ordinarily be needed to keep the unemployment rate from rising. Investment has slowed sharply in recent months and federal government cutbacks are just now being felt. It is absurd to think that the economy has enough momentum to make any substantial dent in unemployment in the foreseeable future. Any analyst who can look beyond a single report should know this.
If we want to have a real impact on unemployment in the near future, the government will have to take action. The calls for patience on this issue are truly infuriating. Invariably such calls come from people who have jobs, generally very well paying jobs.
The prolonged periods of unemployment that millions are enduring are in fact a crisis for the people affected. They are ruining the lives of the unemployed and their families. In fact, there was a disturbing study highlighted in the New York Times last week about the surge in suicides among baby boomers approaching retirement age. For these people this stretch of high unemployment is not a short-term problem that we have to tough out.
This brings us to the second complaint, that we don't know how to spend money to create jobs. This argument is every bit as far from the mark as the first one. For beginners, we have just cut well over $100bn from annual spending by state and local governments. This has hit everything from pre-school education to police and fire services. If the federal government restored the funding, many of these cuts could be quickly reversed. It would be desirable to spend money in areas that would have lasting benefits, even if many of the items would have longer lead times.
At the top of this list would be funding for the retrofitting of homes and businesses to make them more energy efficient. The Obama administration had funding in the original stimulus for this purpose, but most of the spending and credits have expired. There is still much to be done; these should be brought back. We also can do much more to improve infrastructure, especially to build 21st century train and urban transit systems. And, we can enhance funding for research and education in a wide variety of areas.
We should also be taking measures to directly address the problem of long-term unemployment. Recent research has revealed the extent of discrimination against the long-term unemployed. In a labor market where there are dozens of applicants for every job opening employers don't feel they have to consider anyone who has been out of work for a substantial period of time.
This should not be a partisan issue; we all can recognize that the long-term unemployed need a hand to get back on their feet. Kevin Hassett, a prominent conservative economist and top advisor to Governor Mitt Romney in his presidential campaign, recently argued for employment programs specifically targeting the long-term unemployed. Hassett wisely proposed a set of competing approaches, involving both public jobs and incentives for private employers. There are enough long-term unemployed that we can afford to experiment with different approaches and see which produces the best results.
There are many more ways to spend money that will put people back to work, but the key is to get such spending back on the political agenda. We allowed policy to be waylaid by a misplaced obsession with deficits. Now that everyone in the debate recognizes this mistake, it is time to focus on getting the country working again.If there was a shot in the Mohali Test that said "you may as well shake hands now" it was Parthiv Patel's upper cut off Ben Stokes for four with India needing 48 runs to win. Parthiv was playing for India for the first time in eight years and he gave a fine account of himself, cracking 67 off 54 balls, including a lofted cover drive for four which became the winning runs.
"I think he really stood out in this game for me as a batsman," India's captain, Virat Kohli, said.
Parthiv had also made 42 in the first innings opening the batting at short notice after KL Rahul was ruled out aggravating a forearm injury in the nets, to go with four catches and a stumping. So was there a chance that he might stay with the team as a back-up batsman even if Wriddhiman Saha comes back to keep wicket for the Mumbai Test, starting on December 8?
"You never know, there are all kinds of possibilities," Kohli said. "The way he approached both innings, it was amazing to see. That's where experience from the first-class level comes into play. He's someone who's played [for India] at a very early age and he's come back and the intent he showed in both innings, I think, just deflated the opposition. Credit to him to go out there and counterattack and take on their seamers. You never know. We'll see what happens in the next few days. We'll take a call accordingly."
Another aspect that pleased Kohli was how consistently India's lower order has been performing. They are second in terms of average runs added by the last four wickets in Test cricket this year.
"As a side, when you get five or six wickets you think that the game is going to get over early and the batsmen go into that zone and suddenly you have to field for 50 more overs," Kohli said. "You are confused whether to think about the game or focus on batting or focus on the field. All sorts of things start happening. We have experienced in the past as well when other teams have done it against us and we haven't found a way to stop it. So it's great to see our guys stepping up and making it count.
"Every game, on an average, we are scoring 80-85 runs. This game was 200-plus. Amazing to see guys working hard on their batting, 70-80 runs put a dent on the opposition batting and when they come out to bat they know they've given 60 runs more. It makes a massive difference especially in Test cricket to stretch the game longer for a session or session-and-a-half and then come out with the confidence in the field as well. With the ball also it helps them, they have admitted it themselves. You see, Ashwin is the No. 1 allrounder, he scores lots of runs and comes out more confident with the ball. Credit to them and for executing those plans."
There was something else that geed up Kohli as well. He was seen exchanging words with Ben Stokes after the England allrounder was dismissed on the first day at the PCA stadium. Stokes was later fined by the ICC for the incident and when he took Kohli's wicket on the second day, he celebrated by putting his hand over his mouth. Kohli responded with a finger-on-lips celebration when Stokes got out in the last over of the third day.
Tthe question was bound to crop up in the press conference. "I'm surprised out of all the cricket questions you picked this," Kohli said. "He's a competitive player and so am I. I wouldn't like to explain or elaborate what happened on the field. It's better left to officials to know what happened. These things have only motivated me in the past and continued to do so. So I don't mind it."This year's Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC for short, is right around the corner. While it's attracting the Marco Rubios, Rand Pauls and Paul Ryans of the world, there's some other interesting things going on too.
First, Mitt Romney is coming. So is Sarah Palin. This will be Romney's first flirtation with the conservative base since losing the White House to President Obama. As for Palin, this will be her first big public appearance since splitting from Fox News.
This is also the first CPAC since the passing of pundit and publisher Andrew Breitbart and, because of that, there will be lots of tributes.
There will also be an MSNBC presence. Sort of. "Up with Chris Hayes" host Chris Hayes has been tapped to participate in the panel discussion "CSI Washington, D.C.: November 2012 Autopsy" on the last election. "We thought that folks would be more informed if we get their perspective as well," American Conservative Union head Al Cardenas told Yeas & Nays about inviting the occasional liberal.
MSNBC's more conservative host, S.E. Cupp, will be on hand as well. "I think by the end of the conference we'll have 160 speakers and 150 of them will be, you know, true movement conservatives, and 10 will be thrown in for the fun and diversity of the conversation," Cardenas continued, not specifying which group Cupp fit in.
And finally, there's at least one panel discussion that's name alone is provocative: "How I Learned to Stop Worrying & Love Plastic Water Bottles, Fracking, Genetically Modified Food, & Big Gulp Sodas."
This year's CPAC will be held March 14-16 at a new address, the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center at Maryland's National Harbor. Shuttle buses will be running to and from the site from parts of D.C.Members of the Tunisian National Constituent Assembly (NCA) attend a meeting as part of the debates on the adoption of a new constitution on Jan. 26, 2014, in Tunis. Fethi Belaid/AFP/Getty Images
After decades of dictatorship and two years of arguments and compromises, Tunisians finally have a new constitution laying the foundations for a new democracy.
The document is groundbreaking as one of the most progressive constitutions in the Arab world — and for the fact that it got written at all. It passed late Sunday by 200 votes out of 216 in the Muslim Mediterranean country that inspired uprisings across the region after overthrowing a dictator in 2011.
"This constitution, without being perfect, is one of consensus," assembly speaker Mustapha Ben Jaafar said after the vote. "We had today a new rendezvous with history to build a democracy founded on rights and equality."
The constitution enshrining freedom of religion and women's rights took two years to finish. During that period, the country was battered by high unemployment, protests, terrorist attacks, political assassinations and politicians who seemed more interested in posturing than finishing the charter.
At the same time, Egypt wrote two constitutions — and went through a military coup against an elected government. Egypt's charters were quickly drafted by appointed committees and involved little public debate or input. In Tunisia, an elected assembly of Tunisian Islamists, leftists and liberals worked on a detailed roadmap for their political future.
Tunisians hope its care in drafting the constitution makes a difference in returning stability to the country and reassuring investors and allies such as the U.S.
"We needed time to get this constitution as it is today," said Amira Yahyaoui, who has closely followed the assembly's activities with her monitoring group Bawsala. "Clearly, writing this constitution to do a real transformation of the minds of people needed time, and I absolutely don't regret these two years, and I am happy we had time to discuss and think about all the arguments."
The new constitution sets out to make the North African country of 11 million people a democracy, with a civil state whose laws are not based on Islamic law, unlike many other Arab constitutions. An entire chapter of the document, some 28 articles, is dedicated to protecting citizens' rights, including protection from torture, the right to due process, and freedom of worship. It guarantees equality between men and women before the law and the state commits itself to protecting women's rights.
"This is the real revolution, many democratic constitutions don't even have that," said Yahyaoui. "It will have a real impact on the rest of the Arab region, because finally we can say that women's rights are not a Western concept only, but also exist in Tunisia."
Tunisia has always had the most progressive legislation on women's rights in the Arab world and Yahyaoui believes the long period of writing has made people comfortable with its contents.
One of the most hotly debated articles guarantees "freedom of belief and conscience," which would permit atheism and the practice of non-Abrahamic religions frowned upon in other Islamic countries. It also bans incitement to violence and declaring a Muslim an apostate — a fallen Muslim — which leaves them open to death threats. In response, conservative lawmakers insisted that "attacks on the sacred" be forbidden, which many see as a threat to freedom of expression.
"This formulation is vague and gives too much leeway to the legislators to trample other rights such as the right to free expression, artistic creation and academic freedoms," warned Amna Guelleli, the Human Rights Watch representative in Tunisia. "However, the risk is reduced given the strong safeguards (in other articles) against overly broad interpretations."
Since the revolution, there has been a rise in convictions for so-called attacks on religion, especially by artists. A Tunisian cartoonist is in the second year of a seven-year sentence for posting cartoons insulting to the Prophet Muhammad on Facebook.
Constitutional scholar Slim Loghmani said despite some drawbacks, the constitution is an "historic compromise between identity and modernity" that can serve as a model for other countries in the region seeking a balance between an Arab-Islamic heritage and contemporary ideas of human rights and good governance.
"It's a step forward in the nagging question of cultural identity in Arab countries," he said, lauding in particular not just freedom of religion but what he calls the freedom "not to have a religion."
While the constitution itself will not solve the country's persistent unemployment, rising prices, crushing debt and constant demonstrations, Loghmani said it will move politics forward and reassure foreign investors that the country is back on track after a rocky transition.
"It will be a relief for the average Tunisian who is impatient to see the end of the transition period," he said. "It will reassure Tunisia's international partners that country is headed in the right direction."
The completion of the constitution is also a tribute to the assembly's disparate parties to compromise and negotiate to reach a consensus.
The moderate Islamist party Ennahda, which holds more than 40 percent of the seats in the assembly, backed down on putting a number of religious-inspired measures into the constitution in the face of wide opposition.
At times the constitution looked like it would never get written, with numerous walkouts by different parties and at one point a complete suspension of its activities in the wake of the assassination of a left-wing deputy in July.
In the end, Ennahda made concessions to the opposition and stepped down in favor of a caretaker government to manage the rest of the transition, allowing the constitution to be completed.
The willingness of Ennahda to negotiate stood in sharp contrast to the more overbearing approach of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which had a more dominant position in the elected parliament and held the presidency. It ran roughshod over the demands of the opposition, citing its electoral successes.
"Egyptian constitutional politics has been a winner-take-all game; Tunisian politics has been more consensual — though consensus has been difficult to achieve," said Nathan Brown, an expert on Egyptian law at George Washington University. "The Tunisian experience is one that is more likely to give birth to a functioning democracy."
The overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt by the military in July and subsequent violent repression was a stern warning to Tunisia, said Yahyaoui of Bawsala, and it helped the various parties find a compromise.
"The only people who won something out of what happened in Egypt was Tunisia," she said. "Ennahda saw what happened to the Brotherhood and they didn't want to see the same scenario in Tunisia."
The Associated PressWhen one works, as I do, through the hustle and bustle of a ten hour hour working week it’s only fair that my employers reward this high pressure position with six weeks paid vacation. A vacation embarked upon by myself, Nick and Rich (two fellow English teachers at the nearby middle school) to attempt to cover a little of the country in which we currently reside.
While many teachers have decided to head south toward foreign shores in search of a warmer climate we decided to remain in China with the view of discovering more about the land in which we may never again find ourselves upon departure.
Harbin
The ice city of Harbin was to be our first destination. A Chinese city northeast of Beijing and further north than the famed winter town of Russia’s Vladivostok. To fly there from our local airport would have taken around five hours but one of us spotted a cheaper flight from Hong Kong convincing the others it would be a much worthier option regardless of the lengthier travel time. To save your weary eyes I will just say that it took us over 24 hours and some quality airport sleeping to complete a 5 hour journey in order to save fifty quid.
Despite this, the inevitable drunken accosting by an Englishman at HK airport and the fact that due to my miniature luggage I had to wear half the clothes I needed for Harbin (the city that regularly experiences temperature lows of up to -35) we eventually arrived at our destination.
Our late arrival saw our first evening spent exploring the main streets of Harbin, witnessing my first Chinese marriage proposal whilst experiencing a temperature my body has never even come close to before, including frozen bogies and icicle pikey tash.
After heading to and crossing the completely frozen river into Stalin’s park, getting lost brought the need for an emergency taxi situation. Just before we got ‘really’ cold we managed to flag down a cab complete with 50% working doors and nutcase of a driver to boot. And so we set off towards the Siberian Tiger Park picking up a similarly cold Harbin local en-route. Of course the mission was going too successfully for Richards liking, prompting him to forget how to exit a vehicle resulting in him falling out of a taxi with his trousers down. Neither driver nor passenger had ever seen a moon so pale, on this, the east side of the world.
The Siberian Tiger Park, home to more of the 200 tigers that exist than the wild. This bizarre experience saw us travelling around the park, where the tigers roam free, in a tin can on wheels. A tin can that would get stuck and fail to scare away any marauding tigers with its horn. While that was all well and good, escaping unscathed, now comes the moral dilemma to divulge what I played a part in afterwards. Being a Chinese safari park there was of course going to be a twist. And this particular twist came in the form of the option to purchase live animals to feed to the tigers. As we didn’t have enough money to opt for the sheep or the cow we went for the budget choice of a chicken. I should point out that the debate on whether to do this at all was of course a long one. With the winning argument coming down to several points, those being, that the chicken was done for anyway, the tigers should be eating live prey as opposed to rotting meat and the fact that it would be awesome to watch. However we did not bank on what would happen to the chicken before its final moments on planet earth. As none of us were prepared to actually do the deed of throwing the chicken ourselves we asked the vendor to do it for us. A request in which she read the desire to see the tigers riled up first. Grabbing the chicken by its wings she proceeded to drag the poor fated fowl across the cage, summoning the tigers towards us, before dangling at the leaping beasts and finally hurling it towards the big roost in the sky. A grim tale indeed and one which I’d rather not be judged on if possible readers.
To continue the tale the main purpose for our visiting Harbin was to view the annual ice festival in which an entire city is created from ice and lit from within. A rather spectacular feat that I am very glad to have experienced in person. For this event I will rely on a few photographs to do the describing for me.
To cap off, before you feast your eyes on my camera candy, it might be worth mentioning that our Harbin adventure ended with a night in a Russian discotech where my companions were a bearded Bristolian, a Ugandan, a Chinese Avril Lavigne, a group of (what could only have been lost) Kenyans and a Russian stripper. Perhaps I’ll explain more about that night on my secret unadulterated blog…..
See you in Beijing!
AdvertisementsIf there's one organization known for its crusade against online piracy, it's the RIAA. Nevertheless, even in the RIAA's headquarters several people use BitTorrent to download pirated music, movies, TV-shows and software. And they are in good company. The Department of Homeland Security - known for seizing pirate domain names - also harbors hundreds of BitTorrent pirates.
Last week we wrote about a new website that exposes what people behind an IP-address have downloaded using BitTorrent. The Russian-based founders of the site gathered this data from public BitTorrent trackers, much like anti-piracy outfits do when they track down copyright infringers.
In response to the article many readers commented that they indeed saw a few familiar downloads, and they are not alone.
YouHaveDownloaded currently lists information on more than 50 million users. Although this is only a fraction of all public BitTorrent downloads, it shows that in pretty much every major organization people are pirating content.
Earlier this week we already showed that there are BitTorrent pirates at Sony, Universal and Fox. A few days later it was revealed that torrents are being downloaded in the palace of French President Nicholas Sarkozy, and today we can add the RIAA and the Department of Homeland Security to the list.
After carefully checking all the IP-addresses of the RIAA we found 6 unique addresses from where copyrighted material was shared. Aside from recent music albums from Jay-Z and Kanye West – which may have been downloaded for research purposes – RIAA staff also pirated the first five seasons of Dexter, an episode of Law and Order SVU, and a pirated audio converter and MP3 tagger.
RIAA staff have a taste for crime dramas.
And of course some handy audio tools.
All in all, quite an astonishing revelation for an outfit that wants to disconnect copyright infringers from the Internet.
Another prominent organization that has been in the news for their tough actions against online piracy is the Department of Homeland Security. In recent months they have seized domain names of hundreds of sites accused of facilitating counterfeiting and piracy, including the torrent search engine Torrent-Finder.
By now it probably comes as no surprise that staff at the Department of Homeland Security are also using BitTorrent. In fact, we found more than 900 unique IP-addresses at the Government organization through which copyrighted files were downloaded.
Since Homeland Security employs more than 200,000 people the finding is hardly a surprise. However, this and the other revelations show that BitTorrent is being used everywhere, from government agencies to even the most outspoken anti-piracy outfits.
For now at least, since the RIAA has lobbied hard for a nationwide piracy monitoring system much like YouHaveDownloaded.
In a few months millions of online ‘pirates’ will be monitored as part of an agreement between the MPAA, RIAA and all major U.S. Internet providers. Alleged infringers will be notified about their misbehavior, and repeat offenders will eventually be punished.
But will the RIAA be punished too?
Update: RIAA: Someone Else Is Pirating Through Our IP- AddressesDan Pearson European Editor Tuesday 22nd July 2014 Share this article Share
A new survey commissioned by IHS in partnership with GamesIndustry.biz parent company Gamer Network has shown that E3 gave a huge boost to the number of people interested in buying a Wii U, with purchasing intent growing by 50 per cent over the course of the event.
Around one thousand core gamers were surveyed on various purchase intentions before and after the LA show, revealing that, whilst Nintendo's platform started out with the lowest number of people looking at buying it, it saw the biggest benefit from the show's exposure. 20 per cent of respondents now intend to buy the machine, equal to those who are looking at an Xbox One, which saw a seven per cent increase in popularity.
Sony's PS4, a clear leader going in to E3, lost ground to its competitors, sinking below 30 per cent of respondents.
In terms of anticipated games, consumers are champing at the bit for 2015's third-party releases, with Warner's Arkham Knight leading the charge with an incredible 60 per cent of those surveyed intending to buy the game for at least one platform. Gamers are slightly less excited for 2014's titles, but Activision's Destiny is the narrow leader for this year, edging out AC: Unity and GTA V with just under 50 per cent. Both Battlefield Hardline and CoD: Advanced Warfare are lagging behind slightly.
As might be expected, purchasing intent is higher amongst first-party exclusives for current platform owners. On PS4, Uncharted 4 was the most popular game both before and after E3 with 76 per cent of PS4 owners expected to buy it. On Xbox One, it's Halo which pays the piper, garnering support from 77 per cent of One owners. Over on the Wii U and amazing 89 per cent of owners expect to buy the new Zelda game when it's released. None of these platform-exclusive heavy hitters will land until 2015 at the earliest, which IHS predicts will increase pre-Christmas reliance on multi-platform games for Microsoft, Sony and, to a lesser extent, Nintendo.
"Although there are other exclusive titles coming in 2014 or already available," the report reads, "none hold the influence that these leading titles have in terms of selling console hardware, with the exception of Mario Kart 8 for Wii U. As a result, the success of console sales this holiday shopping season will depend more heavily on the total value and content proposition including exclusive content offered by multi-platform games rather than a single, very influential system-selling exclusive. This factor will impact the marketing strategies of the platform holders as we move into 2014's main shopping season."Netflix announced today that Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons and Futurama, will be developing a medieval animated adult fantasy called Disenchantment. It’s scheduled to begin streaming on Netflix in 2018.
The series’s protagonist is a young, “hard-drinking” princess named Bean (Broad City’s Abbi Jacobson), and her two male companions are a “feisty elf” named Elfo (Nat Faxon) and a demon named Luci (Eric Andre). While both The Simpsons and Futurama have dynamic, fleshed-out female characters, this is Groening’s first series with a clear female lead.
Rough Draft Studios, the studio that does the art for Futurama, will animate Disenchantment. From the few details Netflix is offering, it’s easy to imagine a sort of epic-fantasy version of Futurama, with the same acerbic, absurdist humor as Groening’s other shows. In the US, Netflix doesn’t have a series that fits this exact bill, though Archer may come closest. (Netflix also carries Futurama, so Disenchantment should fit in.)
"The series will bear [Groening’s] trademark animation style and biting wit, and we think it's a perfect fit for our many Netflix animation fans," says Cindy Holland, Netflix’s vice president of original content.
From the premise, this series sounds a lot like a myriad of other failed adult animated medieval cartoons like Korgoth of |
And yet immigrants appear in general to be less violent than people born in America, particularly when they live in neighborhoods with high numbers of other immigrants.
We are thus witnessing a different pattern from early 20th century America, when growth in immigration from Europe, along with ethnic diversity more generally, was linked with increasing crime and formed a building block for what became known as “social disorganization” theory. New York today is a leading magnet for immigration, yet it has for a decade ranked as one of America’s safest cities. Crime in Los Angeles dropped considerably in the late 1990s (45 percent overall) as did other Hispanic influenced cities such as San Jose, Dallas, and Phoenix. The same can be said for cities smack on the border like El Paso and San Diego, which have long ranked as low-crime areas. Cities of concentrated immigration are some of the safest places around.
counterpoint
There are criticisms of these arguments, of course. To begin, the previous figure juxtaposes two trends and nothing more—correlation doesn’t equal causation. But it does demonstrate the trends are opposite of what’s commonly assumed, which is surely not irrelevant to the many, and strongly causal, claims that immigration increases crime. Descriptive facts are at the heart of sound social science, a first step in any causal inquiry.
Perhaps a bigger concern is that we need to distinguish illegal from legal immigration and focus on the many illegal aliens who allegedly are accounting for crime waves across the country—the “Newark phenomenon.” By one argument, because of deportation risk illegal immigrants are afraid to report crimes against them to the police, resulting in artificially low official estimates in the Hispanic community. But no evidence exists that reporting biases seriously affect estimates of the homicide victimization rate—unlike other crimes there is a body. At the national level, then, the homicides committed by illegal aliens in the United States are reflected in the data just like for everyone else. The bottom line is that as immigrants poured into the country, homicides plummeted. One could claim crime would decrease faster absent immigration inflows, but that’s a different argument and concedes my basic point.
There is also little disputing that in areas and times of high legal immigration we find accompanying surges of illegal entrants. It would be odd indeed if illegal aliens descended on areas with no other immigrants or where they had no pre-existing networks. And so it is that areas of concentrated immigration are magnets for illegal concentration. Because crime tends to be negatively associated with undifferentiated immigration measures, it follows that we can disconfirm the idea that increasing illegal immigration is associated with increasing crime.
Furthermore, our Chicago study did include both legal and illegal immigrants. I would estimate the illegal status at roughly a quarter—but in any case no group was excluded from the analysis. The other important point is that the violence estimates were based on confidential self-reports and not police statistics or other official sources of crime. Therefore, police arrest biases or undercounts can’t explain the fact that first generation immigrants self-report lower violence than the second generation, which in turn reports less than the third generation.
So let us proceed on the assumption of a substantial negative association across individuals, places, and time with respect to immigration and violence. What potential mechanisms might explain the connections and are they causal? Thinking about these questions requires attention be paid to confounding factors and competing explanations.
Social scientists worry a lot about selection bias because individuals differ in preferences and can, within means, select their environments. It has been widely hypothesized that immigrants, and Mexicans in particular, selectively migrate to the United States on characteristics that predispose them to low crime, such as motivation to work, ambition, and a desire not to be deported. Immigrants may also come from cultures where violence isn’t rewarded as a strategy for establishing reputation (to which I return below).
This scenario is undoubtedly the case and central to the argument—social selection is a causal mechanism. Namely, to the extent that more people predisposed to lower crime immigrate to the United States (we now have some 35 million people of foreign-born status), they will sharply increase the denominator of the crime rate while rarely appearing in the numerator. And in the neighborhoods of U.S. cities with high concentrations of immigrants, one would expect on selection grounds alone to find lower crime rates. Selection thus favors the argument that immigration may be causally linked to lower crime.
Another concern of social scientists is common sources of causation, or “competing” explanations. One candidate is economic trends. After all, potential immigrants respond to incentives and presumably choose to relocate when times are better in their destinations. Although a legitimate concern, economics can’t easily explain the story. Depending on the measure, economic trends aren’t isomorphic with either immigration or crime at either the beginning or end of the time series. Real wages were declining and inequality increasing in the 1990s by most accounts, which should have produced increases in crime by the logic of relative deprivation theory, which says that income gaps, not absolute poverty, are what matters. Broad economic indicators like stock market values did skyrocket but collapsed sharply while immigration didn’t.
Scholars in criminology have long searched for a sturdy link between national economic trends and violence, to little avail. The patterns just don’t match up well, and often they’re in the opposite direction of deprivation-based expectations. The best example is the 1960s when the economy markedly improved yet crime shot up. Don’t forget, too, the concentrated immigration and crime link remains when controlling for economic indicators.
Finally, the “Latino Paradox” in itself should put to rest the idea that economics is the go-to answer: Immigrant Latinos are poor and disadvantaged but at low risk for crime. Poor immigrant neighborhoods and immigrant-tinged cities like El Paso have similarly lower crime than their economic profile would suggest.
Competing explanations also can’t explain the Chicago findings. Immigrant youths committed less violence than natives after adjustment for a rich set of individual, family, and neighborhood confounders. Moreover, there’s an influence of immigrant concentration beyond the effects of individual immigrant status and other individual factors, and beyond neighborhood socioeconomic status and legal cynicism—previously shown to significantly predict violence. We estimated male violence by age for three types of neighborhoods (below):
“Low-risk,” where a very high percentage of people work in professional and managerial occupations (90th percentile), few people hold cynical attitudes about the law and morality (10th percentile), and there are no immigrants;
“High-risk,” where professional/managerial jobs are scarce, cynicism is pervasive, and there are also no immigrants;
“High-risk, immigrant neighborhoods,’ defined by similarly low shares of professional/managerial workers and high legal cynicism, but where about one-half of the people are immigrants.
The estimated probability an average male living in a high-risk neighborhood without immigrants will engage in violence is almost 25 percent higher than in the high-risk, immigrant neighborhood, a pattern again suggesting the protective, rather than crime-generating, influence of immigrant concentration.
Finally, we examined violence in Chicago neighborhoods by a foreign-born diversity index capturing 100 countries of birth from around the world (page 32). In both high- and low-poverty communities, foreign-born diversity is clearly and strongly linked to lower violence. Concentrated poverty predicts more violence (note the high poverty areas above the prediction line) but violence is lower as diversity goes up for low- and high-poverty neighborhoods alike. Interestingly, the link between lower violence and diversity is strongest in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods.
crime declines among non-hispanics
A puzzle apparently remains in how immigration explains the crime decline among whites and blacks in the 1990s. One agitated critic, for example, charged that my thesis implies that for every Mexican entering America a black person would have to commit fewer crimes. But immigration isn’t the only cause of the crime decline. There are many causes of crime—that declines ensued for blacks and whites doesn’t in itself invalidate the immigration argument. This critique also exposes a misconception about immigrant diversity. Immigration isn’t just about Mexicans, it’s about the influx of a wide range of different groups. The previous figure, for example, represents 100 countries, a conservative template for many places. In cities such as Los Angeles and New York, immigrant flows are erasing simple black-white-brown scenarios and replacing them with a complex mixture of immigrant diversity.
Even the traditionally black-white city of Chicago reflects evidence of immigration’s broad reach. When we looked at whites and blacks we still found surprising variation in generational status, with immigration protective for all racial/ethnic groups except Puerto Ricans/other Latinos. In fact, controlling for immigrant generation reduced the gap between African Americans and whites by 14 percent, implying one reason whites have lower levels of violence than African Americans is that whites are more likely to be recent immigrants. The pattern of immigrant generational status and lower crime is thus not just restricted to Latinos, and it extends to helping explain white-black differences as well.
Added to this is substantial non-Latino immigration into the United States from around the world, including Russia, Poland, India, and the Caribbean, to name just a few countries. Black and white populations are increasingly characterized by immigrants (Poles and Russians among whites in Chicago, for example, and Caribbeans and West Africans among blacks in New York). According to Census 2000, the Chicago area has more than 130,000 Polish immigrants, so we aren’t talking about trivial numbers. Perhaps more important, focusing on the “what about whites and blacks” question misses the non-selection-based component of a broader immigration argument. We’re so used to thinking about immigrant adaptation (or assimilation) to the host society we’ve failed to fully appreciate how immigrants themselves shape the host society. Take economic revitalization and urban growth. A growing consensus argues immigration revitalizes cities around the country. Many decaying inner-city areas gained population in the 1990s and became more vital, in large part through immigration. One of the most thriving scenes of economic activity in the entire Chicagoland area, for example, second only to the famed “Miracle Mile” of Michigan Avenue, is the 26th Street corridor in Little Village. A recent analysis of New York City showed that for the first time ever, blacks’ incomes in Queens have surpassed whites’, with the surge in the black middle class driven largely by the successes of black immigrants from the West Indies. Segregation and the concentration of poverty have also decreased in many cities for the first time in decades.
Such changes are a major social force and immigrants aren’t the only beneficiaries—native born blacks, whites, and other traditional groups in the United States have been exposed to the gains associated with lower crime (decreases in segregation, decreases in concentrated poverty, increases in the economic and civic health of central cities, to name just a few). There are many examples of inner-city neighborhoods rejuvenated by immigration that go well beyond Queens and the Lower West Side of Chicago. From Bushwick in Brooklyn to Miami, and from large swaths of south central Los Angeles to the rural South, immigration is reshaping America. It follows that the “externalities” associated with immigration are multiple in character and constitute a plausible mechanism explaining some of the variation in crime rates of all groups in the host society.
There are important implications for this line of argument. If it is correct, then simply adjusting for things like economic revitalization, urban change, and other seemingly confounding explanations is illegitimate from a causal explanation standpoint because they would instead be mediators or conduits of immigration effects—themselves part of the pathway of explanation. Put differently, to the extent immigration is causally bound up with major social changes that in turn are part of the explanatory process of reduced crime, estimating only the net effects of immigration will give us the wrong answer.
cultural penetration and societal renewal
A related cultural implication, while speculative and perhaps provocative, is worth considering. If immigration leads to the penetration into America of diverse and formerly external cultures, then this diffusion may contribute to less crime if these cultures don’t carry the same meanings with respect to violence and crime.
It’s no secret the United States has long been a high-violence society, with many scholars positing a subculture or code of the streets as its main cause. In one influential version, shared expectations for demanding respect and “saving face” lead participants in the “street culture” of poor inner cities to react violently to perceived slights, insults, and otherwise petty encounters that make up the rounds of daily life. But according to the logic of this theory, if one doesn’t share the cultural attribution or perceived meaning of the event, violence is less likely. Outsiders to the culture, that is, are unlikely to be caught in the vicious cycles of interaction (and reaction) that promote violence.
The massive penetration of immigrant (particularly, but not only, Mexican) populations throughout the United States, including rural areas and the South, can properly be thought of as a diffusion-like process. One possible result is that over time American culture is being diluted. Some of the most voracious critiques of immigration have embraced this very line of argument. Samuel Huntington, in one well-known example, claims the very essence of American identity is at stake because of increasing diversity and immigration, especially from Mexico. He may well be right, but the diagnosis might not be so bad if a frontier mentality that endorses and perpetuates codes of violence is a defining feature of American culture.
A profound irony in the immigration debate concedes another point to Huntington. If immigration can be said to have brought violence to America, it most likely came with (white) Irish and Scottish immigrants whose cultural traditions emphasizing honor and respect were defended with violent means when they settled in the South in the 1700s and 1800s. Robert Nisbett and Dov Cohen have presented provocative evidence in favor of this thesis, emphasizing cultural transmission in the form of Scotch-Irish immigrants, descendants of Celtic herdsman, who developed rural herding communities in the frontier South. In areas with little state power to command compliance with the law, a tradition of frontier justice carried over from rural Europe took hold, with a heavy emphasis on retaliation and the use of violence to settle disputes, represented most clearly in the culture of dueling.
In today’s society, then, I would hypothesize that immigration and the increasing cultural diversity that accompanies it generate the sort of conflicts of culture that lead not to increased crime but nearly the opposite. In other words, selective immigration in the current era may be leading to the greater visibility of competing non-violent mores that affect not just immigrant communities but diffuse and concatenate through social interactions to tamp down violent conflict in general. Recent findings showing the spread of immigration to all parts of America, including rural areas of the Midwest and South, give credence to this argument. The Willie Hortinization of illegal aliens notwithstanding, diversity and cultural conflict wrought by immigration may well prove healthy, rather than destructive, as traditionally believed.
recommended resources
Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen. Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South (Westview, 1996). A fascinating take on the cultural roots of violence in the United States, including the culture of honor posited to afflict the South disproportionately and traced to European immigration.
Eyal Press. “Do Immigrants Make Us Safer?” New York Times Magazine, December 3, 2006. A New York Times writer considers the questions raised in this article, taking to the streets of Chicago.
Rubén G. Rumbaut and Walter A. Ewing. “The Myth of Immigrant Criminality and the Paradox of Assimilation: Incarceration Rates among Native and Foreign-Born Men,” Immigration Policy Center Special Report, 2007. A recent synthesis of the empirical facts on immigration and crime, with a special focus on incarceration.
Thorsten Sellin. Culture Conflict and Crime (Social Science Research Council, 1938). Widely considered the classical account of immigration, culture, and crime in the early part of the 20th century.The best part of Mike Krzyzewski's 1969 West Point yearbook photo surfacing on Tuesday isn't his parted hair, boyish face or button-studded uniform.
All of that is secondary to the way the editors poked fun at the future Duke coach.
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How great is it that they compare Coach K to three guys known for their enormous noses in the blurb next to his photo? Or that they refer to him not as "Mike Sha-shef-ski" but as "Mick Kriz-il-lon-ski?"
Hopefully rival ACC schools take note. The first ACC student section to launch a "Kriz-il-lon-ski" chant when Duke visits this season is guaranteed to get a laugh.
(Thanks, USA Today)
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Jeff Eisenberg is the editor of The Dagger on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at daggerblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!CWA protests Christie's pension grab - 6.12.2014
Members of the CWA protest Governor Christie's pension grab to balance the budget at the Statehouse. Trenton, NJ 6/12/14 (Tony Kurdzuk/The Star-Ledger)
(Tony Kurdzuk/The Star-Ledger)
TRENTON — Trustees of New Jersey's largest pension funds filed a lawsuit today against Gov. Chris Christie for slashing $2.4 billion in pension fund payments he promised to pay as part of a 2011 pension reform deal.
The lawsuit will ask the courts to force Christie to restore the cuts. The board overseeing the Public Employees Retirement System — the largest employee pension fund — voted in June to sue Christie.
"We are saying that money is due to the fund," Tom Bruno, chairman of that fund said today. "It's not something we relish doing, but frankly it's got to be done."
"We have a fiduciary responsibility, and that is to protect the fund, as well as to collect the monies that are due to the fund," Bruno said.
The dispute stems from a 2011 deal Christie brokered with Democratic leadership in the Legislature to put the troubled system back on solid footing.
Christie agreed to increase payments into the system in return for a reform package that raised the retirement age from 62 to 65, eliminated cost-of-living increases for retirees, and required workers to contribute more toward their pensions and health benefits.
But instead of pumping in extra money, Christie grabbed $2.4 billion from pension payments to balance budgets over two years after revenue collections fell far short of projections.
The governor said there was no other choice if the state wanted avoid slashing funding to crucial programs or raising taxes instead.
In a statement, the trustees of the three pension funds — the Public Employees' Retirement System, the Police and Fire Retirement System and the Teachers' Pension and Annuity Fund — involved in the suit said Christie "has shamelessly broken his word by derailing the proper funding of the pension funds, while at the same time demanding participants endure benefit reductions and higher employee contributions."
Employee contributions will increased from 3 percent to 7.5 percent of salary for some workers and from 8.5 percent to 10 percent for others, according to the trustees.
"The funding problems of the pension funds are, to quote the governor himself, the fault of prior administrations. And now, by scrapping his own promises while demanding sacrifices from public workers, the governor has claimed this breach of faith as his and his alone," the trustees said in a release. "The governor's sins of political expedience have now been visited on the active and retired employees and their families, who seek only the deferred compensation earned through a lifetime of loyal service."
A spokesman for Christie did not respond to a request for comment. Christie has previously said he expects to prevail against legal challenges.
"A trial court is not going to shut down the New Jersey government," he said on his monthly radio show in June. "We would proceed to pass a budget and continue to appeal. Listen, you can make this as dramatic as you like but I'm willing to predict to you that this will get solved. And the reason this will get solved is we can't print money. We cannot print money."
Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester), who negotiated that reform package and has bashed Christie for reneging, said in a statement Wednesday that he welcomes the support from the pension fund in "demanding that the governor honor his commitment to the working men and women of New Jersey."
Unions representing public workers also filed suit against Christie in June, saying that grabbing those pension funds violated the state and federal constitutions.
A state Superior Court Judge ruled on June 25 that Christie could use his emergency powers to reduce the size of the payment for the fiscal year that ended June 30 because he had proven he was "backed into a corner" and that there would be "severe and immediate impacts on vulnerable populations" if he had to come up with the money.
Superior Court Judge Mary Jacobson did not rule on whether Christie could slice the payment for the current fiscal year. A hearing is set for Dec. 19 on Christie's motion to dismiss.
The unions' complaint hinges on the state's contractual obligation, while the trustee's suit is essentially a collection action, based on their fiduciary responsibility to collect the funds, Bruno said.
Christie's administration disclosed late last month that the state's unfunded pension liabilities had more than doubled to $83 billion under new accounting rules requiring that calculations be based on lower anticipated investment returns.
New Jersey's assets cover just under a third of its newly projected $122.8 billion in liabilities as of June 30.
It also revealed that the two largest pension plans, Public Employees Retirement System and the Teachers Pension and Annuity Fund could run out of money by the ends of 2024 and 2027, respectively.
A Moody's Investor's Service ranking of pension liabilities as a percentage of total revenue puts New Jersey fourth behind Illinois, Connecticut and Kentucky.
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Samantha Marcus may be reached at smarcus@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @samanthamarcus. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.Half of all Millennials believe that gender exists on a spectrum, and shouldn't be limited to the categories of male and female, according to Fusion's Massive Millennial Poll, which surveyed 1,000 people aged 18-34 about everything from politics to dating to race issues.
The findings suggest young people are moving away from a binary conception of gender, a major shift from previous generations. (For full results and methodology, click here.)
Some subsets of Millennials are even more progressive on the issue: 57 percent of female Millennials believe that gender falls on a spectrum, according to the poll, compared with 44 percent of men. And Millennials in the Northeast were even more likely to say so, at 58 percent. (In the South, that number fell to 42 percent.)
The poll found that race created substantial differences on views of gender identity.
White Millennials were the most likely to support the concept of a non-binary gender system — 55 percent of whites said gender is on a spectrum, compared to 47 percent of Latinos and 32 percent of African Americans.
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Some countries, such as India, recognize a third gender. In the U.S., there’s no such federal policy. But some cities have created ID cards that work for municipal services and do not include gender. San Francisco and Oakland both have municipal ID cards that don't specify gender at all.
Young people entering universities today are also more likely to see gender-neutral restrooms, ID cards, and on-campus housing options.
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Students at San Francisco State University, for example, have housing options that include “other gender-identity roommate pairings, regardless of biological sex.”
And Colorado College in 2013 made national headlines when a job seeker complained the job application asked applicants to check one of five genders: "not disclosed," "male," "female," "transgender," or "queer."
Fusion's Massive Millennial Poll surveyed 1,000 people between the ages of 18 to 34, with a general population sample and an overall margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points. The interviews were conducted via telephone from Jan. 6 to Jan. 11. For more on our methodology and poll results, click here.Trump threatens to rip up Iran nuclear deal unless US and allies fix'serious flaws'
Donald Trump has threatened to terminate the 2015 Iran nuclear deal if Congress and US allies fail to amend the agreement in significant ways.
In a vituperative speech on Friday that began by listing Iran’s alleged crimes over the decades, Trump announced he would not continue to certify the agreement to Congress, but stopped short of immediately cancelling US participation in the deal.
“Based on the factual record I have put forward, I am announcing today that we cannot and will not make this certification. We will not continue down a path whose predictable conclusion is more violence, more terror and the very real threat of Iran’s nuclear breakout,” Trump said at the White House.
Trump put the onus on Congress and US allies to agree to means to toughen the conditions on Iran – and to make restriction on the country’s nuclear programme permanent. He made clear that if those negotiations fail to reach a solution – which is almost certain – he would unilaterally pull the US out of the international agreement, a move likely to lead to a return to nuclear confrontation in the Middle East.
“In the event we are not able to reach a solution working with Congress and our allies, then the agreement will be terminated,” Trump said. “It is under continuous review and our participation can be cancelled by me, as president, at any time.”
'It's become a monster': is Iran's revolutionary guard a terror group? Read more
The president also announced he had ordered the US Treasury to impose new sanctions on Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a backer of terrorist groups in the region, although the state department did not designate the IRGC as a terrorist group itself.
The international backlash to Trump’s speech was immediate. The leaders of the UK, France and Germany – also signatories of the nuclear deal – issued a statement vowing their commitment to the agreement.
The EU foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, insisted that the agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was working, and that no single country or leader could terminate it.
“The president of the United States has many powers, but not this one,” Mogherini told reporters in Brussels.
Yukiya Amano, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog, issued a statement restating the agency’s finding that Iran was abiding by its obligations.
Within minutes of Trump’s speech, Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, went live on state television.
He said: “What we heard tonight was a repeat of the same baseless accusations and insults that we’ve heard over the past 40 years. It had nothing new; we weren’t surprised because for 40 years we’ve got used to these words. With your baseless speech you made our people more united.”
Rouhani went on: “Today, the US is more isolated than ever against the nuclear deal, [more] isolated than any other time in its plots against people of Iran.”
The Iranian president shrugged off Trump’s call for constraints on Iran’s ballistic missile programme.
“Our missile and defence activities have always been important to us for our defence, and today it’s more important,” Rouhani said. “We have always made efforts to produce weapons that we need, and from now on we will double our efforts. These weapons are for our defence and we will continue strengthening our defence capabilities.”
Trump received rapid support, meanwhile, from Israel and Saudi Arabia, who have emerged as his own major allies on the world stage.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said he wanted to “congratulate President Trump for his courageous decision today” and for “boldly confront[ing] Iran’s terrorist regime”.
For European diplomats seeking to salvage the JCPOA, the days leading up to Trump’s long-awaited speech were a roller-coaster. Initially fearful that Trump could immediately trigger a possible collapse of the deal, the Europeans were buoyed when they were briefed that Trump would not call for the reimposition of sanctions by Congress.
However, in the wake of the president’s speech on Friday, the JCPOA’s survival looked tenuous.
In the speech, Trump declared: “I am directing my administration to work closely with Congress and our allies to address the deal’s many serious flaws so the Iranian regime can never threaten the world with nuclear weapons.”
He noted that congressional leaders were already drafting amendments to legislation that would include restrictions on ballistic missiles and make the curbs on Iran’s nuclear programme under the 2015 deal permanent, and to reimpose sanctions instantly if those restrictions were breached.
However, any such changes would need 60 votes in the US Senate to pass, and Democrats are high unlikely to give them their backing. Even if they did pass into law, the restrictions would represent a unilateral effort to change the accord that would not be acceptable to the other national signatories.
Hours earlier, the US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson had acknowledged that it was very unlikely that the JCPOA agreement could be change, but suggested that the issue of Iran’s ballistic missile programme and the time limits on some of the nuclear constraints in the deal, could be dealt with in a separate agreement that could exist alongside the JCPOA.
Trump's tough talk on Iran could end in a big, blame-evading dodge | Joe McLean Read more
Trump, however, made no reference to such a way out of the looming impasse.
He appeared to go out of his way to goad Iran, even linking Tehran with al-Qaida and the attacks on US embassies in 1998. He referred to Tehran as a “fanatical regime” and a “dictatorship”. He even referred to the body of water almost universally known as the Persian Gulf as the Arabian Gulf.
“How come a president has not yet learned the name of a famous gulf in the world, the same Persian Gulf that US vessels always pass through aimlessly?” a riled Rouhani said in his response.
“He needs to study geography, but also international law. How come an international agreement that is endorsed by a UN resolution, which is a UN document … how a US president can annul such an international document?”
The exchange of insults mirrored Trump’s continuing spat with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, adding personal animus to already tense situations on opposite sides of the world.We have a big announcement! Your survey experience is about to get an overhaul.
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It’s that simple! We’ll announce the winner on February 25th.
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*All prizes will be paid out in Swag BucksAgriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce says we should "not get too excited that if you have a sausage, you will die of bowel cancer."
Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce says it is a "farce to compare sausages with cigarettes", after a World Health Organisation (WHO) report on the cancer risk posed by processed meat.
Mr Joyce said the findings meant processed and red meat "joins about 474 other things that the World Health Organisation says are carcinogens, including walking outside if you're in the city, or sunshine."
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) analysed 800 studies from around the world, and found "sufficient evidence in humans that the consumption of processed meat causes colorectal cancer".
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It said the cancer risk from eating processed meat was "statistically small" but "increases with the amount of meat consumed."
Mr Joyce said the report pointed to the importance of a balanced diet.
"There's a whole range of detail in the analysis of how you determine something has a correlation with cancer," Mr Joyce told ABC RN Breakfast.
"I don't think that we should get too excited that if you have a sausage you're going to die of bowel cancer.
"You're not. You just don't want to live on sausages.
"If you got everything that the World Health Organisation says is carcinogenic and took it out of your daily requirements, you are heading back to a cave."
Industry defends meat consumption as part of balanced diet
The Australian meat industry's research and development corporation, Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) said it was aware of the IARC report.
MLA declined to be interviewed, but in a statement told ABC Rural that Australia's official dietary guidelines recommended 455 grams per week of cooked red meat "as part of a healthy, balanced diet."
"Promoting red meat as part of a healthy, balanced diet is important to the red meat industry and we are guided by the Australian dietary guidelines," the statement said.
"Red meat such as beef and lamb, is a critical, natural source of iron and zinc, vitamin B12 and omega-3 — essential nutrients needed to keep the body and brain functioning well."
While Australians are huge consumers of meat per capita overall, MLA said Australian women and children were currently "eating less than the recommended amount of red meat, and one in five women have some form of iron deficiency."
"There is no reason to believe that eating beef and lamb as part of a healthy, balanced diet and lifestyle in 100g to 200g portion sizes (raw weight), three to four times a week as recommended in the Australian dietary guidelines, will increase risk of cancer," the MLA statement said.
It's not about people needing to become vegetarian but it is about saying if we're eating a lot of quantities of red meat and processed meat, it's something we should be trying to cut down. Kathy Chapman, Chair, Nutrition Committee for Cancer Council Australia
"An evaluation of available evidence published in 2015 in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition [funded by MLA] examined the latest quantitative research and found no causal link between red meat and cancer.
"When it comes to prevention of cancer and other chronic diseases such as heart disease and diabetes, the evidence suggests a healthy, balanced diet and active lifestyle is critical.
"Focusing on only one kind of food is not enough.
"Education around these issues is vital and we consult extensively with experts to ensure our nutrition communications are evidence-based and relevant to everyday Australians."
Bowel cancer Australia's second most common cancer
Kathy Chapman, Chair, Nutrition Committee for Cancer Council Australia, said bowel cancer was a significant problem in Australia.
"What we know is that when we look at bowel cancer in Australia we know it's our second most common cancer," she said.
"We know that something like 2,600 cases of bowel cancer each year are attributable to processed meat and red meat.
"But it's really important that we look at this in context.
"It's not about people needing to become vegetarian but it is about saying if we're eating a lot of quantities of red meat and processed meat, it's something we should be trying to cut down on."
While the announcement from the WHO may be causing headaches for the processed and red meat industry, according to Ms Chapman there was a silver lining for other producers.
"Our message is about not taking beef off the barbecue or banning bacon or anything like that.
"Hopefully it's really good news for our farmers out there who are growing our fresh produce, like fruits and vegetables and our grain-based foods. It's about trying to give them a bit more room on the plate," Ms Chapman said.
Butchers not sold on the science
Northern Territory butcher, Wade Stanfield from Borroloola thinks the WHO findings may change the buying habits of customers, but remains sceptical of the research findings.
"It could to a certain extent, yes," he said.
"It was bad for the meat industry when they were telling people fat was really bad for you.
"Now it turns out that was lies and it's sugar that is the worst thing you can have.
"If bacon gives you cancer, that would mean anything that's brined, any smallgoods, corned silverside, pickled pork would also give you cancer.
"It just means we'll all have to starve, just in case," Mr Stanfield said.
Bacon and eggs on a Sunday morning; I don't think that'll change too much. Daly Waters cook Justin
Steve Townsend at Gunbalanya Meats agrees that the WHO findings are "a bit hard to swallow".
"People have been eating red meat forever, and people have been eating bacon and sausages for a lot of years. It's hard to believe.
"Bacon and eggs on a Sunday morning; I don't think that'll change too much."
At a remote truck stop on the Northern Territory's Stuart Highway, fillet steak and hamburgers are the most popular menu items.
Daly Waters cook Justin said the menu was unlikely to change.
"A lot of people will continue to eat red meat for the rest of their lives.
"It's just like smoking where there have been lots of studies saying that you can die from smoking, but people still smoke.
"Some die and some don't," he said.THE federal government has secretly wound back a critical environmental protection for the Great Barrier Reef against shipping accidents in order to avoid a diplomatic stoush with the United States and Singapore.
Leaked US embassy cables published by WikiLeaks have revealed that the government has "weakened" the compulsory pilotage regime for large vessels, including oil tankers, chemical tankers and liquefied gas carriers, sailing through the sensitive maritime environment of the Torres Strait.
Under threat... the Great Barrier Reef. Credit:Dave Wachenfeld
Owners and masters of vessels that fail to use a pilot to navigate the narrow and hazardous channel will not face any penalty if they do not subsequently call at an Australian port.
On learning the Torres Strait pilotage |
“It’s absolutely horrific,” said Sarah Thompson, a 38-year-old lawyer and resident of Tortola, the largest of the British Virgin Islands (BVI). “The island is not fit to live on. Planes and boats are needed to get people off. There was some limited evacuation yesterday, prioritizing those who are injured and most vulnerable, but many are still trying to find a way off the island,” she added.
Thompson was on a trip to California when the hurricane hit the BVI and neighboring groups of islands with 185mph winds in a record category 5 storm late last Tuesday and into Wednesday.
“There are people who cannot be accounted for. Many roads are totally blocked and people cannot get out of their houses. There has been some unrest, but it’s not clear [how much],” she said.
Thompson was on a trip to California when the hurricane hit the BVI and neighboring groups of islands with 185mph winds in a record category 5 storm late last Tuesday and into Wednesday.
How Britain and France have responded to Hurricane Irma disaster Read more
“There are people who cannot be accounted for. Many roads are totally blocked and people cannot get out of their houses. There has been some unrest, but it’s not clear [how much],” she said.
The islands are British overseas territory and the UK government in London has sent a Royal Navy vessel, troops and experts to the region to assist people in the BVI and other territories such as Turks and Caicos and Anguilla. Dutch and French authorities are sending personnel and aid to their overseas territories, such as Saint Martin. Many other islands, such as Barbuda, have seen most of their settlements and infrastructure obliterated.
Play Video 0:16 New aerial footage of Barbuda shows Irma's destruction
Olga Osadchaya, 33, a liquidation lawyer and resident of Tortola – the largest island in the BVI – was evacuated by her employer to San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Saturday. But she said many thousands of islanders were stranded and suffering.
“I was privileged to have the option to leave and there are many who are not able to get out. Time is of the essence because of lack of sanitation and more rain coming, which could cause mud slides,” she said.
As Osadchaya was leaving the BVI she saw the Royal Navy arriving with personnel, vehicles and helicopters, she said, but with many of the islands badly damaged there is still a large task ahead to get the emergency under control, she said.
“Most people are helping each other, sharing supplies where they have them, but I am hearing about people running out of water and there are lots of people missing. Some friends of mine were held up for money by someone with a machete in what is left of their house,” she said.
The small number of banks and some shops on Tortola have reportedly been looted and there is some panic about a breakdown in law and order and the growing risk of the outbreak of diseases, both Thompson and Osadchaya told the Guardian, citing communications with friends and family still on the island.
Osadchaya said she understood that many inmates who had escaped from prison after the storm passed through had been recaptured by Monday, but not all. The BVI authorities have declared a curfew from 6pm to 6am.
In a video message posted to Facebook, the BVI premier, Orlando Smith, said the islanders “have been shaken to our core” by the record storm and he was “heartbroken over the loss of life”.
Five people are understood to have died in the BVI so far, but the known death toll is expected to rise as personnel reach areas isolated by flooding and debris.
Communications were down across much of the BVI from Wednesday and there is now some patchy phone and internet function. The only power is from generators, with people running low on fuel to run them, Thompson said.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest People work surrounded by debris in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma in Tortola. Photograph: Gabi Gonzalez/AP
She did not hear from her husband, Christian, who tried to weather the storm at their home on Tortola, from Wednesday until Saturday, when she learned he was safe, although their home is wrecked.
“There is debris all over the island. There seems to be no information and people are running around like headless chickens. It looks like the government building in Tortola has been totalled, but there has to be some more coordination. People on the ground are starting to panic, and I can hear it in my husband’s voice,” said Thompson.
Video from the BVI has shown that many wooden structures have been reduced to kindling, while many concrete buildings have been badly damaged and some have been destroyed.
“People are talking about supplies going in, but there is a need to get stuff out. It’s well over 30C and it’s humid and dirty. Houses are not secure and there is raw sewage, rubbish and rotting food and there are rats and birds going into the houses,” said Thompson.The Great Cluster in Hercules is one of the observing highlights in the summer sky. The cluster is a globular cluster of stars known as M31. This sky map shows the cluster's location in relation to other constellations in the night sky.
If you look to the east at night with a telescope this week, you may see a bright cluster of stars with a powerful name and a discovery story that dates back to the 18th century.
The cluster is an especially beautiful Messier object known as the great globular cluster M13, in the constellation Hercules, which stands high in the eastern sky at dusk this week. Because of its location, the cluster is sometimes known as the Globular Cluster of Hercules. The sky map available here shows where the cluster appears in relation to other constellations.
Famous star clusters and glowing cosmic nebulas are often denoted by names that begin with the letter M, such as M42 (the Orion nebula) and M31 (the Andromeda galaxy). These objects are part of the storied Messier catalogue, created by 18th century comet observer Charles Messier (1730-1817).
Find the Keystone
To locate Messier 13, look toward the four stars known as the "Keystone," which supposedly forms the body of Hercules. A keystone is the stone atop an arch, and is narrower at one end. The keystone of Hercules is composed of the stars Eta, Pi, Epsilon, and Zeta Herculis. It's an asterism, which is defined as a distinctive grouping of stars forming part of the recognized constellation outlines, or lying within its boundaries.
Ranging in size from sprawling naked-eye figures to minute stellar settings, asterisms are found in every quarter of the sky and at all seasons of the year. The larger asterisms – ones like the Big Dipperin Ursa Major and the Great Square of Pegasus– are often better known than their host constellations.
It's between the two western stars of the keystone that we can find the Great Globular Cluster of Hercules. It's about a third of the way along a line drawn from the stars Eta to Zeta.
Actually, it was not Messier, but Edmund Halley (of comet fame), who first mentioned this cluster in 1715, having discovered it the previous year: "This is but a little Patch," he wrote, "but it shows itself to the naked Eye, when the Sky is serene and the Moon absent."
Located at a distance of about 25,000 light-years, the Globular Cluster of Hercules has been estimated to be a ball of tens of thousands of stars roughly 160 light-years in diameter. Globular clusters are masses of stars that typically lie on the outskirts of our galaxy.
False comets
Messier was deeply interested in discovering comets but he was plagued by the same trouble that besets all comet hunters. He kept finding "comets" that were not comets at all but only star clusters and nebulae. His hopes were dashed so often that for his own convenience he kept a list of these deceiving objects, which he published in a catalogue.
Messier first saw the Hercules cluster in June 1764, and described it as a "round and brilliant nebula with a brighter center, which I am sure contains no stars."
Today, if you use good binoculars and look toward that spot in the sky where M13 is, you likely will see a similar view: a roundish glow or patch of light.
Moving up to a telescope, the view dramatically improves. With a 4 to 6-inch telescope, the "patch" starts to become resolved into hundreds of tiny pinpoints of light. In larger instruments, Messier 13 is transformed into a spectacular celestial chrysanthemum. [New Tips to See Ancient Star Clusters With Telescopes]
In his Celestial Handbook, Robert Burnham describes the view of the cluster in a 12-inch or larger telescope as "an incredibly wonderful sight; the vast swarm of thousands of glittering stars, when seen for the first time or the hundredth, is an absolutely amazing spectacle."
An oldie but goodie
For those who regularly attend the annual Stellafane convention, which is held just outside of Springfield, Vt. (which in 2011 takes place July 28-31), the Great Hercules Cluster is the object that the 12-inch Porter turret telescope on Breezy Hill is directed toward most often.
Many years ago, the legendary deep sky observer, Walter Scott Houston (1912-1993) – known to one and all as "Scotty" – noticed a long line of people patiently waiting their turn to get a view through the eyepiece.
"What are you folks looking at?" he asked as he poked his head through the observatory door. From out of the darkness, came the response: M13. "M13?" replied Scotty, with a tinge of incredulity. "So many people have looked at it, you would think it'd be worn out by now!"
Stellar nuisances
Many of the objects listed in Messier's catalogue have turned out to be beautiful star clusters like that in Hercules. Others are great clouds of nebulosity, while still others are galaxies similar to our own.
Yet, there is absolutely no reason to believe that Messier had the slightest interest in these objects. They were all merely a nuisance to him.
The 13 comets that Messier discovered and of which he was so proud of are long gone and forgotten now. But his catalogue, the by-product of his main work, has turned out to be amazingly useful to astronomers. His catalogue numbers have been retained and are the principal reason Messier is still remembered today.
Messier's original list contained 45 celestial objects and was published in 1774. By 1781, the list had grown to 103. Historians have since added seven more objects that were seen, but never catalogued by Messier.
Single-minded zeal
It has been written by many that Messier had consummate skill in making astronomical observations, even though by contemporary standards the telescopes he utilized were inefficient and crude (that fact is made obvious by his description of the Great Cluster in Hercules). Nonetheless, he was highly ambitious and always sought recognition of his observing skills and comet discoveries.
One oft-repeated anecdote demonstrates Messier's single-minded and zealous pursuit for finding comets.
On the occasion that a rival, Jacques Leibax Montaigne (1716-1785), discovered a brand new comet, Messier was holding watch at his wife's deathbed.
When a friend later offered condolences for his loss, Messier – thinking only of the comet – answered, "I had discovered twelve, alas, to be robbed of the thirteenth by that Montaigne!" His eyes then began to fill with tears. There was a long, awkward moment and then, realizing his friend was actually commenting not about comets but about his wife, Messier quickly added "Ah! The poor woman."
Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for The New York Times and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, New York.Please enable Javascript to watch this video
RICHMOND, Va. -- A woman raped inside her Richmond home was seven months pregnant at the time of the violent sexual attack. The woman, who we will refer to as Danielle, reached out to CBS 6 to tell her traumatic story with the hope that it helped Richmond Police track down the gunmen responsible.
Danielle said she was sleeping the February 18 morning when her fiancé, who worked late that night, went outside to collect the couple's cat. It was around 2 a.m.
He opened the door, he hadn't even left the steps when two guys pulled his hood over his head and had guns up under his ribs, Danielle told CBS 6 reporter Melissa Hipolit. They tried to rob him, she said, then pushed him into the couple's home, along the 700 block of North First Street in Jackson Ward.
The commotion woke Danielle up.
She said she yelled down to her fiancé, then heard footsteps coming up the stairs.
Before she knew it, she said there was a gun to her head and the gunman demanded money. She said a second gunman had his foot on her fiancé’s head and had a gun pointed at him.
"He raped me and then he left for a minute to go look for more money," she told Hipolit. "Then he came back and tried to do it again."
Danielle described the attackers as "young." She said she was not wearing her contact lenses, so she was unable to get a good look at them.
"He was threatening to kill us," she said. "I am so angry and they're still out there."
The attackers took the couple's cell phones.
Once the attackers left the home, Danielle said she got onto her Xbox and got in contact with a friend in Seattle. That friend called 911 and Richmond Police arrived minutes later. It was about 3:30 a.m. at that point.
"They were very helpful and seemed very angry [about the situation]," Danielle said about the police officers who arrived to investigate the crime.
Danielle said she believed this was a crime of opportunity.
She said she wanted to tell her story not only to help get the attackers off the street, but to warn others who may work late or take their pets out at night.
"I want people to be careful," she said.
Her unborn baby was unharmed in the attack, she said.
Richmond Police said detectives were not ready to release new information about this case. Immediately after the crime, Richmond Deputy Chief Steve Drew said the department would increase patrols in the area.
"We have a lot of resources dedicated to it," Drew said. "We need to bring the two individuals who are responsible for this act to justice."
Anyone with information was asked to call Det. David Cuffley at 804-646-6795 or Crime Stoppers at 804-780-1000.The service isn’t designed to replace professional translation, but to bridge a language barrier that otherwise makes simple things more difficult.
Microsoft’s Skype Translator is about to get a wider audience.
The translation feature of Microsoft’s video and voice chat service, available until now only for users of the Windows 8.1 operating system, will make its way starting Thursday to users of all Windows versions.
Skype Translator, first demonstrated at a conference last year, offers real-time translation of conversations into a handful of languages. Currently, that’s English, French, German, Italian, Mandarin and Spanish.
Others are coming, said Olivier Fontana, a director of product marketing with Microsoft Research who’s working on the translator project.
The service isn’t designed to replace professional translation, he said. Rather, it aims to bridge a language barrier that used to make things like changing a hotel reservation in a foreign language difficult.
“We’re not trying to compete with Ferrari,” he said. “We’re trying to bring a [Volkswagen] Beetle to people who are walking today.”
The next step, Fontana said, is to build the feature into other versions of Skype, including those for other desktop operating systems or mobile phones, though he didn’t indicate which was likely to come first. Fontana also didn’t say when Skype Translator might be included in Microsoft’s Skype for Business, which is sold to business customers.
Microsoft executives have touted the service as an example of better collaboration within a company with a reputation for infighting. The voice-recognition technology comes from Microsoft Research, which collaborated with the Skype team and the group within the Windows organization that builds the Cortana voice-activated digital assistant.
The technology is built on algorithms designed to learn based on speech. The tool starts with the smarts of Microsoft’s existing text-translation dictionary and is fed information on how people actually speak. That includes news broadcasts paired with closed captioning, purchased logs of customer support calls, and, ultimately, conversations Microsoft stages to teach the software. Data from actual users of preview versions helps, too.
“All we need is a sound and the transcript,” said Fontana. “The more data we get, the better it becomes.”
Some language tics, like adding “um,” or “right” at the end of a sentence, require linguists to step in and guide the software.
“It’s a combination of art and science,” Fontana said.The two-day international conference on women trafficking held in Mumbai by the Maharashtra State Commission for Women (MSCW) in partnership with the International Justice Mission, India (IJM) concluded on Friday.
There were many distinguished speakers at the event, including Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, State Minister for Women & Child Development Vijaya Rahatkar, who is also the MSCW chairperson; Second Lady of Ghana Hajia Samira Bawumia; and Global CEO of International Justice Mission (IJM) US Garry Hague.
“Human trafficking, especially of children, is a big menace for the society and the Maharashtra government has taken a slew of steps to deal with the issue. The cases of child trafficking have come down drastically in the state where special cells have been set up in the vulnerable districts to curb the menace,” CM Fadnavis said.
The Chief Minister said special anti-human trafficking units have been constituted by the state in 12 vulnerable districts and special courts have been set up for speedy trial of trafficking cases.
Informing the audience that 10,000 children have been freed by Maharashtra police under a special initiative called 'Operation Muskan', Fadnavis said: “The conviction rate in such cases is 50 per cent (in Maharashtra), which is very good compared to the other states of the country.”
Second Lady of Ghana Hajia Samira Bawumia said: “The five most important measures required to tackle woman-trafficking are socialization, sensatization, support, supervision and security. I am appealing to all the nations that actions should be initiated on these fronts to curb this growing menace.”
Prosecution of Traffickers
Director General of Police, Maharashtra, Satish Mathur, said: “It is important to bring human trafficking under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) as it is an organised crime. It involves one person who asks for it, the other arranges for it and third person is involved. The MCOCA will instill fear in them.”
DGP Mathur also said, “We will soon have one anti-human trafficking unit in every district headed by a deputy superintendent of police. We need to book them for economic offences. Mumbai is the financial hub. Therefore, money is more, so demand is more."
Speaking on the second day of the conference, retired IPS officer and currently Professor at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) PM Nair, who has served National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) as nodal officer on anti-human trafficking and the principal researcher on the Action Research on Trafficking in Women and Children, strongly advocated for prosecution of traffickers, observing that most of the real perpetrators, who are the source of trafficking, are not prosecuted.
Condemning the use of word ‘child prostitute’, Nair said: “A child can never be a prostitute, a child is a child.”
Nair also said legalisation of prostitution would mean legalisation of trafficking.
Last year, 19,223 women and children were trafficked as against 15,448 in 2015.
PIL in Bombay HC filed by survivors
While such strong support is being extended towards eradication of human trafficking from both the state government as well as the international community, a look at the petition filed in the High Court of Bombay by two survivors of human trafficking is warranted.
One of the petitioners was trafficked as a minor, and she was rescued the same year. But the other petitioner was subjected to commercial sexual exploitation for six years.
The petition states that no case was registered against the traffickers; consequently, no arrests were made even though specific names are provided.
It is contended that only brothel managers are arrested and charge-sheeted but no case is made out against the trafficker and transporter who play a major role in trafficking.
The petition alleged that the police shows complete disregard in registration and investigation of human trafficking under Section 370 (buying or disposing of any person as a slave/trafficking of persons), 372 (selling minor for purposes of prostitution) of Indian Penal Code and in almost all the cases related to inter-state human trafficking, no investigation is carried out to find out offenders from other states.
The PIL also highlights a failure on part of the state in taking steps to come into an understanding with other states and union territories for co-operation in investigation and prosecution of cases of inter-state human trafficking.
As per the government record mentioned in the PIL, about 3.25 lakh children have been reported missing between 2011 and 2014, out of which nearly 2 lakh were girls.
According to National Crime Bureau Record data in 2013, total number of cases of human trafficking registered in India was at 3,940, in 2014 an increase of 38.7% took place (5,466 cases) and in 2015 number of cases registered was 6,877.
Although, this PIL is still pending, the issues discussed at the conference were very similar to what the petition highlights and the major takeaway is a need for prosecution of traffickers who are the root cause and source of this menace.
Read the Data Report HereImage copyright AFP Image caption Homemade beer is popular in many African countries, as seen here in South Africa
The number of people killed after drinking a "poisoned" homemade beer in Mozambique has risen to 69, state radio has reported.
The beer, usually made from millet, may have been contaminated with crocodile bile, a health official said.
A toddler was among those killed after apparently drinking the beer at a funeral in Tete province on Saturday.
An official said it was the worst such tragedy to hit Mozambique, with 39 people still being treated in hospital.
The government declared three days of national mourning in a decree published on Sunday.
The beer, known as "phombe", is traditionally served at functions in Mozambique's Tete province. Deaths from drinking it are rare, correspondents say.
Carle Mosse, the province's health director, said it was suspected that the poisoning had been caused by crocodile bile although this had yet to be confirmed in tests.
It was not immediately clear how the beer had been contaminated and whether it was intentional.
The woman who brewed the beer and several members of her family were among the victims, Radio Mozambique has reported.Pictures support theory of water on Europa
High-resolution image of Europa's ridged plains
March 2, 1998
Web posted at: 1:29 p.m. EST (1829 GMT)
PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (CNN) -- Newly released images of Jupiter's moon Europa -- the most detailed ever taken -- show more evidence that there is slush, and perhaps even water, beneath Europa's icy surface. The presence of water would increase the odds that life may have existed at some point in Europa's history.
The Europa pictures, from NASA's Galileo's spacecraft, were released at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and on the Internet site of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
A L S O :
- Image gallery of recently released photos of Europa
taken by NASA's Galileo space probe -
They were taken by the Galileo spacecraft during a December 16, 1997, fly-by and received on Earth in late February.
The new pictures include high-resolution views of rough, broadly scalloped icy cliffs on Europa as high as Mount Rushmore.
Other images show an impact crater named Pwyll and the so-called Conamara Chaos region, where icy plates on the surface have broken apart and moved around.
Computer-generated model with a topographical perspective view of the Pwyll impact crater
One large, icy fracture is big enough to be spanned by the Brooklyn Bridge.
Galileo, which was launched in 1989 and arrived at Jupiter in 1995, is making a two-year tour of its four major moons: Io, Europa, Callisto and Ganymede.
The Galileo mission is due to continue through December 1999.poster="https://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201607/3255/1155968404_5017383130001_5017338395001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true Sanders hits Trump: I 'do not hate' Clinton
When it comes to Donald Trump's contention that Bernie Sanders "hates" Hillary Clinton, the Vermont senator chalked it up to Trump being Trump.
"I know, he has read my mind. What a man, what a genius," Sanders remarked sarcastically in an interview Thursday night on MSNBC's "All In with Chris Hayes." "No, the answer is of course, Trump is lying as he always does."
Story Continued Below
He continued, explaining: "No, I do not hate Secretary Clinton. I've known her for 25 years. I have a lot of respect for her. We've worked together."
While acknowledging that the two Democratic presidential primary rivals "have disagreements on issues," saying that he hates her "is absolutely untrue."
In Bangor, Maine, on Wednesday, Trump told supporters: “I have to say one thing about Bernie — he, you know, he'll be nasty and say, 'Oh, I'd never vote for Trump,' but that's OK. I know what he thinks inside.
“He hates her. He hates her. I mean, he cannot stand her."Lately I’ve been seeing nationalistic / racialistic rhetoric from some who identify as Christian. Some say that this is just their politics and has nothing to do with their religion.
That is, of course, a distinctly secular idea, that one can practice some part of life in a way that is separate from religion. While we don’t have to pursue theocracy, dominionism, etc., to be authentically Christian, we still don’t turn off our Christianity when practicing politics. It is not Christian to say that I can act one way in church and in a contradictory way in politics.
Please note well that this post is not to promote some particular policy position about borders, immigration, globalization, etc. I’m talking about the underlying exclusionary philosophy of nationalism. One might, for instance, decide to close borders for defense reasons rather than nationalistic ones or to emphasize localist economic policies to stimulate local commerce rather than out of fear of cultural pollution. I’m also not critiquing the idea of having a “Christian nation” (which of course is a very complicated issue all on its own) or even just a nation.
All Christians may find it interesting to read this 2014 Biblically-based reflection by Dr. Eric Jobe on this question: Is Racial Nationalism Compatible with Orthodox Christianity? A Theological Reflection on Holiness and Priesthood in the Old Testament. Eric gets down to the questions of division and distinction through the priesthood as represented in the Hebrew Scriptures. It’s very much worth reading.
Some say that their Christian religion is neutral on the question of nationalism or perhaps even positive on it. There are so many kinds of religion out there going by the name of Christian that one cannot generalize too much about them all. That said, the varieties that claim any kind of historical succession from the early Church should remember well that line from the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed:
I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
It’s kind of hard to be catholic in anything but name when practicing nationalism or racialism:
Yes, the Church is for all people, and all are my brothers, but you are not my kind, so go stand over there. I’m happy to receive communion with you, but not with you, please understand.
There is a reason why, in Orthodox Christian liturgical texts, we so often see this phrase: “the race of Christians.” Christians are a new nation, a new people joined together all in Christ. A truly catholic Christianity will not inspire its followers to divide people on the basis of “kind” (however construed). Only sectarian religion does that.
To be catholic (from Greek katholikos, “according to the whole”) is not only to be universal but also to embrace the wholeness of humanity. It is not a system of correctness but a spirit of love. In catholicity we do indeed find true dogma, true faith and true worship. And in catholicity we find a spirit which invites all into the intimacy of communion. Catholicity does not promote error, for most errors are sins against catholicity. And catholicity does not remove distinctions, for it would not be catholic if it imposed utter uniformity.
There is nothing wrong with being of whatever “kind” one is—culturally, racially, nationally, etc., or even with wanting to preserve and cultivate those things. The problem comes when we seek to divide and to exclude on the basis of such things. That is not catholic. It is sectarian.
Historic Christians have to resist the temptation to the sin of sectarianism, the feeling that one must be divided from the other because of the impurity or difference of the other. Rather, while true divisions do exist over things like dogma, our hearts should be torn over those divisions and seek to overcome them. Certainly, a much lesser division such as nationality or race should not divide us, because such identities are temporary, anyway, and do not contradict the catholicity of the one Church.
Just as an addendum, it should be noted that this post is not about what we might think of as the “ethnic problem” in the Orthodox Church, though of course it is related. If you’re interested in my thoughts on that, here’s a piece I published last October: How I Made My Peace with “Ethnic” Orthodoxy.Story highlights Christian university student claims he was suspended for his sex-abuse activism
Was motivated by earlier experiences with sex-abuse in his church
Bob Jones University strongly denies allegations
Former Bob Jones University student Chris Peterman expected to graduate on May 4. But on April 24, nine days before he was set to receive his diploma, the 23-year-old poli-sci major was suspended from school.
According to BJU, Peterman was suspended for a variety of infractions involving the school's code of conduct. Most of the violations, Peterman says, involved his activity on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.
Peterman responded by uploading videos to CNN iReport alleging that he was the victim of a pattern of intimidation and coercion on the part of several BJU staff and administrators. He claims to have been forced out of school in retaliation for his activism against Chuck Phelps, a former BJU Board of Trustees member who was accused of covering up a sex-abuse scandal at the church where he served as pastor.
Carol Keirstead, BJU's Chief Communications Officer, denied these allegations, and said the university could not comment on Peterman's case because of a federal law that protects the privacy of student education records, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act [FERPA].
"Outraged" by scandal
The Greenville, South Carolina-based college is well known for its Christian-conservative culture. BJU requires students to sign a covenant every year dictating permissible on- and off-campus behaviors. The school enforces strict prohibitions against the use of alcohol and drugs, premarital sex and public demonstrations for causes or institutions opposed by BJU.
In July 2010, allegations surfaced that former Pastor Phelps of Trinity Baptist Church in Concord, New Hampshire, had helped cover up repeated instances of sexual abuse committed more than a decade earlier by an older male parishioner against his step-daughter. The parishioner is currently serving a 15-30 year prison sentence on statutory rape charges.
The girl was impregnated, and she claimed in various media reports that then-Pastor Phelps compelled her to publicly apologize in front of the church congregation for the "sin" of her pregnancy. Phelps was accused of providing board for her in a guest room over his garage until the baby could be put up for adoption, according to reporting by ABC
Phelps told CNN the girl was not coerced in any way. And in a statement released on his website, he said she "came before the congregation at Trinity Baptist Church voluntarily with her mother's blessing."
Phelps also explained his actions in the statement: "There was certainly no intent to cover up the allegations or hide [her]," the statement said. "I have always been committed to a policy of compliance and partnership with official investigations of any kind."
When Peterman heard news of the initial allegations against Chuck Phelps, he was outraged that Phelps was allowed to continue to hold his chair as a Board member, Peterman said. He posted links about the story on his personal Facebook account, and was called into a meeting with BJU's Dean of Men, Jon Daulton. The Deans of Men and Women are gender-specific assistants to the school's Dean of Students
"I was told that I'd have to stop posting that stuff, or I would be expelled," Peterman said in an interview with CNN. The Dean of Men "said that the administration was upset with what I was saying. He said that the public relations department was following everything because it was giving Bob Jones a bad name."
Keirstead said that BJU was not commenting on specific allegations made by Peterman, again citing FERPA guidelines.
Personal motivation
Peterman had a personal motivation behind his activism: A practicing Baptist, he has also witnessed a church cover-up of sexual abuse, he said.
"I knew this, so I had this desire to tell my story, and help other people tell their stories." Peterman said he'd rather not give any more specifics on the incident, for fear of hurting and embarrassing his family and community.
In an effort to abide by BJU rules and continue his activism, Peterman created the "Do Right BJU" Facebook page, which drew considerable attention from BJU students and the local community. The group's mission was, in Peterman's words, to "provide a support and outreach network for victims of sexual abuse in the BJU community."
Peterman said that he continued to share stories about the Phelps scandal on the "Do Right BJU" Facebook page.
In a follow-up interview with CNN, Phelps refuted any wrong-doing in the New Hampshire abuse case, and pointed to the statement on his web site that defended his actions.
When Peterman created the Facebook page and organized a "Do Right BJU" protest on December 12, 2011, he was told by the Dean of Men to shut it down immediately, he said. He said he told the Dean he believed his actions were protected by the First Amendment, and that the Department of Education expressly protected his activism.
"They backed off.... I went home that Christmas, Chuck Phelps resigned from the board, and Bob Jones announced that they were going to form a sexual abuse committee," he said. "I thought everything was good. I was talking with abuse victims and referring them to a support network, RAINN [the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network]. I had other students joining in. It was very good."
Disciplined for using social media
When Peterman returned to BJU in January 2012 for his final semester, he claims he was called in for special weekly counseling with the Dean of Men. "I had questioned the authority of the university, so by association, I had questioned the authority of God himself," he said. "Therefore, I had a deep spiritual problem he needed to fix."
"I would go into these meetings, two to three times a week, for an hour or more at a time, sometimes even at midnight. He would have a printout of my Facebook, and have things highlighted and starred. If anyone appeared in the picture with me, he would have their names highlighted and their faces circled," he said.
"I felt like I was being harassed and followed.... He would also call my friends in and question them about me, all in an effort to isolate me and shut me up."
Keirstead declined to comment on these allegations.
By April, with only a month left in the school year, Peterman felt confident that he was going to graduate. But then, during the school's Spring Break Bible conference, he Tweeted about the length of a service, five minutes before it began: "This thing is 2hrs long!? What could they possibly talk about for that long!"
"The Dean of Men calls me in and says I sent that Tweet during the Bible conference, which isn't true," he said. "I explained that it was right before, not during, but he says he doesn't believe me and that they're going to give me 25 demerits. That was the first time I'd ever gotten demerits."
According to BJU officials, if a Bob Jones student accrues 150 demerits during the course of a semester, they're suspended from the school for a full semester. "I knew, at that point, that this was going to be difficult," he said. "They had gotten tired of me, because I refused to be quiet."
This, he contends, was the beginning of a pattern of harassment on the part of the BJU administration in retaliation for his activism the previous semester.
Suspended for watching "Glee?"
Three weeks before graduation, he said he was informed by the Dean of Men that he was reported by another student for watching TV off-campus, and would be facing another round of demerits.
He told CNN he was at an off-campus Starbucks, drinking coffee and watching "Glee" when he got called into the office and asked what he had been watching.
"I didn't lie to them. I had been watching 'Glee' since my freshman year, I didn't think I had anything to fear."
Though there are no prohibitions in BJU's student handbook against watching TV off-campus (on-campus TV viewing is not allowed), Peterman said that he was given 50 demerits because of the show's "morally reprehensible" tolerance for, among other things, homosexuality.
"So I'm at about 120 demerits now," he said. "I was so scared. Up until that semester, I had never had any demerits. It's not |
’re multi-faceted and they’re full-time and, you know, you have extended family and church. And so in life I’ve done a lot that just fills me as a wife and mother, homeowner, pet owner, car repair gal.
Layne had some recording equipment at home. Would any of this music be worthy of release?
There is nothing. We’ve listened to everything and — Just because he had the equipment didn’t mean that he had the professional ability to pull it all together. I know that he practiced on it a lot. Just unfinished little ditties. And I don’t even know if he did them. It might have been a friend going “doodly-wop”. I don’t know. His music room was completely pristine and clean even though the rest of the house was an artist’s home. So I value the possibility, but no. Don’t you suppose that after 13 years if there was something valuable, it would’ve been heard by now?
Do you know who may have been the last person to see Layne?
According to the stories, it was Mike (Starr) and he went to the store for Layne. So that’s all I know.
It’s heart-breaking to think it was you, his mother, who was notified by Layne’s management that there had been no spending activity from him in two weeks. You (and Jim Elmer) then went to his home with the police, broke down the door and discovered him lifeless on April 19, 2002. Is there anything you can clear up? You brought him in this world, and you went to save him.
I didn’t know I was saving him when we were checking on him. And the phone call that I got said, “Now, don’t be overly concerned because it’s not unusual for Layne to take out a sum of money and then just use cash”. And when I got there, I had been there a couple of days before; because, Demri’s brother had died in February and I hadn’t known about it and I didn’t know if Layne knew about it, so I had been there a couple of days before to talk to him about it. There was no answer. I think that would’ve been a Wednesday, yeah. Then when I got the phone call to check on him on Friday, I wasn’t surprised that there wasn’t an answer. He had a little bit of mail by the door, but the kitty meowed, and she had never done that before and somehow that just alerted me. And when he didn’t answer after a while, I thought, well, I better have somebody come and check on him. So that’s when I made the 911 call. The police first went in and then they said – I said, well, I need to go in and be with him. And they said, “Oh I wouldn’t do that.” And I said, “I can do this.” I’ve always promised myself that if anything happened to my children I would be there for them. And I went in, and he was tiny and I thought at first that he had made like a life-sized mannequin of himself because he had lots and lots of art projects always. And I thought, you know, somebody could have thrown that little guy over their shoulder and walked down the street and nobody would have even know that it was a real person.
So, and I sat with him for a few minutes. And I told him that I was really sorry how things had turned out. Because, of course we tried to not pressure him. We always felt like pressure would just push him to the wrong place, and he knew what he had to do. He had to go in treatment, stay in treatment, communicate with his sponsor, stay with healthy people – but the music industry doesn’t afford you the time to do that. And those aren’t healthy people – a lot of them are not. It was pretty tough to get cleaned up. By then he had pretty much secluded, been secluded. So it was shocking to see my child like that. It should have turned out better. And it’s been amazing how many people have expressed their love and support. And they say, “Gee, I hope Layne knew how loved he was.” And I think, Wow, how could he not have known?” I’m sure he did. And then there was the crying and the storytelling and the making the plans. You know I think people who are sweet-hearted deserve to know the truth, and you know, “Warning, warning. Don’t kid yourself. The best of the best succumb to drug addiction. Stay away.”
Why do we lose certain people?
Once Layne and I were on the phone and he was saying, “You know why, Mom? Why did this happen to me?” And I said, “Honey, that’s a witch hunt. Just go to treatment. And move on with your life. We have no idea. We have no idea of the why.” Believe. Don’t take yourself out to teach somebody a lesson. He didn’t. And I mean, everybody’s circumstances are different. I understand that. Don’t judge somebody else. Don’t think you know things you don’t know for sure. You were not there. But the whole why thing is part of a distraction that the world wants you to get distracted away from your purpose. Let it go. You don’t want to blame – what if you figured out the reason and it was someone’s fault? Are you going to go through life judging and blaming? No. Just drop the why and move on.
There is a small bar next to Layne’s last home called the “Blue Moon”. Did he go there?
Yeah, to just hang out and be around people. To come on down and see a band play. I think he knew that he was kind of safe there because they knew not to make a fuss over him. Just let him be.
What are your future plans with Layne’s music?
Please clear this up. It won’t be up to me anyway and won’t be new music. It would be anything that he has the copyright to, and it will be up to professionals. I’m not at all capable of making those decisions. The (same) way the people ask about the artwork.
You often get asked about your lawsuit against Alice In Chains. Can you set the record straight here for all those who ask about the outcome?
It really isn’t anyone else’s business, is it?
Do you have any plans to officially release any artwork or photos by Layne?
Well, I think that it will be up to someone who promotes and that’s probably part of the future. You know, I once asked someone about poetry because we’ve received so many poems. And he has some lyrics that are just – they’re poems, they’re not lyrics. And I thought, well somebody would love that in a poetry book. And I talked with someone who publishes and he goes, “No, we don’t do poetry books.” They just don’t sell very well.” So it has to be a self-published thing or…I don’t know. Until I knew what the parameters were of what my rights are, I really couldn’t make a plan around future projects. He does have some interesting art. And of course he didn’t release it, so did he want it to be released? Those are decisions that are hard to make. I wasn’t a part of his business, and when he came home, it was brownies or chocolate chip cookies and meatloaf and the longest nap he needed and a hot long shower and no interruptions and just visit about other things, be around family and the pets and be home. And so, it wasn’t a lot of talk about business.
The 14th Annual Layne Staley Tribute is coming up in August with three locations of memorials and celebrations. I assume you will be at all three events, but will fans have easier access to meet you at the first gathering – the Fountain?
Absolutely at the Fountain. Because it’s quiet there. At the other events, fans come up and they want to tell me stuff and it’s like, “Hey, I want to hear the bands that we’ve asked to come and play.” I want to hear their music and their renditions, and by the end of the night if I have to talk to people I have such a sore throat. And so if you want to come and visit, come to the Fountain and then we can really visit. And there is always a little acoustic time where we hang out underneath the covering by the Fountain and people bring their guitars, and they bring their cell phones so they can read the words to the music and it’s a sing-along and it’s really sweet. Prior to that, people visit. So that starts around 7pm at the Seattle Center International Fountain.
You have been known to get up on stage and sing the Mad Season song, “Wake Up.” What are your personal reasons for this choice of a song?
I can’t sing most of Layne’s songs. They’re too hard. But I do love them, and I don’t know the words, you know, I’m Layne’s mom. But, I’m talking to the audience. He was. This is the song that mom would sing to this young crowd of people who think that drugs are recreational. They are not! Wake up. He was singing it to them. And I would sing it. It’s you know, I’m not a showman; so there is some music in there where I just sort of hang out on stage and wonder what should I do with my microphone.
But it’s a beautiful song and it means a lot, and you know, it says ‘10 long years of leaves to rake up.’ There’s a Bible verse that said that ‘the leaves were for the healing of the nations’. Our purpose is to be healers and be helpful and be kind and live quietly in your heart and love other people and don’t blame them and don’t judge them. People ask sometimes about, “Oh, did you forgive whatever so-and-so for whatever?” And I go, “You know, to forgive means I had to have judged”. I’m not a judge. And everybody has to square things up with the universe themselves.
So, I kind of love that song for a lot of different reasons besides the fact that it’s easy to learn and I can sing it. But since then I’ve actually learned more of the songs just because of repetition and the environment. You know, I hear bands playing and if I go to a show and they’re on the radio and once in a while I put the music in myself; but, it’s very painful most of the time. And I don’t watch the videos because people say, “Oh, but you have all those videos”. You can watch them. It’s like, do you know what it’s like to see him there and not have him in my world just for everyday stuff?
And besides, that guy onstage was only part of Layne, and he was so many other parts. And he meant so many other things to other people for other reasons.
What else can we expect at a Layne Tribute?
At The Crocodile, two years ago, it was such a spiritual experience. I cannot describe it well enough, but I can tell you that when everyone sang along, it sounded like a choir, like a church. And at the end of the night I jokingly, but not really, I said, “You know it felt like going to church with Pastor Layne presiding”. It was amazing. And people who had been to many, many concerts said they had never had that experience before. So bless his little heart, if that’s what he does. He brings people together to love one another and have a happy memory, and make happy memories. We do little things different every year; but one year, I just said, “You know if you’ve lost a friend to addiction, call their name out. And that was a really sweet few minutes where people just called out their dear friend’s name and everybody was flicking their BIC’s. I don’t know if you can do that anymore because Washington is in a drought. If you want to bring a glow stick, oh, Layne loved glow sticks. Everybody bring your glow sticks. That would be so cool. I also have a friend who wrote a beautiful song for Layne and it’s my understanding is that it will be played at the Crocodile. And I’ve heard it and it’s gorgeous.
Do you have a message you wish to give to fans of Layne’s?
What would Layne say? He said it in his lyrics. He warned you. He described what he was up against. He said stay away. Don’t follow. And in the end, he said we’re alone. And I say we’re all alone together. Each of us has our own experience and past; but, we are walking alongside one another. And ask for help, for heaven’s sake. And for heaven’s sake go to 12-Step if you need help. 12-Step for anything. I don’t care what your obsession is. If your obsession is green and you can’t stand it anymore, go to a 12-Step program. It doesn’t matter what your obsession is. The 12-Step program is the same. If you do too much for others, if you don’t do enough for others, if you smoke, if you gamble, if there’s a sex addiction, if there’s a drug addiction or alcohol, or you can’t talk to people because you sweat, I don’t care what it is, the 12-Step problem solving process is for everyone and for everything. We all have parts of ourselves that are not socially acceptable, that scare us in ourselves, that might not be acceptable in our families, or things that are hidden; because, we don’t want to talk about them or relive them or whatever. But I think that’s the nerve that Layne hits for some people in his music, (but) not everybody. I’ve heard people who said, “Oh, I get so much joy out of his music”. I thought, ‘Do you listen to the words? Because they’re not nice stories.” We know what was going on in some of that and it was very painful. And it’s a part of ourselves that need release and relief. Not that we had to go crazy and wild about, you know stuff, but stuff has to have some kind of outlet. You know maybe you just – maybe you cook or maybe you bang on the drums or maybe you run or ride your bike, whatever it is – stuff has to have an outlet.
Is it true that eventually you answer all fan emails sent to you?
I do. Thirty-one thousand so far and counting. I have one thousand waiting for me at home, but only about three-hundred haven’t heard from me. And I’m still trying to catch up with them. So have patience, and don’t change your e-mail address. Plus a few thousand letters (to answer) because not everybody you know has computers or they want to write. It’s really sweet.
You went to Layne’s twenty-year high school reunion. How was that?
I asked people, “Is Calvin here? Is Calvin here?” (Because he had a friend Calvin that I had never met; but, he used to talk about him). Well several people said, “Layne Staley was Layne Elmer!?” (Because he went to school with his stepdad’s last name). “He was the quietest boy in our class!” So I’m going out, Calvin is coming in, and someone said “There’s Calvin.” And I went up and I said, “I’m Layne’s mom. And I know that you were Layne’s friend.” And we started to talk, it’s kind of a narrow hallway and his back was leaning against one way and I’m facing with my back against another as people are going through, and he said, “That kid could not run a drill press.” And I said, “Well you know people are telling me that he was the quietest kid in class.” And I said, “But once he got out on that stage, he used it for other things.” And Calvin said very seriously and sweetly to me, he said, “Nancy, Layne did it for us all.”
I was surprised to hear that you still go to concerts. (Referring to House of Blues, Fri., July 19, 2015)
The band was Michael Grande’s band, Memory Layne. They played “Queen of the Rodeo” at the House of Blues on Friday night. That‘s a funny song. And it’s on (Alice In Chains’) live album, which is my favorite album; because, it’s so causal. The audience is right there and the guys are wearing their cowboy hats, and then they do “Queen of the Rodeo” in Texas. I just think that’s funny. I also attended the Mad Season concert at Benaroya Hall recently, in Seattle. What a night!
Washington State has now decriminalized recreational marijuana. What are your thoughts on this?
Any state that decides to legalize marijuana is asking for what they get.
It’s interesting that donations for the Layne Staley Memorial Fund go to the Therapeutic Health Services – the very same company you were working for when Layne passed.
When I worked at THS, it was a brand-new job. I had been there three weeks (with) my girlfriend (it was her first job out of high school). And THS had been in existence for over forty-some years now. They have seven locations. They do alcohol and drug addiction including heroin. They also have family programs for moms who are pregnant and are using, and for the addicts, their support system. All of the counseling includes a support system for those people who want to help. Most of their locations have heroin treatment. They do co-presenting, which means that if you have a drug addiction and something else going on, a mental health issue, or physical, they coordinate the service. So that is the whole approach. Oh, I feel so lucky. I got to know many people at THS in my short, well, I was there two years altogether. And I got to know the administrators and the Executive Director, and these are some of the finest people you could ever work with and they love everyone who comes there. They will do whatever they can to accommodate any kind of financial need, because people think, “Oh, I don’t have any money for treatment.” Well, if you don’t have personal money and you don’t have insurance and your company doesn’t have insurance for you now, there is Medicare, Medicaid and ACA, which is the Affordable Care Act. And there’s funding from the cities, counties, state and feds through grants that the facility applies for and uses on behalf of people who cannot pay for their own treatment in one way or another. So there’s – I mean there’s ten different ways that the treatments center will try to make treatment possible. And yes, it’s a revolving door proposal once in a while, and yeah, you might have to go back a few times. But stay as long you need and get the help that you need. And don’t give up on yourself because everybody has a clean and sober core.
But I am not involved at all in the (Layne Staley Memorial Fund) finances anymore. The only thing that I get involved in is if there’s a copyright issue. At the end of the Hungarian tribute, the Italian tribute, the Swiss tribute, the Bulgarian tribute, Seattle’s tribute and anyone else’s, it’s up to the coordinators to pay their expenses and then any money left over, goes to THS. And then if I find money on the street, it goes in an envelope. At the end of the year they get that along with any checks that people have sent to me, because sometimes a letter will include a donation check. But it should be made out to THS (Therapeutic Health Services). And I think people need to know about the website, because it really is a gift of love. One woman said, “I went to the website.” And she said “I thought it was really kind of weird”, and then she said “I realized how much you love us”. Layne-Staley.com. Please spell his name correctly, because he just hated it when people spelled his name wrong.
What made the Seattle scene so special?
Because you were all brothers. That’s what made this Seattle scene so unique. They weren’t competing. They weren’t undercutting one another. They cared about one another and they shared musicians and instruments and practice space, and it was a brotherhood. It was like Robin Hood’s band of Merry Men.
How were Layne & Mike Starr together?
They were funny together. They were a comedy team – the two of them. But you should talk to Gayle Starr about that. Because she had more experience with them sitting at the piano bench and you know, being silly.
People sometimes name their children after Layne.
We have Layne, Delayne, Elayna, Dalayna, Alice in Chains – that’s the cat. All these parents send me pictures of their babies that they’ve named for Layne. It’s really sweet. And they’re the cutest little kids. And sometimes they send me Christmas cards later. And they’re growing up. Now they’re four and then they’re ten, and it’s just precious. One little boy’s name is Layne Staley and then his family’s last name. It’s humbling. It’s very sweet.
Originally, your last name was Layne?
Yeah. It’s my maiden name. And my dad had three daughters. So when we had Layne, I thought that that’s kind of a cool first name and it carried the name another generation, Then Layne chose his middle name, Thomas, when he got a little bit older.
To donate to the Layne Staley Memorial Fund, please visit:
Therapeutic Health Services
Donations also accepted by mail:
Therapeutic Health Services
1116 Summit Ave.
Seattle, WA. 98101
Upcoming Events:
The 14th Annual Layne Staley Tribute
Layne-Staley.com
Thursday, 8/20/15, Fan Gathering at The Fountain
Seattle Center International Fountain, Seattle, WA 98109
7:00 pm
Free
Friday, 8/21/15, Layne Staley Tribute (Acoustic Night)
Jar Of Flies, Outshined, Poottana Play for Money
The Central, 207 1st Ave South, Seattle, WA 98104
(206) 622-0209
9:30 pm
$7
Saturday, 8/22/15, Layne Staley Tribute
(Celebrating the lives and legacies of Layne Staley, Mike Starr, Kurt Cobain, Andrew Wood, and more.)
Jar Of Flies, Outshined, Poottana Play For Money
The Crocodile, 2200 2nd Ave, Seattle, WA 98121
(206) 441-4618
9:00 pm
$15 Advance
$20 Day Of Show
Tickets available at www.thecrocodile.comChinese military transgressions and Doklam-like standoffs +
deployment of snow scooters at all the high-altitude border outposts +
Border Security Force under the home ministry, that guards the Indo-Pak border, had an artillery unit and some mechanised components +
completing the construction of China border roads +
significantly enhance infrastructure along this border +
NEW DELHI: For the first time in its over 50 years history, the ITBP is raising and deploying a mechanised column of power vehicles and machines to speedily mobilise troops along the India-China border in case ofThe decision to raise such a military-style combat wing in the paramilitary was taken after the Union home ministry recently approvedof the mountain-warfare trained force along the 3,488-km long frontier it guards.A senior home ministry official told PTI on the condition of anonymity that the mechanised column of the force will comprise over 250 Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs), all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), snow scooters, excavators and few other medium-lift four-wheeled vehicles.While the army has the mechanised infantry, it was essential to have a mechanised column in the border guarding force as it secures this border in peace times and will bear the first onslaught in case of a war or a conflict, the official said explaining the rationale for the latest move.Till now, only theto aid it.A proposal to raise a full-fledged mechanised column under the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) force was moved by the forces' headquarters here sometime back, the official said, with the force Director General (DG) R K Pachnanda making a specific presentation to the ministry in this context.The about 90,000-personnel force has sanctions to procure about 150 SUVs for high-altitude deployment, out of which it has about five dozen already deployed, half-a-dozen snow scooters and few excavators to clear snow-bound passes and landslide-prone border tracks.A senior ITBP official said many more such vehicles and machines, including anti-skid ATVs, will be procured by the force in the next few months.The force has about 30 border posts above the height of 15,000 feet and some 50 such posts above 12,000 feet and the home ministry has accorded sanctions to the ITBP to have at least one snow scooter at each of these frontier bases.The force has also been given sanctions to upgrade its firepower by modernising the support weapons like 81mm mortars, he added."Sanctions have already been accorded to procure modern machines and vehicles for the force.So, apart from expeditiouslyin the wake of Doklam-like incidents and transgressions, the government has decided to strengthen the assets and strength of the both the army and the ITBP, the first line of defence on the Line of Actual Control (LAC)," the home ministry official said.The defence ministry had recently decided toincluding around the areas of dispute with the Chinese forces.The decision was taken at the Army's commanders conference which extensively deliberated on the Dokalam face off with China besides analysing all possible security challenges on the northern border.The ITBP, as part of bolstering its capabilities to effectively secure this border, had last year procured over six dozen SUVs and sent them to far-flung border areas for patrol and transportation of troops and had similarly procured five snow scooters early this year.The force was raised in 1962 in the aftermath of the Chinese aggression.The Seattle Seahawks are heading into what is expected to be another very good season in 2015 and made some big acquisitions this past offseason. Jimmy Graham was the biggest move they made and will make their offense much more dangerous. Russell Wilson has needed more tools to work with in the offense over the past couple seasons and could still use more help, even after the addition of Graham.
Reggie Wayne is currently sitting on the free-agent market and it would make a lot of sense for the Seahawks to strongly consider going after him. He is reportedly interested in playing in 2015, and the Seahawks would be able to offer him a big role on a legitimate championship-contending football team.
Reggie Wayne said teams have been calling and he plans to play this season — Mike Wells (@MikeWellsNFL) July 17, 2015
Needless to say, seeing him in a jersey other than that of the Indianapolis Colts is going to be very strange. Just like what happened with the Peyton Manning saga when he signed with the Denver Broncos, Wayne has meant a lot to the Colts’ fan base. It was bittersweet for the franchise, and the fans alike, when they made the decision to allow Wayne to hit the market in order to sign Andre Johnson and move on from that era of football.
During the 2014 season with the Colts, Wayne dealt with quite a few nagging injuries throughout the season. Despite those problems, he caught 64 passes for 779 yards and two touchdowns. Obviously the touchdown numbers aren’t too terribly impressive, but he still put up solid production and proved that he is still capable of making a difference.
At 36 years old, Wayne likely won’t be a very pricey addition either. Seattle could get him on a bargain deal and he could end up being the missing piece for their offense that puts them over the top.
That being said, the Seahawks also have the ability to offer a lot more playing time and more targets than many teams in need of a veteran receiver could. Seattle currently has Doug Baldwin, Jermaine Kearse, rookie Tyler Lockett, and Super Bowl hero Chris Matthews slated to be their top-four wide receivers on the depth chart. Those players are going to be solid, but the consistency of Wayne would easily put him on the field ahead of a few of those players.
Simply having his type of veteran leadership in the locker room would be a big addition as well for the Seahawks. He has always shown an interest in helping young players develop and has been a steady voice throughout his career with the Colts as well.
It will be interesting to see which teams step up and show the most interest in signing Wayne throughout the rest of the offseason. He is going to be a very hot commodity when he decides that he’s ready to join a new team, and it sounds like he’s getting very close to that point. Seattle is definitely a team to keep an eye on, and they need to do everything they can to bring him on board.
Evan Massey is a featured writer for. Follow him on Twitter at @Massey_Evan and like him on Facebook.This story starts with a transgender high school student who was born male but identifies as female. As a public high school student, she wants the school to recognize her as a girl, to call her by her new legal name, to allow her to use the girls’ bathroom and to accept her in girls’ athletic programs.
Her high school in Palatine, Illinois, has pretty much complied. Teachers call the girl by her female name. She uses the girls’ bathroom. She plays on a girls’ sports team. Except, she does hit one wall: The school doesn’t provide unfettered access to girls’ locker rooms where students shower or change clothes. Administrators have experimented with different arrangements — such as a separate room. The New York Times reported the district said it would allow Student A (her name in this legal case) to change in the girls’ locker room, “but only behind a curtain.” Student A, for her part, “said she would probably use that curtain to change. But she and the federal government have insisted that she be allowed to make that decision voluntarily, and not because of requirements by the district.”
That is not good enough for President Obama’s Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which issued a letter Monday that warned Township High School District 211 is not in compliance with Title IX’s ban on gender discrimination. The government contends that having different accommodations excludes Student A and denies her “the benefits of its education program” by “subjecting her to different rules of behavior” and “different treatment.”
The letter explained that Student A “wanted to be a girl like every other girl.”
There’s a problem with that wish: Student A is not a girl like every other girl. While in transgender transition, she takes hormones, according to case documents, but remains “biologically male.” “The body that transgender students have on the outside is not the identity they are on the inside,” District Superintendent Daniel Cates wrote in the local newspaper.
Transgender activists may denounce the school’s curtain policy as discriminatory or hateful, but I think it is in the best interests of the child. If Student A wants the other girls to think she is just like them, she probably ought to hide her penis.
Cates believes the school system has to balance Student A’s privacy with the privacy concerns of all students. Girls have a privacy expectation, too. Some parents have issues about their girls changing in a room with a biological male.
I asked Assistant Secretary of Civil Rights Catherine Lhamon: What about the rights of others? “All students have privacy rights and all students have rights against discrimination,” she answered. Lhamon impressed upon me the fact that Student A has not been allowed in the locker room because she has not agreed to the district’s terms. Her case has been in litigation for two years.
When I asked Lhamon about girls who may not want a biological male in the room where they are changing, she answered, “Any student in the locker room is able to use a privacy curtain.” Cates translated: “They have the right to leave, is really what they mean.” I fear many parents will consider leaving the public school system if the feds go after District 211 because they will be convinced the system will listen to everyone but them. “The problem,” Cates wrote, is that the Office for Civil Rights “has no interest in creative or sensitive solutions.”
There are limits to what laws can do. Without a curtain, some girls are going to see what they do not consider to be female parts. Is that in Student A’s best interest? Lhamon responded, “I don’t make decisions for this girl or any other girl.” And: “The district has not let her into the locker room. That lack of access violates the law.”
In the end, I suspect, the district and the feds will come to an agreement — that all kids can have curtains. Or access to curtains. Lhamon and Cates see that possibility, too.
It must take immense courage for a teenager to announce to the world that, even though she was born with male anatomy, inside she knows she is a girl. Even if Student A prevails and gets the district to back down, that doesn’t mean other students will accept her.
The Office for Civil Rights maintains that Student A should be treated like any other girl, even as it recognizes Student A is “a transitioning transgender girl.” Student A clearly painfully wants to be accepted. The school district has tried to accommodate her, but it can only do so much.I used cannabis for nausea without realizing it might actually have been the cause of it. Cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome (also known as cannabis hyperemesis syndrome, or CHS) is a recently discovered, poorly understood condition theoretically caused by heavy, long-term cannabis use. Its acute “hyperemetic” phase is characterized by vomiting, nausea, severe gastrointestinal discomfort, and compulsive bathing, although it may be preceded by a period of milder symptoms like morning nausea, consistent urges to vomit, and abdominal pain.
When I read about this condition in a 2011 study from Temple University, I nearly fell out of my chair. I’ve been using cannabis medicinally for the last five years to treat morning sickness, nausea, and intestinal pain. A conversation with an ex came to mind. He used to antagonistically pose theories that cannabis might be what’s causing the problems, to which I would respond with a heated and defensive, “Cannabis is the only thing that helps, why would it be causing it?”
Fast-forward one year to a discussion with my budtender who recently experienced the acute phase of the condition. As per her doctor’s recommendation, she set cannabis aside and within a few weeks, she made a full recovery. My friend’s symptoms were so much more severe than mine, it never occurred to me that I might be experiencing early stages of the same condition.
In fact, it took a long, hard look at the research for me to admit that the condition might even exist at all.
Research on Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome
The earliest focused study on the cannabinoid hyperemesis phenomenon appears to be in 2004, when Australian researchers noticed a commonality among patients experiencing cyclical vomiting symptoms: chronic cannabis use. Seven out of ten subjects who abstained from cannabis resolved their cyclical vomiting symptoms; the other three participants refused to abstain and their symptoms continued.
Small case studies surfaced in the years following, demonstrating similar patterns:
In 2009, a 22-year old cannabis consumer exhibited CHS symptoms in a U.K. case study. His symptoms resolved following cannabis cessation.
Two more cases in 2009 that matched CHS criteria were recorded. Severe symptoms improved following 24 to 48 hours after cannabis cessation.
A 42-year old chronic cannabis user was CHS symptom-free 3 months after his diagnosis, according to a 2014 U.K. case study.
The appearance of cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome in medical literature is rare for two reasons: (a) the condition has only recently been acknowledged and named, and (b) CHS – as a result – is likely to have been misdiagnosed as cyclical vomiting syndrome (CVS). Though rarely seen in study papers, personal stories are beginning to bubble up in media reports and by word-of-mouth.
I asked a number of doctors to share any cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome patient information they had on hand, but it seemed that cannabis doctors were the only ones even privy to the condition at all. With 33 million Americans consuming cannabis, we can only hope that researchers and medical professionals will start to explore the many questions tied to this condition.
What Are Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome Signs and Symptoms?
Among patients diagnosed with cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, most tend to be “young adults with a long history of cannabis use,” according to the 2011 Temple study.
“In nearly all cases there is a delay of several years in the onset of symptoms preceded by chronic marijuana abuse. Daily marijuana use is characteristic and often reported as exceeding three to five times per day.”
As previously mentioned, researchers have proposed CHS be characterized by three phases.
1. Prodromal Phase
Typically months or years before exhibiting severe cyclical vomiting symptoms, the patient experiences:
Morning sickness
Abdominal pain and discomfort
Nausea and fear of vomiting
Appetite is typically unaffected during this phase, but researchers note that consumers tend to administer more cannabis as a nausea remedy.
2. Hyperemetic Phase
The acute phase of the illness is characterized by an intensification of effects and unique behaviors:
Persistent nausea and vomiting that can last for hours at a time
Frequent retching, up to five times an hour
Abdominal pain
Weight loss
Dehydration
Habitual bathing and/or showering
Why the compulsive bathing and showering? Hot temperatures are known to relieve the nausea and vomiting associated with CHS. The reasons why are not well developed, but researchers propose that “hot bathing may act by correcting the cannabis-induced equilibrium of the thermoregulatory system of the hypothalamus.”
A 2014 review offers further explanation:
“The brain may react to changes in core body temperature due to the dose-dependent hypothermic effects of [THC]. Alternatively, the bathing behaviour may be a result of direct CB1 receptor activation in the hypothalamus by [THC] or another active compound and may not necessarily be a response to changes in core body temperature.”
3. Recovery Phase
After halting cannabis use (the only cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome “treatment” option), patients typically recover in a matter of days, weeks, or months. Nausea ceases, appetite resumes, body weight is |
650. But it certainly won’t be cheaper than the OnePlus 3T.
As we said at the outset, this is not at all how we’re expecting the final OnePlus 5 to look. Its status as a prototype means we’re more likely to see an all new design in this year’s flagship. An all-new design that looks set to feature even more high-end internals than any previous OnePlus offering, with a price to match. Hit he comments and let us know what you think of the possibility and let us know what you want to see OnePlus do this year.After handcuffing and beating two brothers, one a teenager, Israeli soldiers took a “selfie” with the injured prisoners, a common practice. Israeli forces conducted 196 search and arrest operations across the West Bank, including nine children, between October 10 and October 23.
By IMEMC News
Two Palestinian prisoners, including one teenager, gave testimonies to the Palestinian Committee of Prisoners’ Affairs, detailing the abuse and harassment they faced at the hands of Israeli forces during their arrests.
The committee released a statement on Monday saying that Israeli forces raided the home of brothers Tariq Baajeh, 26, and Ahmad Baajeh, 19, in the Qalqilia-area town of Jayyus in the northern occupied West Bank around midnight on Sunday.
According to the brothers’ testimonies, soldiers handcuffed and blindfolded the brothers before transferring them to a military zone near Qalqiliya in a military jeep.
“The Baajeh brothers were assaulted and insulted the entire time they were held at the military zone,” the statement said, adding that after the soldiers beat up the brothers, soldier took a “selfie” with the injured brothers “in order to provoke them.” [Such actions are common. See this article about a 2015 incident.]
The brothers were then transferred to the Huwwara detention center near Nablus, and then to the Megiddo prison north of the West Bank, where they were strip searched.
Israeli raids in Palestinian towns, villages, and refugee camps are a daily occurrence in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, Ma;an News Agency further reports.
According to United Nations documentation, Israeli forces conducted 196 search and arrest operations across the West Bank, including nine children, between October 10 and October 23.
Human rights groups have widely documented the abuse of Palestinians by Israeli forces during night raids, and the harsh interrogation practices used to force their confessions, which has long been the target of criticism by the international community.
Defense for Children International – Palestine has said their research showed that almost two-thirds of Palestinian children detained in the occupied West Bank by Israeli forces had endured physical violence after their arrest.Thousands of gaming fans have shared a photo of a rainbow spotted above the Nintendo HQ after the death of much-loved president Satoru Iwata.
The rainbow was reportedly spotted above Nintendo’s white building in the Japanese city of Kyoto; hours after the company announced his death.
Two Twitter users posted the images of the rainbow under cloudy skies online this morning.
Many Nintendo fans have dubbed it the “Rainbow Road to heaven”, a reference to a racecourse in the popular Mario Kart gaming franchise.
#RIPIwata has been trending on social media as people around the world paid tribute to the much-loved Nintendo president.
Mr Iwata, who helped create some of Nintendo’s most popular games, died of bile duct cancer at the age of 55.
Thank you Satoru Iwata, for your talents in development and your genius in leadership. You will be missed. #RIPIwata pic.twitter.com/a44K8gGrlc — Robert Bowling (@fourzerotwo) July 13, 2015
Men like this are far too rare. Thank you for my childhood. #RIPIwata pic.twitter.com/hih0wX2MzO — Rem - Senpai (@IZRem27) July 13, 2015“Blue Ocean Strategy” might be one of the best business books in a decade. In a nutshell the strategy forsakes traditional competition for exploration and market creation.
WikiPedia:
The book uses many examples across industries to demonstrate how to break out of traditional competitive (structuralist) strategic thinking and to grow demand and profits for the company and the industry by using blue ocean (reconstructionist) strategic thinking. The four principles are: how to create uncontested market space by reconstructing market boundaries, focusing on the big picture, reaching beyond existing demand and getting the strategic sequence right.
Using Blue Ocean how would one build a more effective political enterprise?
1) The Uncontested Space
Here is what the actual market of registered voters looks like :
I = 43% D = 30% R = 26%
www.gallup.com/…
That huge slice taking up 43% of the pie is “Independents”. If you examine the trend lines in the article linked above, you’ll see that the bulk of “Independent” growth came at the expense of declining GOP affiliation. It is easy to fall for the belief that the Democratic party is the party of the people. The reality is the biggest chunk of registered voters in this country have disgust for both parties,
This giant sea of disaffected voters is a political Blue Ocean
2) The Big Picture
Why are they disaffected? Because they’ve seen their real incomes shrink as the banks and financial services companies have eaten all the economic growth and funneled it to the top %1 www.salon.com/…
Why don’t they support an existing party? Because both parties have been complicit in the deregulation and bad trade policy that has caused their pain. While Bill Clinton’s “third way” might have professed to “feel their pain”; NAFTA, Glass-Stegal repeal, and rise of the Prison Industrial Complex all happen on his watch. Let’s face it; without the economic boom created by tons of venture capital flooding the market, as investors rushed to get in on the internet boom, the Clinton economy wouldn’t have been so great. I diaried this earlier but if you want some good insight into the real threat to America and our biggest challenge see “The Big Short”
They’re also are smart enough to see that the current system is wholly owned by the corporations and lobbyists. Why give the few bucks you can afford or a hour of phone banking to giant political machine that’s taking donations by the millions to it’s PAC. A political machine whose candidates will make millions in “speaking fees” after they “retire” from the same special interests that fund 80% of their campaign. What is that tiny voice or contribution worth in that environment? Most people have correctly assessed that it is worth nothing.
3) The Reach
Thankfully we are at an inflection point. The old paradigm of political opinion making is breaking down. The advertising driven model no longer works, as none of the top ad spenders has seen their voter share increase since the summer. The biggest spender (Bush) has completely tanked.
The reason for this could be that people no longer trust MSM outlets or advertisments
It’s been a long held business axiom that the best advertising in “Word of Mouth”. From my own experience this holds true. I’m far more likely to take a friends recomendation on where to eat or what to buy than I am to believe an ad. What Obama discovered in 2008 was that social media would allow him to do an end-around the establishment media that has a vested interested in keeping the ad driven model alive. After all, the MSM makes no money when folks are knocking on doors or chatting on FaceBook.
The wet dream of CNN etal is to have a Clinton vs Bush matchup with both negative ad bombing each other into sub-50% voter turnout oblivion. Mixing in a few hundred million in Donald Trump ad spends as a third party candidate would be the cherry on top.
The good news; Bernie sanders has a social media channel almost 20 times as big to work with now as Obama had in 2007.
4) The Strategic Sequence
Step one is always to build the “product” that meets the needs of this new market. Bernie is offering a political movement that actually values the individual working class donor of time or money. (by forsaking PACS & big money donors). He’s a got an economic and social justice platform that resonates with people. The fact is; in states he’s spent significant time in he’s winning or closing the gap. When people hear his message and really start to analyse the candidates they become supporters.
The strategic roll-out sequence bernie is following is largely defined by the primary calendar. There is little room for innovation here as he does not control the scheduling of these events. For this reason winning Iowa and NH will be key to Sanders success. A path that has been shown to work in other upstart victories. While Sanders has a lead in NH based on polling we trails Clinton in Iowa but 5-10%. Significantly, Clinton is not breaking very far over 50%. It’s easy to spend 2 minutes telling a pollster you support a candidate, quite another to show up and debate your support for a candidate (at a caucus) for potentially hours. Sanders support might be a hair narrower but a lot deeper. Sanders supporters will more likely stay until the end. Another factor is that O’Malley supporters will have to go somewhere after the first talley. (cut off is 15%) If you support O’Malley, and your guy is not going to take your precinct, the smart move is to cut into the frontrunner. This could mean another 5% boost for Sanders. Clinton is at about 50% now in polls with 100% name recognition. If she stays under 55% I’d bet the enthusiasm gap and softness of her support will translate to a narrow Bernie victory. With Victories in Iowa and New Hampshire the MSM will be forced to admit Sanders is a viable candidate.
----—
The Ideal Result :
There is a reason that when pollsters compare Sanders and Clinton in head-to-head match ups vs the GOP Sanders consistently does better. It is that giant ocean of independent voters that simply has had enough with the status quo. They want authenticity and independence. Getting past the partisan gridlock will require a “National Political Realignment” where Sanders pulls a blue ocean of independent voters into the party. We as “progressive democrats” need to see past our own party to very different general election voter pool. A pool largely Independent that simply is not excited to buy what Hillary is selling.Windscreen washers at Christchurch intersections could be fined up to $20,000 after violent incidents prompted police to crack down on the practice.
Sergeant Greg Hume said motorists had made a "large number" of complaints about young windscreen washers damaging their vehicles or intimidating them in the last year.
Hume recalled a businessman was attacked by two or three windscreen washers at the Moorhouse Ave/Barbadoes St intersection about a month ago, after the man confronted a washer who had smashed his car's side window.
Thefts of squeegees from petrol stations was an ongoing issue.
In May, a petrol station manager said 20 squeegees had been stolen from his premises over four weeks.
Hume said the thefts showed a lack of empathy on part of offenders, as it affected petrol stations' ability to offer quality customer service.
A 16-year old had been referred to Police Youth Services for stealing two squeegees from the same service station twice, he said.
Since Monday, police have informed windscreen washers they faced fines of up to $20,000 under the Christchurch City Council's public places bylaw if they worked without a council-issued commercial licence.
Windscreen washers have been an increasing nuisance at the Linwood Ave/Buckleys Rd, Moorhouse Ave/Barbadoes St, Moorhouse Ave/Madras St, Avonside Dr/Stanmore Rd and Aldwins/Ferry roads intersections.
Hume said he had "no doubt" youth gangs were the main culprits, and expressed concern turf wars over intersections could develop if the practice continued.
He encouraged motorists to report windscreen washers to the police.
Hume said police had been recording washers' details during the "warning phase", which would continue for about a month to give the washers an opportunity to avoid prosecution.
However, teens aged 14-16 had received court summons for returning to their squeegees hours after being warned to relinquish them, Hume said.
Council policy team leader Claire Bryant said both council and police had sought legal advice on how to thwart windscreen washers after complaints began escalating about a year ago.
Both Hume and Bryant said the apparent profitability had sparked increased numbers to give it a try.
Bryant said the council would continue to support police in their efforts to curb the practice, which posed a health and safety risk to washers, and a nuisance to motorists by disrupting vehicle flow.
Last year, Auckland police and council compliance officers began a crack-down on windscreen washers at the intersection of Great South Rd and Cavendish Drive, confiscating squeegees and fining offenders under Auckland Council's public safety and nuisance bylaw.
Last month, Auckland Council gave Counties Manukau police authority to trespass people at the intersection of Bairds and East Tamaki roads in Otara, after receiving almost 100 complaints about windscreen washers at the intersection in the past year.
Sergeant Jonathan Milne said "Operation Wash Up" had resulted in a drastic decrease in windscreen washing at the intersection over the past month.
The operation would be extended to other areas of Counties Manukau.
* Comments are now closed on this article.In Einstein's universe, spacetime is supposed to be some crazy rubber sheet full of folds and bends. But the idea of curved space is not the most intuitive in the world. And what does light have to do with any of this? In this week's Ask a Physicist, we'll find out.
For the last few weeks, we've been running a contest to answer some of the most interesting questions about the cosmos. This week's winner is RT who should shoot me an email to get a free signed copy of my new book. He/she asks:
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If light has no mass, then how does it interact with massive objects like the sun through gravity… Read more Read
If light has no mass, then how does it interact with massive objects like the sun through gravity causing it to bend? Also, on the extreme side, what does the edge of the event horizon look like on a black hole as the light is bent around?
If you want to understand gravity, you need to understand General Relativity – with no disrespect to Isaac Newton intended. To understand Relativity, we need to understand "spacetime" – which, as just like it sounds like, is just space and time smashed together.
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The great John Archibald Wheeler had a ready description for how all of this fits together. "Spacetime tells matter how to move;" he said, "matter tells spacetime how to curve."
This curvature of spacetime has caused a lot of confusion over the years, and while bowling balls on rubber sheets may give a vague conceptual idea of how gravity works, let's get back to basics and figure out where this curvature comes from. It will also give me a really good opportunity to riff on one of Einstein's more awesome thought experiments.
Before we get into how gravity works, I need to say a few words about space and time.
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Image Credit: NASA, Andrew Fruchter and the ERO Team
A Relativity Primer
Einstein came up with his famous Theory of Special Relativity in 1905. The idea, as you may recall, is that the speed of light should be the same for everybody, and so long as you're traveling at a constant speed and in a constant direction, you shouldn't be able to tell that you are moving.
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Those were his assumptions (which turned out, as it happens, to be perfectly in accord with the actual physics of the universe), and from them, he found some incredibly surprising things:
1) A clock on a moving spaceship will run slow compared to stationary observers outside. This is also true for heartbeats, pendulums, digital watches, and so on.
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2) A moving spaceship will appear to be compressed along the direction of motion.
In both cases, the effect becomes ridiculously huge as you approach the speed of light, but are small enough to be easily ignored under normal terrestrial conditions, which is why nobody noticed them until Einstein came along.
In order to extend those predictions to gravity, starting in 1907 (and over many iterations), Einstein devised what he referred to as the Equivalence Principle, which says (roughly):
[We] assume the complete physical equivalence of a gravitational field and a corresponding acceleration of the reference system.
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He argued that there is no measurable distinction between real gravity and acceleration, which is why there's no functional difference between being thrown the back of a rocketship because it's accelerating, and being thrown to the bottom of a refrigerator carton with a picture of a rocket ship drawn on it; it's sitting on earth, and you tend to fall in the downward direction.
Even without working out any of the details of General Relativity, a process that took Einstein almost an entire additional decade post–Special Relativity, he quickly had an inkling of what the final theory should look like. By using the Equivalence Principle, Einstein came up with a scenario for relating artificial to real gravity, one that I’m going to shamelessly steal.
Life in Antworld
Imagine life on top of a large spinning disk.
In this universe, there are a bunch of superintelligent ants slowly crawling around on the surface. The queen sits perfectly still at the center of Antworld. Her royal court surrounds her in close proximity. To an outsider (you), her courtiers slowly rotate about the queen. They don’t know any of this, of course. They just grip so as to not be thrown outward by the tug of the rotating disk. As far as they’re concerned, “out” is “down.”
The farther the ants are from the Queen, the faster they move and the stronger they are tugged outward. From the perspective of the ants, their Antworld feels very much like a hill with the queen at the top, a hill that gets steeper the farther they go out. An ant that loses its grip will roll outward—down the hill—at an ever-accelerating rate.
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Credit: Herb Thornby (one of his awesome illustrations from my new book!)
There’s at least one sense in which this analogy isn’t perfect. If you fall down a hill on earth, you’ll simply roll down in a radially outward path. An ant falling down the hill in Antworld will start rolling straight down, but will then slowly start rolling around the hill as well. This is the famous Coriolis Effect. It’s the same thing that causes cyclones to spin counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern.
But supposing they don't move around too much, we can pretty much ignore the Coriolis Effect entirely. Your toilet water also doesn't move around too much, which is why, whatever else it does, the Coriolis Effect doesn't determine the direction of your toilet water funnel.
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Likewise, as far as the the ants are concerned, they live on a hill and aren’t spinning at all. Outside the Antworld, we know better. The queen isn’t moving. Nearby ants are moving slowly. Ants farther out move faster. The ants out in the hinterlands are moving fastest of all. This is where all of our training in Special Relativity begins to really pay off. We know something about the flow of time of moving ants. The faster they move, the slower time will appear to pass compared to the queen. The farther out an ant is, the slower that ant will appear to age.
The ants don’t know they’re moving so they don’t know that Special Relativity should come into play at all. The ants, so far as they can tell, are living in a gravitational field. They've discovered that the farther you go “down” the slower time runs.
The ant physicists are absolutely correct—about their universe and ours. Time runs slower the closer you get to a massive body, and the more massive the body, the more dramatic the effect. These effects are quite real, but normally ridiculously tiny. Time runs slower on the surface of the earth by less than 1 part in a billion compared to time out in deep space. Over the surface of the earth, the effect is even smaller. Time runs slower at the bottom of Mount Everest than at the top by about 1 part in a trillion. Given that we’ve been confined to the surface of the earth for most of our existence, it’s not that surprising that nobody before Einstein noticed that the flow of time changes based on where you are.
There are much more extreme environments out there. You could hang out on the surface of a neutron star where time runs slower by 20 percent or more. After a decade, two extra years will have passed far away. What you’ve done here is built a (pretty crappy) time machine into the future. But because the gravity on a neutron star is so strong that you’d be squashed like a pancake, traveling to the future is probably the least of your concerns.
But what about the curvature? Here's where things get even weirder. Remember when I said that space appears contracted along the direction of motion? Well, since the ants are moving around and around, distances seem compressed. Suppose an outlying ant decides to take a trip around the entire world, a circle. His trip would seem shorter than the queen might have guessed using simple Euclidean geometry. As seen by its residents, Antworld is curved. What’s true for the ants is true for us.
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"Straight" Lines
Even though we "know" that Antworld really is a flat disk, it doesn't seem so to the ants. An astronaut flying around in a rocket will take what she perceives to be a straight line, but it's anything but. In other words, even in a 2-d world, there's a difference between what the inhabitants see, and what we might see in a higher dimensional space.
A straight line is normally considered to be the shortest distance between two points, but from our perspective, the rocketship curves outward (as you can see in the Antworld drawing above).
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Because there's no difference between "real" gravity and a spinning disk or an accelerated rocketship, everything falls at the same rate (Thanks, Galileo!), whether they're ordinary matter, particles with negative mass, or particles with no mass at all.
Which brings us to light.
If you've got an old school physics education (the kind where you played with pendulums, pulleys, and did force diagrams without end), you probably learned that only particles with mass experience gravitational acceleration. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Light beams bend in gravitational fields as well, because they are, after all, only following the shortest route. This effect is known as "Gravitational Lensing," and was, in fact, the first successful test of General Relativity.
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Time runs slow near a massive source; that's what the ants told us at any rate. Light, which wants to travel in as fast a route as possible will tend to avoid the slow time parts of the universe, and as a result, will get deflected. Because there are several possible "fastest" routes, this can also mean that we get multiple images of the same object.
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G2237+305. Credit: NASA, ESA, and STSCI.
But back to RT's original question. We've gotten the "why?" and "how?" light gets bent, but we still haven't touched on the "how much?" Normally, the effects of lensing are quite small because, compared to black holes, most places in the galaxy have very, very weak gravitational fields.
However, something interesting happens near a black hole. As most good io9 readers know, black holes are bounded by a region of no return known as the "Event Horizon." For black hole the mass of our sun, for instance, the event horizon is at a radius of about 3km.
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Interestingly, it turns out that if you fire a laser pointed at 1 1/2 times the event horizon, you can (if you aim absolutely perfectly) get your laser to orbit the black hole. Any less, and it spirals inwards, never to be seen again. Any more, and your laser will boomerang back at you.
There's a moral to all of this: If you're going to be firing lasers near black holes, you're going to shoot your eye out.
Dave Goldberg is a Physics Professor at Drexel University. His newest book, The Universe in the Rearview Mirror is coming out July 11, but you can totally pre-order it now. You should definitely become a fan on facebook, or better yet, send a (non-contest) question about the universe.Mayo Clinic
With lung cancer being the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the U.S., effective early screening is key to saving lives. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic say they've developed new software that can help classify lung nodules noninvasively, saving lives and health care costs.
A pilot study of the program called Computer-aided Nodule Assessment and Risk Yield, or Canary, appears in the April issue of the Journal of Thoracic Oncology.
Canary leans on data from high-resolution CT images of a common type of cancerous nodule in the lung called pulmonary adenocarcinomas. It matches every pixel of the lung image to one of nine unique radiological exemplars. In the pilot study, it was able to classify the lesions as aggressive or indolent with high sensitivity, as compared to microscopic analyses of the lesions after being surgically removed and analyzed by lung pathologists.
"Pulmonary adenocarcinoma is the most common type of lung cancer and early detection using traditional computed tomography (CT) scans can lead to a better prognosis," Tobias Peikert, a Mayo Clinic pulmonologist and senior author of the study, said in a news release. "However, a subgroup of the detected adenocarcinomas identified by CT may grow very slowly and may be treatable with less extensive surgery."
Peikert says that without effective screening, most lung cancer patients don't identify the disease until they are at an advanced stage and far more likely to die from it. Yet, screening via CT scans would be an expensive way to improve the survival rate, as it often can lead to overtreating slow-growing tumors. The hope is that Canary can identify those tumors that can be treated with less extensive -- and expensive -- surgery.Steve Brill has a very interesting 8,500-word story in this weekend's NYT magazine, all about Kenneth Feinberg and the process he went through to determine the pay packages of companies the US government had bailed out.
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Steve Brill has a very interesting 8,500-word story in this weekend’s NYT magazine, all about Kenneth Feinberg and the process he went through to determine the pay packages of companies the US government had bailed out.
The funniest part of the story is the bit where Feinberg reflexively tries to pay AIG executives in stock — which was trading at more than $40 a share at the time — only for both AIG and Treasury to tell him that really wasn’t fair, because AIG stock is, yes, fundamentally worthless. They were right on that point: Feinberg actually would have been foolish to pay AIG executives in common stock, because that stock only has any long-term value at all in the event that AIG takes enormous risks and they pay off. And that is not something we want AIG’s leadership to be doing, so I’m sad that Feinberg agreed to stock-based compensation at AIG “in appropriate cases”.
But Brill, who is a multi-millionaire in his own right, is not always a reliable guide to what constitutes fair pay. He’s got a friend who works at AIG Financial Products, and who he lets “make the case” for that company’s crazy retention-bonus plan. He quotes another friend talking sympathetically about how “really hard” these people are working, and a lawyer saying that “if people in these industries see that Congress can jerk them around whenever they want, they’re going to stop going into these businesses, just the way people have stopped becoming doctors”. He’s happy talking about how half a million bucks a year “is considered piddling” on Wall Street, and how a low six-figure salary doesn’t mean anything to people who are already millionaires. And he talks a lot about the risk that people will quit, or not work hard, if they aren’t paid lots of money — without giving a single example of that actually happening.
He also covers at length and with a perfectly straight face about the bizarre creature invented by Feinberg and called “salarized stock”:
For base cash salaries, Feinberg suggested a sum that, on Wall Street, is considered piddling — typically no more than $500,000 a year. He also said there would be no cash bonuses. But he tempered that with a compromise: The firms could provide additional annual salary compensation if paid in company stock — stock that the executive would receive every payday but could not sell immediately. This last provision came to be called “salarized stock.” It sounds like jargon only an M.B.A. could love, but it became a key element of the negotiations and a clever way for Feinberg and the bailed-out companies to work around a law passed in the early weeks of the Obama administration. Back in February, Senator Christopher Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat who is the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, inserted what is now called the Dodd amendment into the President’s economic stimulus bill. A provision in that amendment limited any bonus compensation to 50 percent of the executive’s salary… Because Feinberg’s salarized stock would be dispensed every payday, it could therefore be considered salary under the Dodd amendment.
How clever of Feinberg to “work around” a clear law like that! Of course “salarized stock” is simply a guaranteed bonus, payable in stock; since it vests over a period of years, it’s neither here nor there whether it’s paid annually or whether it’s paid monthly. But because Feinberg didn’t like the optics of guaranteed bonuses — and because Dodd had clearly made guaranteed bonuses illegal — he created this Frankenstein monster instead, waving his magic terminological wand and turning a bonus into salary, to the delight of Brill, who as a lawyer loves this kind of sophistry.
To be fair to Brill, he does show quite clearly that Feinberg ended up paying lots of money to senior executives in practice, while trying as hard as possible to make it look as though he was being very harsh. That’s probably what the government wanted all along: the main thing it was worried about was headlines. Feinberg’s job wasn’t to rein in pay, it was to rein in outrage about pay.
Brill’s also excellent at uncovering the silly game that Feinberg played with the banks: he invited them to submit their own proposals as the basis for negotiation, with the predictable result that the banks spent millions of dollars on compensation consultants paid to conclude that senior executives were all above average, and had to be paid as much as $21 million a year, in the case of BofA. Feinberg could then announce multi-million-dollar pay packages as a low percentage of what the banks originally asked for, and seem tough in so doing.
But what Brill never really addresses is the question in the headline of his piece: how much are these bankers actually worth? And he also never addresses the question of the degree to which seven- and eight-figure salaries caused the crisis in the first place, or whether we actually want greedy people in these positions who won’t do their jobs unless they’re paid a hundred grand a week.
In Brill’s world, the only downside to an enormous salary is the optics of the thing: how it looks to the rest of us. “Business common sense,” he writes, “dictates that because the government owned them, these were the last companies the government should want to undercut with unilateral pay disarmament”. Does he give a single example of a company underperforming because it can’t pay well enough? Of course not: it’s just obvious to Brill that banks which pay modest salaries (like, say, most credit unions) will do worse than banks which pay enormous bonuses (like, say, Lehman Brothers or Bear Stearns). Well, it’s not obvious to me. Just like it’s not obvious to me that people have stopped becoming doctors.
Update: Thanks to reader Anthony Bongiorni for picking up on this:
Feinberg consulted regularly with Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin and others at Treasury, Wolin says, though he met with Geithner only three times. “We pushed back with him on some issues,” Wolin recalls, referring to Treasury’s desire to make sure that the companies would be able keep talented employees — and eventually repay the government.
It seems it was Wolin, at Treasury, who was pressuring Feinberg to pay more, rather than less. Wolin, in turn, entered Treasury straight from a senior executive position at The Hartford, which took $3.4 billion in federal bailout money, and surely wanted to be able to continue to pay its executives lots of money in future. Maybe they should send their friend Neal a thank-you note for helping to keep salaries high at bailout recipients.SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The shooting of two California deputies responding to a disturbance at a Rastafarian marijuana farm has drawn attention to religious use of the drug, sparking debate over whether churches should be protected from drug prosecutions.
Religious organizations throughout California have been growing marijuana for ceremonial purposes for years — and have been losing in court for just as long.
That’s because there is no religious exemption to state and federal marijuana bans, and there won’t be any special treatment when California legalizes pot next year.
That’s unlikely to stop Heidi and Charles Lepp, a Sacramento couple affiliated with the church where Tuesday’s (Aug. 1) shooting occurred.
Heidi Lepp launched her Sugarleaf Rastafarian Church in 2014 while Charles was serving eight years in federal prison after openly growing more than 20,000 pot plants in Lake County for what he considered religious purposes. She said she’s advised nearly 200 farms affiliated with her church not to adhere to state licensing rules.
“As a member of the church you aren’t bound by a lot of the rules other people are,” Charles Lepp said. “You’re not supposed to grow in Yuba County where this incident happened without a county-issued permit, (but) as a church you don’t need a permit.”
Officials don’t agree. The religious argument didn’t keep Charles Lepp, an ordained Rastafarian minister, out of jail, and it hasn’t been successfully used by the Oklevueha Native American Church in Sonoma County.
The church filed two unsuccessful civil rights lawsuits against the local sheriff for destroying its marijuana farm in 2015.
Yuba County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Leslie Carbah said the Rastafarian church doesn’t have the proper county license to grow marijuana on the property at the center of Tuesday’s shooting.
She didn’t say whether sheriff’s investigators are looking into the farm’s operations. The property has been cited for illegally growing marijuana and as of October 2016 owed more than $400,000 in penalties, the Marysville Appeal-Democrat reported.
The licensing dispute didn’t stop Heidi Lepp from calling police Tuesday when a worker on the farm told her a newly arrived church member was armed, agitated and destroying pot plants. Heidi Lepp told the worker to leave and then she called the Sheriff’s Department, which dispatched three deputies.
Two of the deputies chased the suspect up a hill and into a house about 100 yards behind the farm. Another deputy remained outside, guarding the back door.
Sheriff Steve Durfor said the two deputies exchanged gunfire with the suspect inside the house and both were shot. The suspect died.
Authorities identified him as Mark Anthony Sanchez, 33, of Gilroy, Calif., a former California State Prison inmate with a history of violent felonies and two active warrants for his arrest. Lepp said he began working at the farm about a month ago.
The two deputies were in satisfactory condition after each underwent surgery. Both are expected to recover, Durfor said.
Jay Leiderman, a Ventura defense attorney who represents clients charged with marijuana crimes, said many people in Lepp’s position want to argue that marijuana is to them as wine is to Catholics. But “religious use is an extremely hard defense to use in California,” Leiderman said.
California authorities said religious organizations will have to obtain a state license when they become available next year like everyone else if they want to legally grow marijuana in California.
There will be no exceptions for religious use, said Alex Traverso, spokesman for the state’s Bureau of Medical Cannabis Regulation.
“There are certainly plenty of other folks who have been doing things one way for quite some time that probably would like to be exempt for other reasons,” he said. “After Jan. 1, it’s really going to be a challenge for everybody to regulate the market and get people who are not in the regulated market into the regulated market.”
At this point, the Lepps have no plans to come into the legal fold. They insist that religious freedom laws apply to them because marijuana is the sacrament of their religion.
Heidi Lepp shares a set of documents with every group that affiliates with her Sugarleaf Rastafarian Church, advising them not to consent to property searches or police questioning. She instructs them all to call her before dealing with law enforcement.
“Cannabis is a plant that should be free to everybody,” she said.Commercial office leases are quoted in terms of "Rentable Square Feet", not "Useable Square Feet". The rentable area of virtually every office includes a portion the common area, for which the tenant is charged rent.
Useable Square Feet
Simply put, usable square footage means the square feet used directly and exclusively by the tenant. It does not include common area square footage.
Usable square feet includes private (tenant-only) rest rooms, closets, storage and any other areas used only by the tenant.
Rentable Square Feet
Rentable square footage is usable square footage plus a prorata share of the building's common area. Theoretically, rentable square footage should be the amount of building space from which the tenant benefits. Most office buildings have common areas not directly and exclusively used by the tenant, but nonetheless benefiting the tenant (e.g., hallways, stairways, lobbies, etc.).
Business owners should obtain the services of a tenant representation broker to help with translate these and other
convoluted definitions into real dollars and cents prices, allowing for an apples-to-apples comparison of alternative properties.December 1, |
return. But as the Church on one side and the nobles on the other, succeeded in enthralling the people, the right of law-making escaped from the hands of the nation and passed into those of the privileged orders. Fortified by the wealth accumulating in her coffers, the Church extended her authority; she tampered more and more with private life, and under pretext of saving souls, she seized upon the labour of her serfs, she gathered taxes from every class, she increased her jurisdiction, she multiplied penalties, and enriched herself in proportion to the number of offences committed, for the produce of every fine poured into her coffers. Laws had no longer any connection with the interest of the nation. They might have been supposed to emanate rather from a council of religious fanatics than from legislators, observes an historian of French Law. At the same time, as the baron likewise extended his authority over labourers in the fields and artisans in the towns, he, too, became legislator and judge. The few relics of national law dating from the tenth century are merely agreements regulating service, statute labour, and tribute due from serf and vassals to their lord. The legislators of that period were a handful of brigands organised for the plunder of a people daily becoming more peaceful, as they applied themselves to agricultural pursuits. These robbers exploited the feelings for justice inherent in the people, they posed as the administrators of that justice, made a source of revenue for themselves out of its fundamental principles and concocted laws to maintain their own dominations. Later on, these laws collected and classified by jurists, formed the foundation of our modern codes. And are we to talk about respecting these codes, the legacy of baron and priest? The first revolution, the revolt of the townships, was successful in abolishing a portion only of these laws, the charters of enfranchised towns are, for the most part, a mere compromise between baronial and episcopal legislation, and the new relations created within the free borough itself. Yet what a difference between these laws, and the laws we have now! The town did not take upon itself to imprison and execute citizens for reasons of State: it was content to expel anyone who plotted with the enemies of the city, and to raze his house to the ground. It confined itself to imposing fines for so-called crimes and misdemeanours and in the townships of the twelfth century may even be discerned the just principle to-day forgotten, which holds the whole community responsible for the misdoing of each of its members. The societies of that time looked upon crime as an accident or misfortune; a conception common amongst the Russian peasantry at this moment. Therefore, they did not admit of the principle of personal vengeance as preached by the Bible, but considered that the blame for each misdeed reverted to the whole society. It needed all the influence of the Bysantine Church, which imported into the West the refined cruelties of Eastern despotism, to introduce into the manners of Gauls and Germans the penalty of death, and the horrible fortunes afterwards inflicted on those regarded as criminals. Just in the same way, it needed all the influence of the Roman code, the product of the corruption of Imperial Rome, to introduce the notions as to absolute property in land, which have overthrown the communistic customs of primitive people. As we know, the free townships were not able to hold their own. Torn by intestine dissensions between rich and poor, burgher and serf, they fell an easy prey to royalty. And as royalty acquired fresh strength, the right of legislation passed more and more into the hands of a clique of courtiers. Appeal to the nation, was made only to sanction the taxes demanded by the King. Parliament summoned at intervals of two centuries, according to the good pleasure or caprice of the Court, Councils Extraordinary, Assemblies of Notables, Ministers, scarce heeding the grievances of the Kings subjects -- these are the legislators of France. Later still, when all power is concentrated in a single man, who can say I am the State, edicts are concocted in the secret counsels of the Prince, according to the whim of a minister, or of an imbecile King; and subjects must obey on pain of death. All judicial guarantees are abolished; the nation is the serf of royalty, and of a handful of courtiers. And at this period the most horrible penalties startle our gaze -- the wheel, the stake, flaying alive, tortures of every description, invented by the sick fancy of monks and madmen, seeking delight in the sufferings of executed criminals. The great Revolution began the demolition of this framework of law, bequeathed to us by feudalism and royalty. But after having demolished some portions of the ancient edifice, the Revolution delivered over the power of law-making to the bourgeoisie, who, in their turn, began to raise a fresh framework of laws, intended to maintain and perpetuate middle-class domination amongst the masses. Their Parliament makes laws right and left, and mountains of law accumulate with frightful rapidity. But what are all these laws at bottom? The major portion have but one object -- to protect private property, i.e., wealth acquired by the exploitation of man by man. Their aim is to open out to capital fresh fields for exploitation, and to sanction the new forms which that exploitation continually assumes, as capital swallows up another branch of human activity, railways, telegraphs, electric light, chemical industries, the expression of mans thought in literature and science, etc. The object of the rest of these laws is fundamentally the same. They exist to keep up the machinery of government, which serves to secure to capital the exploitation and monopoly of the wealth produced. Magistrature, police, army, public instruction, finance, all serve one God- capital; all have but one object- to facilitate the exploitation of the worker by the capitalist. Analyse all the laws passed for the last eighty years and you will find nothing but this. The protection of the person, which is put forward as the true mission of law occupies an imperceptible space amongst them, for, existing society, assaults upon the person, directly dictated by hatred and brutality, tend to disappear. Nowadays, if anyone is murdered, it is generally for the sake of robbing him; rarely from personal vengeance. But if this class of crimes and misdemeanours is continually diminishing, we certainly do not owe the change to legislation. It is due to the growth of humanitarianism in our societies, to our increasingly social habits rather than to the prescriptions of our laws. Repeal to-morrow every law dealing with the protection of the person, and to-morrow stop all proceedings for assault, and the number of attempts, dictated by personal vengeance and by brutality, would not be augment by one single instance. It will, perhaps, be objected that, during the last fifty years, a good many liberal laws have been enacted. But, if these laws are analysed, it will be discovered that this liberal legislation consists in the repeal of the laws bequeathed to us by the barbarism of preceding centuries. Every liberal law, every radical programme, maybe summed up in these words, abolition of laws grown irksome to the middle-class itself, and return and extension to all citizens of liberties enjoyed by the townships of the twelfth century. The abolition of capital punishment, trial by jury for all crimes (there was a more liberal jury in the twelfth century), the election of magistrates, the right of bringing public officials to trial, the abolition of standing armies, free instruction, etc., everything that is pointed out as an invention of modern liberalism, is but a return to the freedom which existed before Church and King had laid hands upon every manifestation of human life. Thus the protection of exploitation directly by laws on property, and indirectly by the maintenance of the State is both the spirit and the substance of our modern codes, and the one function of our costly legislative machinery. But it is time we gave up being satisfied with mere phrases, and learned to appreciate their real signification. The law, which on its first appearance presented itself as a compendium of customs useful for the preservation of society, is now perceived to be nothing but an instrument for the maintenance of exploitation, and the domination of the toiling masses by rich idlers. At the present day its civilising mission is nil; it has but one object, to bolster up exploitation. This is what is told us by history as to the development of law. Is it in virtue of this history that we are called upon to respect it? Certainly not. It has no more title to respect than capital; the fruit of pillage; and the first duty of the revolutionists of the nineteenth century will be to made a bonfire of all existing laws, as they will of all titles to property. Chapter IV The millions of laws which exist for the regulation of humanity, appear upon investigation to be divided into three principal categories- protection of property, protection of persons, protection of government. And by analysing each of these three categories, we arrive at the same logical and necessary conclusion: the uselessness and hurtfulness of law. Socialists know what is meant by protection of property. Laws on property are not made to guarantee either to the individual or to society the enjoyment of the produce of their own labour. On the contrary, they are made to rob the producer of a part of what he has created, and to secure to certain other people that portion of the produce which they have stolen either from the producer or from society as a whole. When, for example, the law establishes Mr. So-and-Sos right to a house, it is not establishing his right to a cottage he has built for himself, or to a house he has erected with the help of some of his friends. In that case no one would have disputed his right. On the contrary, the law is establishing his right to a house which is not the product of his labour; first of all, because he has had it built for him by others to whom he has not paid the full value of their work; and next because that house represents a social value, which he could not have produced for himself. The law is establishing his right to what belongs to everybody in general to nobody in particular. The same house built in the midst of Siberia would not have the value it possesses in a large town, and, as we know, that value arises from the labour of something like fifty generations of men who have built the town, beautified it, supplied it with water and gas, fine promenades, colleges, theatres, shops, railways and roads leading in all directions. Thus, by recognising to the right of Mr. So-and-So to a particular house in Paris, London or Rouen, the law is unjustly appropriating to him a certain portion of the produce of the labour of mankind in general. And it is precisely because this appropriation and all other forms of property, bearing the same character, are a crying injustice, that a whole arsenal of laws, and a whole army of soldiers, policemen and judges are needed to maintain it against the good sense and just feeling inherent in humanity. Well, half our laws, the civil code in each country serves no other purpose than to maintain this appropriation, this monopoly for the benefit of certain individuals, against the whole of mankind. Three-fourths of the causes decided by the tribunals are nothing but quarrels between monopolists- two robbers disputing over their booty. And a great many of our criminal laws have the same object in view, their end being to keep the workman in a subordinate position towards his employer, and thus afford security for exploitation. As for guaranteeing the product of his labour to the producer, there are no laws which even attempt such a thing. It is so simple and natural, so much a part of the manners and customs of mankind; that law has not given it so much as a thought. Open brigandage, sword in hand, is no feature of our age. Neither does one workman ever come and dispute the produce of his labour with another. If they have a misunderstanding they settle it by calling in a third person, without having recourse to law. The only person who exacts from another what the other has produced, is the proprietor, who comes in and deducts the lions share. As for humanity in general, it everywhere respects the right of each to what he has created, without the interposition of any special laws. As all the laws about property, which make up thick volumes of codes, and are the delight of our lawyers, have no other object than to protect the unjust appropriating of human labour by certain monopolists, there is no reason for their existence, and, on the day of the Revolution, social revolutionists are thoroughly determined to put an end to them. Indeed, a bonfire might be made with perfect justice of all laws bearing upon the so-called rights of property, all title-deeds, all registers, in a word, of all that is in any way connected with an institution which will soon be looked upon as a blot in the history of humanity, as humiliating as the slavery and serfdom of past ages. The remarks just made upon laws concerning property are quite as applicable to the second category of laws; those for the maintenance of government, i.e., Constitutional Law. It again is a complete arsenal of laws, decrees, ordinances, orders in council, and what not, all serving to protect the diverse forms of representative government, delegated or usurped, beneath which humanity is writhing. We know very well- Anarchists have often enough pointed out in their perpetual criticism of the various forms of government- that the mission of all governments, monarchical, constitutional, or republican, is to protect and maintain by force the privileges of the classes in possession, the aristocracy, clergy and traders. A good third of our laws- and each century possesses some tens of thousands of them- the fundamental laws on taxes, excise duties, the organisation of ministerial departments and their offices, of the army, the police, the Church, etc., have no other end than to maintain, patch up, and develop the administrative machine. And this machine in its turn serves almost entirely to protect the privileges of the possessing classes. Analyse all these laws, observe them in action day by day, and you will discover that not one is worth preserving. About such laws there can be no two opinions. Not only Anarchists, but more or less revolutionary radicals also, are agreed that the only use to be made of laws concerning the organisation of government is to fling them into the fire. The third category of law still remains to be considered, that relating to the protection of the person and the detection and prevention of crime. This is the most important, because most prejudices attach to it; because, if law enjoys a certain amount of consideration, it is in consequence of the belief that this species of law is absolutely indispensable to the maintenance of security in our societies. These are laws developed from the nucleus of customs useful to human communities, which have been turned to account by rulers to sanctify their own domination. The authority of the chiefs of tribes, of rich families in towns, and of the king, depended upon their judicial functions, and even down to the present day, whenever the necessity of government is spoken of, its function as supreme judge is the thing implied. Without a government men would tear one another to pieces, argues the village orator. The ultimate end of all government is to secure twelve honest jurymen to every accused person, said Burke. Well, in spite of all the prejudices existing on this subject, it is quite time that anarchists should boldly declare this category of laws as useless and injurious as the preceding ones. First of all, as to so-called crimes -- assaults upon persons -- it is well-known that two-thirds, and often as many as three-fourths, of such crimes are instigated by the desire to obtain possession of someones wealth. This immense class of so-called crimes and misdemeanours will disappear on the day on which private property ceases to exist. But, it will be said, there will always be brutes who will attempt the lives of their fellow citizens, who will lay their hands to a knife in every quarrel, and revenge the slightest offence by murder, if there are not laws to restrain and punishments to withhold them. This refrain is repeated ever time the right of society to punish is called in question. Yet there is one fact upon this head which at the present time, is thoroughly established; the severity of punishment does not diminish the amount of crime. Hang, and, if you like, quarter murderers, and the number of murders will not decrease by one. On the other hand, abolish the penalty of death, and there will not be one murder more; there will be fewer. Statistics prove it. But if the harvest is good, and bread cheap, and the weather fine, the number of murders immediately decreases. This again is proved by statistics. The amount of crime always augments and diminishes in proportion to the price of provisions and the states of the weather. Not that all murders are actuated by hunger. That is not the case. But when the harvest is good and provisions are at an obtainable price, and when the sun shines, men, lighter hearted and less miserable than usual, do not give way to gloomy passions, do not from trivial motives, plunge a knife into the bosom of a fellow creature. Moreover, it is also a well-known fact that the fear of punishment has never stopped a single murderer. He who kills his neighbour from revenge or misery does not reason much about consequence; and there have been few murderers who were not firmly convinced that they should escape prosecution. Without speaking of a society in which a man will receive a better education, in which the development of all his faculties, and the possibility of exercising them, will procure him so many enjoyments, that he will not seek to poison them by remorse- without speaking of the society of the future- even in our society, even with those sad products of misery, whom we see to-day in the public-houses of great cities- on the day when no punishment is inflicted upon murderers, the number of murders will not augment by a single case; and it is extremely probably that it will be, on the contrary, diminished by all those cases which are due at present to habitual criminals, who have been brutalised in prison. We are continually being told of the benefits conferred by law, and the beneficial effect of penalties, but have the speakers ever attempted to strike a balance between the benefits attributed to laws and penalties, and the degrading effect of these penalties upon humanity? Only calculate all the evil passions awakened in mankind by the atrocious punishments formerly inflicted in our streets! Man is the cruelest animal upon earth; and who has pampered and developed the cruel instincts unknown, even amongst monkeys; if it is not the king, the judge, and the priests, armed with law, who caused flesh to be torn off in strips, boiling pitch to be poured into wounds, limbs to be dislocated, bones to be crushed, men to be sawn asunder to maintain their authority? Only estimate the torrent of depravity let loose in human society by the informing which is countenanced by judges, and paid in hard cash by governments, under pretext of assisting in the discovery of "crime." Only go into the goals and study what man becomes when he is deprived of freedom and shut up with other depraved beings, steeped in the vice and corruption which oozes from the very walls of our existing prisons. Only remember that the more these prisons are reformed, the more detestable they become; our model modern penitentiaries are a hundred-fold more abominable than the dungeons of the middle ages. Finally, consider what corruption, depravity of mind, is kept up amongst men by idea of obedience, the very essence of law; of chastisement; of authority having the right to punish, to judge irrespective of our conscience and the esteem of our friends; of the necessity for executioners, gaolers and informers- in a word, by all the attributes of law and authority. Consider all this, and you will assuredly agree with us in saying that a law inflicting penalties is an abomination which should cease to exist. Peoples without political organisation, and therefore less depraved than ourselves, have perfectly understood that the man who is called criminal is simply unfortunate; that the remedy is not to flog him, to chain him up, or to kill him on the scaffold or in prison, but to relieve him by the most brotherly care, by treatment based on equality, by the usages of life amongst honest men. In the next revolution we hope that this cry will go forth: Burn the guillotine; demolish the prisons; drive away the judges, policemen and informers- the impurest race upon the face of the earth; treat as a brother the man who has been led by passion to do ill to his fellow; above all take from the ignoble products of middle-class idleness the possibility of displaying their vices in attractive colours; and be sure that but few crimes will mar our society. The main supports of crime are idleness, law and authority; laws about property, about government, laws about penalties and misdemeanours; and authority, which takes upon itself to manufacture these laws and to apply them. No more laws! No more judges! Liberty, equality, and practical human sympathy are the only effectual barriers we can oppose to the anti-social instincts of certain amongst us. PRINTED BY THE NEW TEMPLE PRESS, NORBURY CRESCENT, NORBURT, S.W.We don’t know if Sony is deliberately letting details slip about the company’s future flagship devices or if it’s trying to keep things as contained as possible, but one thing is clear – the “Yuga” and “Odin” are two of the worst kept secrets in recent Android history.
The Yuga basically holds no secret after the Russian preview from a while ago and the revealing of its real market name – the Xperia Z – while the Odin can be today officially declared an open book as well.
The pieces of the Odin puzzle have been falling into place for quite some time, starting with the spec sheet, continuing with its appearance and wrapping up with the dimensions, and now we “know” its real name too – the Xperia X.
This is of course not an official piece of news and it doesn’t even come from the most reliable source of rumors, but we have to admit, it sounds very plausible. The phone will be known as the L35 too, with regional variations like L35i, L35h and L35a.
That’s all nice and credible, but what we still don’t get is how will the Xperia X and Z divide the world between them. We initially thought one of the two will be either an Asia-specific or a US-exclusive device, but the source of this latest rumor says the X will be on display at CES 2013 and then will see daylight in Europe and parts of Asia and North America.
Of course, it’s possible for both the X and Z to be “global” devices, but that would be even more confusing, as the two spec sheets are almost identical. Oh, well, it’s not like Sony’s 2012 devices are all about unique identities and originality.
Although today’s leak brings nothing new to the table in terms of specs, let’s recap the features rumored before and “confirmed” now:
5-inch LCD screen with 1,920 x 1,080 pixels resolution
1.5 GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro CPU
2 GB of RAM
32 GB of internal memory
13 MP rear-facing camera with autofocus and LED flash
MicroSD support
Android 4.1 Jelly Bean
4G LTE
So, who’s excited about the Xperia X? Does the name have a certain ring to it or did Odin sound better?Director Bryan Singer is back on Twitter teasing fans from the Toronto production of X-Men: Days of Future Past, Friday showing off what is maybe(?) be the first look at the future/present-day Beast in the 2014 film, along with the quote: "Many a monster wears the form of a man; it is better of the two to have the heart of a man & the form of a monster."
Perhaps it's a make-up test or even computer-rendered concept art, but it does appear to look different than Nicholas Hoult's Beast make-up in X-Men: First Class.
Is that hints of gray/white hair we see?
Check out the image and judge for yourself.
X-Men: Days of Future Past is scheduled for release on July 18, 2014, with a cast including James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Anna Paquin, Ellen Page, Nicholas Hoult, Shawn Ashmore, Peter Dinklage and Halle Berry.It took Dwight Luton nearly a minute before he informed an 911 dispatcher that his mortally-wounded wife had sustained a gunshot wound, according to a 911 tape released Tuesday by police.
Luton, of Riviera Beach, is facing charges of first-degree murder and evidence tampering after he allegedly killed Ashley Balius on March 7 inside her vehicle at their home on North Canterbury Drive.
See who’s been booked into the Palm Beach County Jail
The 911 call begins with Luton politely greeting the dispatcher and requesting an ambulance. Luton doesn’t immediately say anything to reflect the situation’s gravity and appears to be slurring his words as he speaks.
"My wife … there was an accident," Luton says after being switched to a second 911 dispatcher.
The 911 operator repeatedly asks what happened while Luton appears either to not be listening to the question or is confused.
"She went to the store…. I need an ambulance right now," Luton said.
The dispatcher again asks Luton what happened to Balius.
"Oh, she’s injured," Luton said 50 seconds into the call. "She got a gunshot wound."
The 911 tape ends there.
Luton told police that Balius, his wife of less than a year, accidentally shot herself while grabbing a gun from her purse. Police found a bag containing a gun lying on the driveway of the couple’s home. But nothing indicated it recently had been fired, according to a police report.
Surveillance video from the home disputes Luton’s version of events, police said. The video shows Luton reaching into the vehicle just before Balius was shot and then wiping himself off and making phone calls without immediately rendering aid to his critically injured wife, according to a probable-cause affidavit.
Have you seen them? Wanted fugitives in Palm Beach County
Balius, 31, died several hours after the shooting, police said.
Balius worked as a partner in Luton’s firearm business, Strictly Tactical Firearms, LLC, according to the company’s website. County and state records show Luton has owned the business since 2009. According to the website, it offers concealed weapons and shooting classes and sells AR-10s, AR-15s and AK-47s.
Download our PostNOW app to get the latest Breaking NewsMicromax announced its aim to be the first Indian company to build a complete services’ ecosystem to complement the seamless experience over 100 million connected devices by end of 2017.
Micromax Informatics Ltd. has refreshed its corporate, brand and product strategy with the launch of “Micromax 3.0” and a vision to be the top player in the Indian smart devices category and to enter the top 5 club of global handset manufacturers.
Micromax also unveiled a new brand identity with the launch of its new logo and brand philosophy ‘Nuts: Guts: Glory’. The new philosophy is a re-articulation of Micromax’s DNA that underscores its pioneering status as company that has challenged accepted notions and brought market leading innovations to connect millions of Indians.
The new brand identity presents Micromax as a company that is bolder, modern, agile and armed with a winning attitude to take on the global smart devices market. The new logo is an evolution from the existing Micromax punch but a much more modernized version keeping in mind the global design language that appeals to the youth across the globe.
In its next phase of growth as Micromax 3.0, the company looks to further consolidate its leadership status to be the top devices and services company in India. Micromax announced its aim to be the first Indian company to build a complete services’ ecosystem to complement the seamless experience over 100 million connected devices by end of 2017. The company also announced a complete product enhancement of both its mobility and non-mobility segments to lead with world class products as well as its entry into newer product categories to create the same magic it did with LED TV and tablet segment.
Commenting on the announcement, Rahul Sharma, Co-Founder, Micromax Informatics said, “We are proud to be the first Indian brand to be in the top 10 brands globally and today we embark on our journey to be amongst the top 5 players in the world. With our aim of achieving 100 million connected devices in the next two years, we want to make Micromax, the largest services company in India, consolidate our leadership position in overseas markets we are present as well as enter new markets. We would also continue to invest in different service categories which interest our consumers to create a strong ecosystem within our brand for the most compelling and seamless experience.”
Micromax is now looking to invest in passionate entrepreneurs who have built solutions that will delight its customers while its VAS division will focus on building an eco-system of content, applications, services and software experiences by partnering with the best across the globe to build a powerful suite of innovations and native experiences to enhance and add value to its range of Smart Devices.
For the past few years Micromax has tested a few international markets including countries in SAARC and Russia, and established itself among the top 3 in all markets. Getting to No. 3 position in Russia in under 2 years has been a very critical aspect in this journey as the brand gears for its entry into other CIS countries and the Eastern European markets. Success in Russia has also helped the organization to acquire sales strategies of evolved markets. It is definitely an exciting time at Micromax as it embarks on new clusters systematically with a vision to be amongst the world’s top 5 by 2020.
Vikas Jain, Co-Founder, Micromax Informatics said, “We would be looking at further consolidation into newer product categories (LED TV and tablets) to bring in newer set of consumers into the Micromax brand and transform into a complete consumer electronics company. One of our key focus areas in this journey will be to 100% make in India. With an already functional plant at Rudrapur, we are now looking at adding 3 more plants with an investment of Rs 300 crores as well as creating job opportunities for over 10,000 people by 2017”.
While Services will now be a critical aspect of Micromax 3.0, the company also announced its refreshed product strategy to lead in critical product segments and sub segments. As a part of its product refresh, Micromax announced 20 new smart devices, right from smartphones, tablets and LED TVs. The focus will be to have an entire range of mobiles, tablets and LED TVs in different series at different price points to cater to the consumer needs across categories. Additionally, Micromax recently invested in three new manufacturing units in India to ramp up domestic production and reduce dependence on imports. The company will have functional manufacturing units in Telangana, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan by 2017.. |
If you have an interesting article / experience / case study to share, please get in touch with us at editors@expresscomputeronline.comFrom the New York Times “Numberplay” blog:
An entrepreneur has devised a gambling machine that chooses two independent random variables x and y that are uniformly and independently distributed between 0 and 100. He plans to tell any customer the value of x and to ask him whether y > x or x > y. If the customer guesses correctly, he is given y dollars. If x = y, he’s given y/2 dollars. And if he’s wrong about which is larger, he’s given nothing. The entrepreneur plans to charge his customers $40 for the privilege of playing the game. Would you play?
Clearly the strategy is to guess that y > x if x is small, and to guess that y < x if x is large. Say you’re told x = 60. If you guess x is the larger variable, then conditional on your guess being correct (which has probability 0.6) you win an average of 30 dollars (halfway between 0 and 60). If your guess is incorrect you win nothing. Similarly, if you guess x is the smaller variable, then conditional on your guess being correct (which has probability 0.4) you win an average of 80 dollars (halfway between 60 and 100). So your expected winnings are 18 dollars if you guess x is the larger variable, and 32 if you guess x is the smaller variable. You should guess x is the smaller variable — that is, 60 is “small”.
This is surprising at first — 60 is closer to 100 than it is to 0, and if you’re just trying to guess correctly you’d guess that 60 was the larger of x and y. But the payoff is the unseen number y, and if x is the smaller variable then that biases the value of y upwards.
To simplify the analysis, I’m going to say that you’re given u and v, which are x/100 and y/100; so they’re uniformly distributed between 0 and 1. You’re told u, you get to guess if v is larger or smaller than u, and if you get it right you get 100v dollars.
You’re told u. If you guess u is the larger of the two variables, then conditional on your guess being correct — which has probability u — you win on average u/2 hundred dollars. And if you guess u is the smaller, then conditional on your guess being correct — which has probability 1-u — you win on average (1+u)/2 hundred dollars. So your expected winnings are if you guess u is the larger, and if you guess u is the smaller — all money is in units of one hundred dollars.
So you should guess u is the larger variable exactly when ; that is, when, or.
What is the expected payoff? It’s an easy integral, namely
and that’s about 0.4024 — the expected value of this game is $40.24. So you should play! But on the other hand the casino operator might still make money, because are people really going to sit down and work out the optimal strategy?
Lots of solutions were offered at the post giving the puzzle; Bayesian biologist had a simulation-based approach.
(Finally, you might notice that I ignored the possibility where x = y. That’s not because I’m forgetful, but because it happens with probability 0.)
AdvertisementsLast week, Forbes published an explosive story claiming that Nvidia had used GameWorks to cripple AMD’s performance in the new Ubisoft game Watch Dogs. This kicked off a series of events, including our own inability to duplicate similar results and a lengthy conversation with the senior vice president of Nvidia’s content and technology division, Tony Tamasi. Rather than rely solely on these conversations and perpetuate the he-said-she-said nature of the AMD-Nvidia discussion, we decided to take the questions AMD has raised about GameWorks and Nvidia’s counterpoints directly to developers themselves.
We sent out a number of requests for comment and insight to some of the most well-known project heads in the gaming business. Most respondents were only willing to speak off the record, but there were two exceptions: Tim Sweeney, the founder of Epic Games, and Richard Geldreich, a longtime OpenGL developer at Valve (semi-retired as of last week).
The GameWorks discussion has raised many questions about the nature of how game developers and IHV’s (Integrated Hardware Vendors, aka GPU manufacturers) collaborate, whether or not source code is important to that process, whether Mantle and GameWorks should be seen as equivalents, why Nvidia developed GameWorks, and whether GameWorks is a threat to AMD at all.
Because much of the debate over GameWorks is tied to the question of how games are optimized and what that process entails, we’ll start there.
Do AMD and Nvidia need access to developer source code?
AMD: Being able to see and share source code access is very important to our driver optimization process.
Nvidia: Having source code is useful, but it’s just one tool in our toolbox. There are many, many things we can do to improve performance without touching it.
Developers say: They’re both telling the truth.
The first thing to understand about IHV – developer relations is that the process of game optimization is nuanced and complex. The reason AMD and Nvidia are taking different positions on this topic isn’t because one of them is lying, it’s because AMD genuinely tends to focus more on helping developers optimize their own engines, while Nvidia puts more effort into performing tasks in-driver. This is a difference of degree — AMD absolutely can perform its own driver-side optimization and Nvidia’s Tony Tamasi acknowledged on the phone that there are some bugs that can only be fixed by looking at the source.
This philosophical difference of approach makes sense given what we know of the two companies. Nvidia’s graphics business is much larger than AMD’s and the company has invested a great deal of money in creating 3D libraries, rendering engines, programming tools, and in some cases, specialized hardware blocks. AMD hasn’t tended to make as many of these kinds of investments; Mantle is the exception that proves the rule.
Some of this difference in approach is cultural but much of it is driven by necessity. In 2012 (the last year before AMD’s graphics revenue was rolled into the console business), AMD made about $1.4 billion off the Radeon division. For the same period, Nvidia made more than $4.2 billion. Some of that was Tegra-related and it’s a testament to AMD’s hardware engineering that it competes effectively with Nvidia with a much smaller revenue share, but it also means that Team Green has far more money to spend on optimizing every aspect of the driver stack.
Next page: Should developers have access to middleware (GameWorks) source code?How is Signal Strength Increased When an Antenna Has "Gain"?
When an antenna has 'gain' or is 'directional' it doesn't make the transmitted power any greater. Some particular amount of energy is fed into the antenna, some of that is lost to the impedance of the feed line, some is electrically reflected back down the feed line and lost, and the rest is radiated outwards from the antenna. As we say, " |
MX Clear)
Source of photo: keyeduplabs.com
Keyed Up Labs (KUL) is a top-notch company that creates a range of well-regarded mechanical keyboards.
KUL specializes in tenkeyless keyboards, which don’t have the number pad that’s often located on the right side of full-size keyboards.
Many of us never use the number pad. Except for accountants, cashiers, statisticians, and those who frequently key-in numbers into their machine, most people can live without the number pad.
The advantage of removing the redundant keys found in the number pad is that it will create more room on your desk and it will reduce the distance your right hand needs to travel when reaching for your mouse.
KUL ES-87 Mechanical Keyboard (Cherry MX Green)
Source of photo: rapoo.com
Mechanical keyboards are typically wired devices. Not the Rapoo KX though.
Besides the obvious benefit of being able to eliminate wire clutter, the Rapoo KX is also one of the least expensive mechanical keyboards I’ve come across, at $85. It’s also smaller than most mechanical keyboards, which makes the Rapoo KX potentially portable.
For a more detailed look at the Rapoo KX, watch the video review named Wireless + Mechanical – Is This Real Life? on the YouTube channel Unbox Therapy (which has over 2.6 million subscribers). Also see the list of wireless mechanical keyboards on Reddit for more sans-wire alternatives.
Mactrem Rapoo KX (Black)
Source of photo: duckychannel.com.tw
Taiwan-based company DuckyChannel has a collection of mechanical keyboards for gaming and work.
The Ducky Legend is the model I feel best suits work environments. This keyboard has a stylish aluminum case and adjustable backlighting.
Ducky Legend (Silver)
Source of photo: pfusystems.com
The Happy Hacking Keyboard is geared towards professionals and heavy computer users. It was first introduced in 1996 by Japanese IT company, PFU Limited. Since then, the keyboard has managed to gain a loyal fan base.
In the quest to make a small-form-factor keyboard, the designers of the HHKB removed the arrow keys, function keys, and several other keys such as Caps Lock, Backspace, and Insert. Instead, these keys are coupled together with other frequently used keys. For example, the Backspace key shares the same key as the Delete key, and Caps Lock is combined with the Tab key. You can use the “missing” keys by pressing the Fn key along with the key that it shares.
The Happy Hacking Keyboard’s design results in an ultra compact 60-key keyboard, often referred to as a 60% keyboard (because a full-sized keyboard has 104 keys).
This mechanical keyboard has a cult following, as well as its fair share of critics. The biggest disadvantage is that if you use arrow keys, print screen, insert, etc. frequently, then this would not be an efficient keyboard for you.
In my case, as a web developer and writer, I have become accustomed to keyboard shortcuts that rely on several keys that the HHKB decided to drop, such as the Up/Down Arrow keys for jumping to lines of code, Ctrl+Left Arrow/ Right Arrow to move to the previous/next word in a sentence, Ctrl+Page Up/Page Down to scroll web pages, and so forth.
But if desk space and minimalism are things that matter most to you, then this mechanical keyboard is definitely something to check out. As for me, a tenkeyless keyboard is the perfect balance between minimalism, size, and functionality.
Happy Hacking Keyboard Professional 2
Source of photo: diatec.co.jp
The mechanical keyboard community holds the Filco Majestouch 2, often referred to as the MJ2, in high regard. It has a rep for having a solidly sturdy build quality.
Filco products are by a Japanese company called Diatec Corp. The company has been around since 1982, and they specialize in PC peripherals and mobile devices.
Reddit’s mechanical keyboard buying guide wiki says that the MJ2 is “The big boss of Cherry MX keyboards.”
Filco Majestouch 2
Source of photo: vortexgear.tw
The Vortex POK3R mechanical keyboard, sometimes called the Poker3, is a range of compact and customizable mechanical keyboards. Besides its interesting appearance and small size, another notable feature is that the keyboard is programmable. (You can find more info about POK3R’s programmability via its user manual.)
The POK3R keyboard has an atypical design. When viewed on the side, you’ll notice that the keycaps and switches are mounted on top of the keyboard tray, a blackplate, rather than being embedded into it. This design contributes to the keyboard’s compact dimensions and distinct aesthetics.
Side view of the Vortex POK3R keyboard. Source of photo: vortexgear.tw
Check out the in-depth POK3R keyboard video review at the Rhinofeed YouTube channel.
Vortex POK3R 3 (Cherry MX Clear)
Source of photo: amazon.com
Cherry MX is the series of switches that you’ll often find in popular mechanical keyboards such as the Das Keyboard. But they’re not the only players on the block. Topre switches are another type of mechanical keyboard switch.
The Topre REALFORCE is the pricy, flagship mechanical keyboard by Japan-based Topre Corp, makers of electronic equipment. For an alternative that’s notably less expensive, the Topre Type Heaven, at $155, is also a well-regarded option.
Topre Realforce 104U (White)
10. Kinesis Advantage
Source of photo: kinesis-ergo.com
The Kinesis Advantage is a long-standing, ergonomically-designed keyboard that vastly veers off from the keyboard designs we’re all used to. This keyboard is popular amongst software engineers, IT professionals, and web developers — people who spend a ton of time typing on their keyboards, and using keyboard shortcuts and command-line interfaces.
Source of photo: wikipedia.org
The ergonomics of the Kinesis Advantage can help lower the impact of the repetitive strain your hands endure when you’re typing for long hours. Its keys are separated and angled to complement your hands’ natural positions. The keyboard has concave key wells that minimize the distance your fingers need to travel to reach a key.
Jarred Walton, over at the hardware review site AnandTech, wrote that out of three ergonomic mechanical keyboards he reviewed, the Kinesis Advantage is his favorite.
The Kinesis Advantage may not be everybody’s cup of tea. The keyboard’s layout will take time to get used to. And once you get accustomed to it, it will be hard to use traditional keyboard layouts. On the other hand, a top Amazon reviewer that goes by the handle of Ed said that it only took two weeks to get used to the keyboard and that if you’re patient “it will not only pay off with better ergonomics, but speed.”
The $270 price is quite steep. But if you’re suffering from wrist- and hand-related injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome, or if you want to prevent them from happening, the Kinesis Advantage keyboard might be deserving of your hard-earned dineros.
Kinesis Advantage (Black)
Further Reading
Mechanical keyboards are expensive. They’re meant to be used for years. Choosing which one to buy is a decision that shouldn’t be taken lightly. Here are some resources that will help you learn more about the technology:
The MechanicalKeyboards subreddit is a large community of keyboard enthusiasts with over 86,000 subscribers. Check out their wiki, which will inform you of everything you need to know about mechanical keyboards. This subreddit was instrumental in helping me discover the mechanical keyboards on this list.
Tested, a site by the stars of the TV show MythBusters, Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage, has an explainer on why you should use a mechanical keyboard.
Das Keyboard has a slightly technical mechanical keyboard guide that gives you a great overview of the technology.
Overclock.net has a detailed guide covering mechanical keyboard terminologies, popular types of switches, keyboard maintenance, keycap shapes/materials/printing methods, and more.
Read Ty’s comment below for more insights and tips.
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Jacob Gube is the founder of Six Revisions. He’s a front-end developer. Connect with him on Twitter.Two live hand grenades were found in an unclaimed bag in the Varanasi district court premises.
Two live hand grenades were found today in an unclaimed bag in the Varanasi district court premises, leading the police to cordon off the area and suspend the court's work."All the entry and exit points to the court have been sealed and police is trying to check the whole premises for any more such things," a senior police official told IANS.The grenades have been sent to be defused, an official of the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) said.A passer-by spotted the unclaimed bag under a chair near gate number one of the court and called the police.While the police is saying that a probe is on, local intelligence unit (LIU) officials link the finding of the hand grenades to a possible gang war; they say Brijesh Singh and other mafia dons frequent the court for appearances in cases.The possibility of a terror angle is also being explored, an official said.There was a bomb explosion in this court in 2007 in which some people were killed.All the cases listed for the day have been postponed to Monday.Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Aakash Kulhari said a probe is underway and that security has been scaled up. Varanasi is the parliamentary constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.AN Air Canada plane has landed after being forced to return to Sydney airport when smoke billowed out in a galley on board.
Air Canada Flight AC34 departed Sydney Airport at at 10.25am en route to Vancouver and Toronto and reportedly experienced a fire in the galley which could not be contained.
Fuel was dumped over Hornsby and Longreef before the plane returned to Sydney.
Listen to Australian Air Traffic Control
At 11.53am the captain reported that he had completed the fuel dump.
The plane landed shortly after 12.10pm on Thursday, a spokesman the Australian Transport Safety Bureau said.
It is understood the passengers were taken off the plane and stood in a waiting area while the aircraft refuelled.
The plane departed Sydney Airport again at 1.50pm.
"Air Canada reported smoke in the cabin and conducted a fuel dump," the ATSB spokesman told AAP.
He said the incident would be investigated further.
A spokesman for Sydney Airport told AAP said the plane was doing an "air return".
"It's doing an air return... an air return usually means they are coming back as a precaution," he said.
Do you know anyone on board? Email news tips, pictures and video to news@dailytelegraph.com.au
Air Canada's general manager for Australia and New Zealand, Jeannie Foster, said there was smoke in the plane but no fire.
"There was some smoke seen in the cabin by the crew, actually it was coming from the oven," she told Macquarie Radio.
media_camera The Air Canada flight lands safely at Sydney International Airport after dumping fuel. Picture: Phil Hillyard
"It was just smoke coming from an oven, there were no injuries."
There were 264 passengers on board the flight, including four infants.
"The captain didn't declare an emergency," Ms Foster said.
"Obviously he has had to dump fuel as it is a 15 hour flight to Canada... and you can't land with a heavy plane."
Fire and Rescue NSW told AAP it wasn't a "major incident" and emergency crews were not called out to the airport. It is not known if any dangerous cargo was on board the Boeing 777-233LR.
Here is a Youtube clip inside the Boeing 777-233LR taking off from Sydney in 2009.
Two years ago, at least 11 passengers and four crew members were injured when the Air Canada Flight 34 from Sydney to Vancouver hit severe turbulence caused by a thunderstorm about one hour northeast of Honolulu.
Meanwhile, an Asiana Airlines Boeing 744 cargo plane has crashed in waters off South Korea's southern Jeju island killing two, Yonhap news agency reports.
Debris from the aircraft, which had taken off from Incheon at 3.05am local time on Thursday, headed for Pudong in east China, was found by a coast guard patrol boat in the sea about 107 kilometres west of Jeju city, Yonhap said.
The plane carrying a pilot and one crew disappeared from radar at 4.09am while returning to Jeju airport after reporting mechanical trouble, it said.
Originally published as Air Canada plane lands, fire outHackers have taken the social insurance numbers of approximately 900 Canadians from Canada Revenue Agency computers, the tax agency says. The attack on the government computers came while they were vulnerable to the Heartbleed bug, the CRA reported on Monday.
The Canada Revenue Agency shut down electronic services last week, but said Sunday they are back up. ( Sean Kilpatrick / THE CANADIAN PRESS )
It also highlights a growing problem of how to keep personal information safe in the digital age. Experts say that identity thieves can use a stolen social insurance number, date of birth and an address to apply for a credit card, access bank accounts, redirect mail or create phony documents — often without being detected for months — leaving victims with the bills. MORE ON THESTAR.COM CRA’s online services resume following Heartbleed scare
Article Continued Below
Reports that NSA knew about Heartbleed Bug unleash fresh worries Heartbleed bug ‘a critical vulnerability’ for Internet security Ontario’s privacy commissioner, Ann Cavoukian, expressed concern that 900 Canadian taxpayers had their social insurance numbers compromised. “This is an agency that we are required by law to give our information to,” Cavoukian said Monday at Queen’s Park. A spokesperson for the CRA said the agency will send out registered letters to Canadians affected by the security breach.
A dedicated 1-800 number will be included in the registered letter, spokesperson Philippe Brideau said. Brideau said he didn’t know when the letters would be sent out, except to say it would be “as soon as possible. I don’t have an estimated time of arrival.”
Article Continued Below
CRA commissioner Andrew Treusch said the agency will not be calling or emailing individuals to inform them they have been affected because “we want to ensure that our communications are secure and cannot be exploited by fraudsters through phishing schemes The registered letters will also include information for those affected on “what steps to take to protect the integrity of their SIN,” Treusch said in a press release. CRA is doing the right thing, John Russo, chief privacy officer at Equifax Canada, said in an interview. “They are being very accountable as an organization. They’re letting the regulators know and letting consumers know what transpired. They’re taking steps to rectify any loss or identity theft.” There was no description of whose SIN numbers were removed from the CRA systems. The tax agency began on Monday to “support and protect” Canadians who are affected by the security breach, Treusch said. The agency says everyone affected will receive free access to credit protection services. The federal tax agency blocked public access to its online services for several days last week until it put in place measures to address the security risk, but says there was nonetheless a data breach over a six-hour period. “We are currently going through the painstaking process of analyzing other fragments of data, some that may relate to businesses, that were also removed,” Treusch said. The Heartbleed bug is caused by a flaw in OpenSSL software, commonly used on the Internet to provide security and privacy. The bug is affecting many global IT systems in both private and public sector organizations and has the potential to expose private data. “The CRA is one of many organizations that was vulnerable to Heartbleed, despite our robust controls,” the agency said on Monday. Cpl. Lucy Shorey, of the RCMP in Ottawa, declined to comment on the number of officers assigned to the case or their qualifications or how long the investigation might take. “We don’t normally get into that,” she said. “Everything is kind of unique and we wouldn’t speculate on that.” With files from Robert Benzie and Star wire services
Read more about:After booking some cheap flights to Madrid, a group of us decided we’d make our trip a bit more exciting by hiring a car and driving around Spain for a few days. Our first stop on the list was Zaragoza as we chose the slightly less popular option of driving to Northern Spain. We landed at Madrid airport around 9pm, picked up our hire car (this wasn’t as straight forward as it sounds as our driver had an expired licence, but anyway, we got it sorted!) and then we headed straight to the motorway for the 3 hour drive to Zaragoza. I can’t tell you much about the drive as I managed to sleep in the back of the car for the whole 3 hours however I do know it was a main highway and a very easy journey!
I woke up as we arrived in the back streets of Zaragoza, it was around 1am and it looked like a ghost town! There were plenty of bars and restaurants but I suspect they were all closed early because it was March and ‘off-season’. We found our hotel which was located right in the centre of Zaragoza Old Town and were directed to the main public parking area. We’d paid around 60 EUR per night for the hotel including breakfast and I was really surprised at how nice it was. The bedroom was spacious and spotless and the location was perfect.
We woke up in the morning around 8am and were ready to explore after our delicious Spanish breakfast of Pan con Tomate (tomato sauce on toast)! We headed to the Zaragoza tourist office after asking our hotel reception for some directions and this is where the wonderful surprises began …
First of all, I had no idea that Zaragoza was a city so rich in history and culture! The tourist office was tucked in beside the Roman walls and had a wonderful viewing tower from where you can see the whole city! We were given maps and lots of information about interesting things to see in the city. After enjoying the views from the top, we headed out to find the first attraction on our list, La Seo de Zaragoza. On our way we passed by the enormous Basílica de Nuestra Señora del Pilar, one of the city’s most iconic buildings.
The La Seo Cathedral is a Roman Catholic Cathedral and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Cathedral dates back to the 12th Century and has an incredible mix of architectural styles from Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque, Renaissance and Mudéjar, making it not only spectacular, but also very unique.
Next we took a walk around the centre of Zaragoza and found ourselves popping into a few shops. There was a lovely atmosphere everywhere in the streets, very calm and relaxed.
Our next attraction was the The Aljafería Palace, a medieval Islamic Palace built in the 11th century. It was about a 20 minute walk from the centre and we stopped on the way in an incredible tapas bar to refuel. We also passed by the Plaza de Toros de la Misericordia, the Zaragoza bull fighting ring. Bull fighting is not something I’d like to watch, however the building itself was quite something. Palacio de la Aljaferia was really worth seeing inside, it’s bursting with beautiful architecture and interesting history. I think this was my favourite place in Zaragoza.
Last on our list was the Museum of the Forum of Caesaraugusta back in La Seo square. We saved this until last as it’s open until 9pm. These Roman remains were only discovered during excavations in 1988-1991! The museum has both an inside area with artefacts and an outside area where you can walk around the Roman theatre itself!
The one day in Zaragoza that we had was so packed with incredible history. I went to bed both exhausted and delighted that we’d chosen this city as a stop on our journey around Spain.
Next morning, after a good sleep and our Pan con Tomate we headed to the next destination, San Sebastián …Reading Time: 9 minutes
Recently, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to interview Daniel Loxton of Junior Skeptic magazine, a science insert for kids that is bound into the regular Skeptic magazine. I asked him questions about what he does, his skepticism, and how to relate to others who disagree with your views.
GeekMom: What is your role at Junior Skeptic?
Daniel Loxton: My title is “Editor” of Junior Skeptic, but I actually do almost everything. I write most of the content, and do the layout, and I work on all the illustrations. My regular collaborator on my illustrated books, Jim W. W. Smith, works on much of the art with me, but I plan and finish all the graphics. As well, Jim and I do the covers for Junior Skeptic.
In order to write the stories, I spend a very large amount of time each quarter on research. Each issue of Junior Skeptic is intended to be a reliable primer on its topic, even for adults. Junior Skeptic even manages to advance the literature on some topics, which is always a real thrill for me.
GM: How did you decide/realize you were a skeptic?
DL: My brothers and I were raised to value a skeptical attitude. We were taught never to take anyone’s word for anything, to look critically behind messages (especially in advertising), to be suspicious of arguments from authority, and so on. I teach my own son many of the same things my parents taught me.
But there’s a distinction to be drawn between, on the one hand, a skeptical attitude or even critical thinking skills; and, on the other hand, having science literacy–or, especially, having specialized understanding of the esoteric field of skeptical scholarship. It’s a difference between outlook and knowledge. I got the first from my parents, but I had no idea as a kid that my knowledge of paranormal subjects was unreliable and biased toward a paranormal interpretation. That wasn’t my fault: in those days, popular media pretty much unanimously promoted the message that the paranormal is real. Even today, good skeptical material can be hard to find–and you first have to learn that it’s there before you can seek it out.
It happens that I know exactly when the curtain was pulled back for me: 20 years ago, during the weekend of Oct 11-13, 1991, at a little science fiction convention in Victoria, British Columbia. Among the Klingons and Jedis was a speaker named Barry Beyerstein. Barry was a psychopharmacologist at Simon Fraser University, and a spokesperson for a group I’d never heard of: the BC Skeptics. He calmly and kindly fielded questions from the audience–and I was shocked by almost everything he said. This wasn’t the usual fluff: this guy really knew what he was talking about, in a way that I had never encountered before. Even his “I don’t know”s were substantial in a way that I wasn’t used to hearing.
That was a lightbulb moment for me. I was really into paranormal stuff by then, and here was a real scientist explaining in his kindly way that I barely knew my own favorite topics–that there was a whole parallel literature of substantial research I had never even heard of.
His weekend of outreach changed the course of my life. Happily, I was able to tell him that before he passed away. I wrote about that experience here.
Beyerstein’s impact on me is one reason I often speak at Atlanta’s Dragon*Con (though not this year). I wrote about that connection here.
Also, I lectured about the tension of my childhood–between hippie paranormalism and folksy, practical skepticism–at the LogiCon convention at Edmonton’s World of Science early in 2011. You can view the video here.
GM: What’s the skepticism movement like in Canada compared with in the United States?
DL: Canada’s covert cultural imperialism continues in the skeptical arena. Just as we secretly make all of the Western World’s science fiction television, we also gave the world the Toronto-born skeptical magician James Randi (now a US citizen).
In seriousness, Canada is smaller than the US, so our contributions are smaller. But we have a proud history in skepticism, boasting pioneers like Randi, Barry Beyerstein, James Alcock, and Henry Gordon (who wrote regular skeptical outreach columns for the Toronto Star and Toronto Sun newspapers). Today, there is an active skeptical scene across the country. Check out the group blog site “Skeptic North,” for example, or the Edmonton-based broadcast radio program Skeptically Speaking (carried by over 20 stations across North America).
GM: With what do you counter when you meet someone who says they believe in a Young Earth world view or the literal Bible?
DL: In the US, that’s true of every second adult. As a practical matter, it’s not possible to engage every second person who sells you a chair or fixes your car or removes your appendix about their deepest religious convictions–and that’s to say nothing of the hefty majority who subscribe to one or another paranormal belief, or those who hold some scientifically incorrect belief (which is to say, everyone–myself certainly included).
But when I do talk to creationists (friends or family, say, or the audience for my children’s book about evolution) I try to encourage them to look at things one question at a time. Asking, “Do living things change over time?” is not the same thing as asking, “How did life arise in the first place?” which is different from, “How did the universe begin?” which in turn is different from asking, “Is there a god?” From a scientific perspective, the evidence for biological change over time–for evolution by natural selection, including speciation–is so overwhelmingly clear that even sophisticated Young Earth Creationists assert that speciation through mutation and natural selection occurs in nature today (though they believe there are limits to this kind of change). I wrote about that here.
On those other questions, the scientific answers are, “We don’t know yet,” “Ditto,” and “We probably can’t know.” We’re still working to understand the origin of life and the universe. Stay tuned! On the other hand, questions about the existence of god or the meaning of life or how we ought to behave–those are philosophical questions, not scientific. Science can’t test those questions or answer them by observation.
GM: Do you have any practical tips for how to talk with someone who believes in ID/creationism?
DL: Practical tips? Always treat people with respect. Creationists, paranormal believers, skeptics, scientists–we’re all just people. We all make our decisions about the world using the best information we have. Science literacy, skepticism, critical thinking–these aren’t things we’re born with. They’re things we all have to learn.
If you find yourself in a conversation where you have the chance to exchange information, remember that it’s a two-way street. The first step is to discover where the other person is coming from. That means being open-minded and civil and asking fair questions. (That’s harder than it sounds. People are very good at lecturing at cartoon versions of other people; we’re not as good at fair engagement.)
That civility thing works both ways: If the other party isn’t ready to deal with you on a respectful footing, in person or online, then you should walk away. Your time isn’t infinite. You don’t need that grief. (Try not to fall into the “Someone is wrong on the internet!” trap.)
GM: Do you think conversations with creationists can be productive? If so, in what way?
DL: Absolutely. It’s extremely valuable, in several ways, to have genuine conversations with creationists and others who hold beliefs different than our own.
As someone who writes science outreach material, I know that planting seeds is the name of the game. Education, understanding–these don’t happen in a day. People have to digest, live with new information. That takes time.
As a skeptical researcher, I want to understand heterodox beliefs in a substantial way. To that end, I try to keep two rules of thumb in mind:
1) If it doesn’t even occur to us that the claim we’re examining could just possibly be true, we’re not honest investigators;
2) If we can’t feel the persuasiveness of a claim, we don’t really understand it.
(I wrote about the value for skeptics in trying to see creationism from the inside, here.)
And then, there’s my personal perspective as a non-theist and a secularist. Outside of the public sphere, I think other people’s private faith is their own business. (As the old line goes,”It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”) But I do care a great deal about negative attitudes toward non-believers. In surveys, atheists–which is to say, my family and loved ones–are consistently found to be among the least liked and least trusted minorities in North America. That’s a problem. Every respectful conversation across chasms of belief helps to fix that problem.
GM: What would you say to someone who acknowledges that they don’t have any evidence for believing what they believe, but who claims that faith is a legitimate reason to hold that belief? In other words: What do you say to someone who thinks faith is a valid way of knowing reality?
DL: I’d ask them to draw a distinction between taking faith questions on faith, and taking testable, scientific questions on faith. If you say you have faith that god exists outside of time and space, or that humans have undetectable souls, well, by definition those purely philosophical notions aren’t ideas that science can evaluate. (Science can, however, give a traditional answer: “I have no need for that hypothesis.”).
But if you say you have faith that the car you’re buying runs well, or that these berries aren’t toxic for children, or that the bridge you’ve designed is safe, or that evolution is bunk–well, on those sorts of investigable questions, we have a better way: scientific investigation. On scientific questions, “faith” is a synonym for “guess.”
As Mark Twain put it, “Supposing is good, but finding out is better.”
GM: What’s the first story you remember realizing was just not true, as a kid, an adult, or one of each (e.g., UFOs, Bigfoot, Santa Claus)?
DL: My earliest skeptical lessons were about government and industry. My parents were hippies, and also entrepreneurs in the forest industry. They raised us to believe that government is wasteful and disorganized (although necessary); and, that the private sector is disorganized and wasteful and also greedy (although necessary).
But despite a strong background in critical thinking and media literacy in my family, the factual content we were exposed to was very lopsided toward paranormal belief. I came to believe almost every paranormal idea you’ve ever heard of: Bigfoot, psychic powers, ghosts, alien abduction, spontaneous human combustion–you name it. Not just believe it: I was a voracious consumer of paranormal books and media. In those days, even enthusiasts rarely discovered the skeptical counterpoint to that material. When skeptic Barry Beyerstein introduced me and a small crowd of sci-fi nerds to that material at a “science of the paranormal” panel at a small science fiction convention, it was a major eye-opener to me. I walked out with a new understanding that I had a lot more studying to do. I just started working through the skeptical lit on each paranormal topic, and in each case I discovered to my dismay that the evidence wasn’t as strong as I’d been told. Because my parents raised me to ask critical questions and value evidence, I was well-prepared to follow that new information, even though it carried me away from my previous beliefs.
Not, of course, that my fondness or interest for spooky mysteries ever faded. After all, I literally do investigate monsters now, just as I dreamed when I was a kid.
GM: How can kids talk to their peers about skepticism, pro-science, and/or agnosticism?
DL: Carefully! As parents, we want our children to be inquisitive and brave and science-literate, but we also want them to be wise and kind. Kids have to learn to navigate a social landscape in which people hold a range of divergent views on almost any topic.
But teaching our kids to recognize the “aggressive-know-it-all” pitfall isn’t just a matter of social pragmatism. It’s a fundamental scientific principle that we in fact **don’t** know it all. No one does. Our certainty should be proportional to our evidence–and no one is in possession of all the facts. Moreover, we can’t learn new things when we’re too busy telling everyone what we think we know.
If there’s one great lesson of my own work on Junior Skeptic, that’s it: whatever I think I know right this second isn’t the whole story–and some of the information I’m missing is critically important.
GM: What made you decide to do a story book for younger children (Ankylosaur Attack)?
DL: My publisher, Kids Can Press, fell in love with the photorealist paleo-art Jim Smith and I did for Evolution. They wanted more — and of course we leapt at the chance. (What artist isn’t still, in his or her heart, a kid drawing dinosaurs?)
Writing for this audience is a very enjoyable creative stretch for me. I usually write for kids closer to 12 or so. (Junior Skeptic is pitched to about ages 10-13; Evolution for ages 7-13; Ankylosaur Attack for ages 4 and up.) Luckily, I could draw upon the experience of my editor, Valerie Wyatt (an industry veteran who has written or edited over a hundred children’s books). And, of course, my own 5-year old son approved everything. (His discerning taste in dinosaurs in unparalleled.)
GM: What surprises are in store for upcoming books in the Tales of Prehistoric Life series?
DL: Hopefully a major surprise will be the new level of realism we achieve with each volume! The art in Ankylosaur Attack is a huge leap ahead of the art in Evolution, and I want to push that further with each volume.
We’ll see some familiar superstar species in the coming volumes, but also some “cult favorites”–some of the weirder critters you may have heard of, but which rarely take center stage.
GM: Will you write any larger topic books like you did with Evolution?
DL: My next book is an adult non-fiction for Columbia University Press, co-authored with established best-selling science writer Don Prothero. That one is a critical look at the topic of cryptozoology (the search for legendary animals like the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot) which is my area of sub-specialty within skepticism.
And of course, I have a number of other projects in the pipe….
GM: Other than your books, what critical thinking resources do you recommend for kids (and their parents)?
DL: I once wrote a Junior Skeptic article entitled “Everything I Needed to Know about Skepticism, I Learned from Scooby-Doo!” (based upon the the original, all-skeptical Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? series which premiered in 1969, and an equally skeptical recent revival called, What’s New, Scooby-Doo?). My own son knows those shows inside out on DVD.
When we have our eyes open for teachable moments, we find the core lessons we want kids to learn embodied in unexpected places. Scooby teaches us that spooky-seeming mysteries are usually solvable when we roll up our sleeves and look for clues. Shows like MythBusters teach the core scientific virtue of distilling the world into discrete, testable questions.
You can find Daniel Loxton at Junior Skeptic magazine, and on Twitter at @Daniel_Loxton.
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EmailThe females were not so large as the males; they had long lank hair on their heads, but none on their faces, nor any thing more than a sort of down on the rest of their bodies, except about the anus and pudenda.
La unica actividad sexual en la que una mujer adquiere funciones activas durante la practica del sexo es a traves del cunnilingus (Parker, 1997) procedente de los sustantivos latinos cunnus,--i (the female pudenda, vulva) (Lewis, 1879) y lingua,--ae (lengua) (Segura, 2003), este acto hace referencia a la practica del sexo oral en los genitales femeninos.
La arteria pudenda interna es la arteria del perine y de los organos genitales externos, de la cual salen las arterias hemorroidales inferiores que se dirigen a traves de la fosa isquiorrectal a irrigar el conducto anal, el ano y la zona perineal; la arteria perineal, que se separa de la pudenda interna enfrente del borde posterior del musculo transverso superficial del perine, irriga los musculos isquiocavernosos, bulbocavernosos y perineales transversos.
Adams (1983, 89) does not cite fores in this context but does state: "The external female pudenda may be likened to a door, and the vagina to a path of passage.
Assim, a cauda do epididimo e o tecido adjacente foram excisados e realizou-se a sintese do anel inguinal externo, com padrao de sutura em X, preservandose a patencia da veia pudenda externa.
Firstly, they are derived from the female pudenda, cono [English cunt], arguably one of the strongest taboo words in the Spanish language.
With paints and colored chalks, the women begin to fill in the figures, "[f]irst with natural features: breasts and pudenda, toes, ears and head hair," but eventually with metaphorical ones (265).
Num quid enim Priapo mimi ac poetae, non etiam sacerdotes, enormia pudenda fecerunt?
the review that revealed a variety of pudenda in its skits about sexual proclivities.
The floral curtains frame Mary as civilized and cultivated and provide an antithesis to Fanny's animalistic and jungle-like pudenda.
Doch die Pudenda unserer Natur hangen mit den Cammern des Herzens und des Gehirns so genau zusammen, dass eine zu strenge.(Reuters) - The largest U.S. satellite video |
if you were happier, but that would not necessarily make you less cynical. h) No. i) Everyone else is fucked up, just as you suspected. So are you, just as you suspected. You were right on both counts. Whew! Now we are done with the brief answers, thank goodness. Let's get down to the long ones. And talk about you, you, you in endless glorious detail. Your favorite subject and the one you like the least. You know very little about yourself, so there is plenty to talk about! First, as you will already have noticed, the key to your whole cynicism/optimism syndrome is the big brain/big heart combination. The big brain makes you see reality with all its ugly warps and flaws. Thus you are cynical. The big heart makes you see how things could be in all their beauty and kindness. Thus you are optimistic. The big brain reality perceptions fight with the big heart idealism perceptions inside one small human and you get someone exactly like yourself. Difficult to manage, but not as uncommon as you might think. In fact, we can scientifically calculate the prevalence of the big heart/big brain combination using simple math! The possible brain/heart combinations are: small heart/small brain; big heart/small brain; big brain/small heart; big brain/big heart. 4 combinations. There are twice as many big heart/small brain people as any of the others. So effectively, we have 5 combinations. Dividing these into the whole, like pieces of a pie and remembering to give the big heart/small brain people 2 pieces because they are greedy, we see that each combo gets 20% of the pie except for the greedy ones who get 40%. 20% of the people in the world have small hearts and small brains. You have run into these people. They can't see anything but ugliness. You despise them. 20% of the people in the world have big brains/small hearts. You have run into these people as well and they have mightily discouraged you. They can see how things are, but not what they mean. 40% of the people in the world have big hearts and small brains. These are the people who make you want to weep, the sheep who have caused your soul to cry out in an anguished rant. They have driven you to near despair. As the largest segment, they seem to be everywhere, complacently enjoying themselves, contentedly grazing like cows, staring at the ground instead of the sky. They can see how they feel, but they can't see how things are. 20% of the people in the world have big hearts and big brains. They are in the minority, but one out of every 5 people on earth falls into this category and there are a lot of people on earth, so that means you have plenty of company. It also means that 80% of the people you meet will not fall into your category and at times you will feel surrounded and overwhelmed by the presence of hostile combinations. You see everything and sometimes that hurts. Your big brain/big heart combination will naturally cause you to be confused by the big heart/small brain people because they will seem - well, small. Nice enough perhaps, but pitifully small. Nice enough perhaps, but completely unable to understand what comes out of your big brain as they try to process it with their small brains. You will feel misunderstood, frustrated. The big heart/small brain people may also accuse you of not having a heart at all as they instinctively believe that a big brain and a big heart must be mutually exclusive. They will think, perhaps, that it is in fact their small brains that made their hearts big. They will think that any increase in brain size will naturally crowd out room for the heart. They will think this partly because their brains are small. They will also think this partly because there's some truth to it. You stuff a big brain and a big heart into the same person and things do get crowded. Even uncomfortable. Sometimes it will feel to you like there is too much you to fit inside yourself. Too much you to fit inside your small human-sized life. Sometimes you will think you cannot stand it. Sometimes you wil think you are going to explode. What the small brain/big heart people don't understand is that you have made the choice (perhaps much against your better judgment) to fit more inside yourself than they have. The lack of understanding big heart/small brain people have for you will be somewhat heartbreaking to you. You may pretend that it isn't, that you don't care what those people think, but you do. You do because you have a big heart too and you relate to them. You want them to like you. But not if it means giving up your big brain. This is what you meant when you were whining about becoming a mindless robot - you were talking about the implicit demand to give up your big brain in order to fit in with your fellow big-hearted people. And you can't do that. Even though you will try. You will try repeatedly throughout your life, intermittently and desperately, but it will not work. Frustrated and perhaps rejected by the BH/SB combination, you will turn next to the small heart/big brain people. You will turn your back on the big clump that is hogging most of the pie, soothing your hurt feelings by rejecting them before they can reject you anymore. And in the process you will feel yourself magnetically drawn to the SH/BB people. They will seem fascinating to you, those small-hearted smart people. They too reject the majority. And they are so blunt, so bold, so uncaring, above-it-all, aggressive, snotty, prone to wear black and argue with other people just so they can win. Arrogant, wrong, infuriating, self-confident, mesmerizing. An oasis. An oasis of big brainedness in a vast sea of small brainedness. 60% of the population is small-brained, a majority no matter which house of congress you sit in. And so the big-brained people, small hearts or no, will seem like a way to re-connect with the very part of you that is under assault by the majority. You will throw yourself into an orgy of big-brainedness, getting high on arguments and alienation and anger. It will feel good for a while, like taking a good brisk dip in the ocean and letting that salty water just abrade away all the fucking crap that has stuck to your skin from those sticky big-hearted people. You want water that stings your eyes, you want to feel something real and sharp after years of being covered in marshmallow caramel sticky sweet big-hearted small-brainedness clogging all the pores of your skin til you can't fucking think straight. If you come from an environment where you have been intensively subjected to the big heart/small brain people, running away to some college where everyone smokes cigarettes and despises anything conventional can feel like finally being able to see clearly. It can feel like having the scales ripped from your eyes and ushered into the bright white light of freedom. Until.... Until you realize - and you will realize - these people have no fucking heart. They are fake. That is partly what you mean when you say you want an intelligent conversation about something real. Because an intellectual argument is not real to you. It is narrow. And it doesn't fucking matter. The small-hearted big-brained people will disappoint you and make you bitter. They will make you wonder if there is any place for you at all. If you grew up in a big brain/small heart environment, you will have come to despise these people as much as you despise the small brain/small heart people. Because in fact, you despise small-hearted people, whoever they may be. Smallness in heart doesn't cut it for you any more than small-brainedness does. The whole fucking world looks ugly seen through their eyes. And it can make you wonder if maybe they aren't right. If maybe it isn't an ugly fucking world. Obviously what you need is to connect with your like group - the big brain/big heart folks. But where the fuck are they? Like the other groups, they clump. Like the other groups, they hide. Small brain/small heart people dart around society suspiciously, hanging on the fringes, daring to reveal their true smallness only around their like kind, with whom they feel cozy, and accepted, and soothed. Sometimes they too feel alienated and lonely and the alienation and loneliness comfort and frighten them. Sometimes they clump in neighborhoods and political groups. They clump when they find each other in factories, or sports teams, or talk radio. They huddle like everyone else. Big brain/small heart people skulk around the edges of society restlessly clumping in universities or corporations or literary movements or think tanks, scraping out what companionship they can while clinging to their contempt and their fiercely guarded opposition to anything big-hearted people consider worth living for. And even the big happy clump of small brained, big hearted folks hide both their big tender hearts and their small uneasy brains in an attempt to get along with the small-hearted, or the big-brained. They clump in their families and their churches, and their youth groups and their community activities and their PTAs and their bowling leagues and their garden clubs. Everybody hides, everybody clumps. Your group does too. You will hide your big brain for fear of not seeming nice, and you will hide your big heart for fear of not seeming smart. You will dodge and weave through society like a pedestrian on a crowded New York sidewalk, trying to find some space and someone who is not a stranger. Your group clumps in each other's homes, in restaurants and coffee shops, your group clumps around conversation. Just like you said. Like anti-government resistance in a totalitarian regime, you guys get together in secret meetings to hatch your plans and dreams of overthrowing evil and making the world safe for big brains and big hearts. You'll need to know the secret handshake of alienation to get into the underground movement. You'll need to drift around, looking for the tell-tale signs of hidden resistance. You won't find them on the internet in the regular chat rooms or boards or wherever you've been looking. The big-brained and the big-hearted disperse themselves throughout society, the better to escape detection before their plans are hatched. The big-brained and the big-hearted often disguise themselves as normal, adopting a quiet facade to avoid scaring the uninitiated. So what secret signs should you be looking for? Here's a tip: negative positivity. Big hearted people go into social work. Big-brained, big-hearted people go into social work to fuck up social workers and overturn the way social work is done. Because the way it's normally done is stupid and useless, any big-brained person can see that. So look for the social worker who is toiling diligently within the system but has 80 pages of opinions on what's wrong with social work. Look for the teacher who has a million fucking improvements of the teaching system that no one will listen to because it will fuck up all the teachers. Look for the apparent corporate drone who has extensively analyzed how fucking up their corporation would improve things for everybody, not to mention screw up the cozy system the greedy and the mean have for sucking the dollars out of those eternally dazed and confused BH/SB sucker sheep. The Sierra club hiker who is cynical about the Sierra club. The rocker who won't pose as an outsider but won't play anything but what they want either. The grumpy idealist. The disaffected bleeding heart. These are your soul mates! You knew this all along. This is exactly what you stated. You want cynical optimism and alienated hope. So keep your fucking ears perked in every single fucking conversation in every single environment for that trace of edge, that after-aroma of cynicism, that hint of discontent, that snarl of negativity, that clue to idealism, the subtle signs of big dreams and big restlessness, the furtive kindness, the tell-tale lack of reconciliation lurking behind the facade of niceness. Big-brained, big-hearted people practice furtive kindness and accidental subversion everywhere they go. Keep your eyes peeled for it. The world isn't good enough for BB/BH people the way it is, but they love it anyway. Listen for those tell-tale signs of tortured love and a sick, dysfunctional relationship with humanity in which it abuses them repeatedly and yet they go back for more every time. In which they hate everybody but wouldn't want to hurt anybody. Remember that BB/BH people pass for normal. You must be aware of this to effectively seek them out. They thread their way through a society they do not accept while not being rude about it. They blend, they assimilate. You must throw out the secret code words of subtle negativity, cynicism, despair, self-deprecation, alienation and so on, into ordinary conversations, waiting for the initiated to pick up on them and let you know where the clubhouse is. Make jokes! Your cynical bitter sense of humor will zing right pass the 80% whose groups you don't belong to. But the 20% will zip over to your side immediately and start trying to make plans for secret meetings. Now that you understand the situation - steer clear of the big-brained/small hearted people. They were just a distraction. Dismiss your attention from the big-hearted and small brained. Stop looking at them! You are mesmerized by their sheer numbers and they are preventing you from seeing who you need to see. They are fascinating in their ability to be both misguided and self-sustaining, but you cannot spend the rest of your life looking at cows while thinking - 'Why are you a cow?' Not if you ever want to see anything in your life but cows. And ignore the small-brained and small-hearted, you'll fix them later, when you start ruling the world. Look only at your objective. You're a pedestrian on the sidewalk of New York - steer clear of the crowds, focus on your destination. If the wrong kind of people are clumping all around you at your school or work - skirt around them. Don't join their clumps hoping to change them. Not when you are looking for connection. You will do plenty of that anyway. You will constantly find yourself in clumps you want to change. But don't let that deter you from your mission of finding the underground resistance. If you enter a field packed and teeming with the wrong kind of clump - say a job, or a certain geographical area of Texas, make immediate plans for escape, observe quietly until you can enact them, say nothing, learn much. You are a stealth warrior, a practitioner of the martial arts of social survival where the smartest strategy is the most graceful. Practice Zen and the art of the cynical idealism. Do not lurk around the wrong clumps, hoping for acceptance where none is to be had. Seek your own clump. And finally, to answer the question you didn't ask - is your cynicism and idealism and big brain and big heart a sign of superiority? Or is it instead a sign that you are forever doomed to the fringes of society - crowded out of the good spots by the contented cows, by the small-brained, by the small-hearted? Are you better than everyone else - or are you worse? The answer of course, is an incredibly disappointing neither. You're not particularly superior in spite of your bigness. And you know this, because even though your big brain tells you that you are, your big heart attacks you with doubts and humility and compassion and a general desire for love and all that other shit that every big-hearted person wants. Meanwhile, your big brain is cynical even about you - while your big heart jolts you with disconcerting hopes of winning the Nobel Peace Prize while discovering the cure for all disease. Big hopes like that can push you right over into a sharp sense that you are in fact nothing but a whining loser, all talk and no action. Or meaningless action and no talk. Maybe everyone else is right. But you can't automatically claim a loser spot for yourself just because you're in the minority. It's not that easy. Evolution has made people like you a part of the mix of society and you have a job to do. Your job is to make things better for other people even when they are going worse for yourself. You may not be in the mood for this job, but that's the way it is. Your job is to make people feel better by pointing out what's wrong with the world they live in and how it could be better. So that their own misery makes a little more sense and feels a little less lonely. Your job is to whine and complain. Not just on your own behalf but everyone else's. Your job is to get all pissed off. Not just on everyone else's behalf but your own as well. Your job is to be nice to people and kind to them when they don't deserve it, don't want it, didn't ask for it, and won't appreciate it. Your job is to fuck things up in ways that make all the other clumps mad. Your job is to make compassion more effective by showing the other 40% of the people who are compassionate how stupid and small-minded they are. You may be politically liberal. You may be politically conservative. You may be both at the same time while hewing in a disciplined way to the core platform of anger and disaffection. If you are a writer, you might be Mark Twain or Charles Dickens. Entertaining a shitload of people while relentlessly cutting away at everything your loyal readers believe in. You might be a local talk show host. You might be a TV producer. You might be a dog-breeder. Whatever you are, your dreams will always be big and your group will always be small. It will consist of you. Your fellow-clump mates will be your friends but they won't be your sycophants. You won't really be able to follow anyone and you won't really be able to lead. If you are good at what you do, no one will really understand it. If you are a psychologist, you will fuck up psychology. If you are the president of the United States, you will be Bill Clinton, and you will improve everything but your own reputation. If you are a suffragette, you will be Elizabeth Cady Stanton, whom no one remembers, and not Susan B. Anthony, who gets a quarter with her picture on it even if nobody wants it. You won't get to be sentimental and you won't get to be a firebrand. You may get rich, but you won't get comfortable. You may be successful in society's eyes, but society will never be exactly successful in yours. Sometimes your heart will break and your brain will fry. You will forever be discontented and yet you will stubbornly cling to a belief in something absolutely fucking wonderful that no one can really see but you. You will experience happiness and peace of mind at times, but happiness and peace of mind were not meant for you. Which is exactly what you always wanted anyway. You never wanted to be happy, you wanted to be you. This is what the big-hearted/small-brained will never understand about you. They don't understand why you don't toss away that big brain and make yourself happy. They don't understand that you don't want to. You're unhappy on purpose. It's your job. You've always known that. I've just validated for you what was always true anyway. You are secretly thrilled with everything I'm saying and flattered too. You are relieved to be told that you do not have to be happy - but that you are incredibly important anyway. You never wanted anything else. You are too cynical believe this - but too optimistic not to want to. So somewhere deep inside, you know this shit is true - so get off your ass, go out there right now and find something to be very very discontented about. It will do you a world a good - and it's not a bad deal for everyone else. More personal angst....It's Just a Plant is a picture book about marijuana for younger readers, written and illustrated by the illustrator of Go the Fuck to Sleep
It's Just a Plant is a children's book. About cannabis. Written and illustrated by Ricardo Cortés, whose lovely illustrations were recently seen in the book Go the Fuck to Sleep, it was first published in 2005 and has been recently reissued. It follows Jackie, a girl whose twitching nostrils lead her to her parents' bedroom one night where they are smoking a joint. The following day, her mother takes her on an educational journey – they meet a farmer, a doctor, a police officer – to learn more about marijuana.
"It makes some people feel happy. Other people say it's 'dreamy'." Photograph: Ricardo Cortés
What right-on parents: they cycle, they have cool art and psychedelic carpets, they get their vegetables for their vegetarian dinner direct from a farmer (Bob, who has a nice sideline growing pot plants), they are politically active, if a little too optimistic. "Any government can make a bad law," says Jackie's mother, explaining why marijuana was banned. "Luckily, where we live people can work together to fix unfair laws." Cortés is staunchly pro-legalisation – this summer, he printed and distributed illustrated pamphlets to try to convince people on jury duty to practise "jury nullification" – returning a not guilty verdict regardless of evidence – in all criminal drug cases in protest at the law.
"I call it … herb, reefer." Photograph: Ricardo Cortés
Many politicians and columnists have criticised Cortés's sympathetic look at cannabis, claiming that he was encouraging children down an evil road of drug abuse. But perhaps it will have the opposite effect. Although you may agree with much of Cortés's message, anything so self-consciously liberal is usually more than a little cringey. If there's one thing that might put children off drugs, it's reading about these groovy parents taking them.
• This article was amended on 28 November 2011. The introduction to the original version stated that Cortés was the author of Go the Fuck to Sleep. In fact he was the illustrator of that book1 Foundations: Algorithmic and generative music systems bablecast
2 Foundations: Musical parameters, mappings, and tools
3 Approaches: Distributions and stochastics Ames, C. "A Catalog of Statistical Distributions: Techniques for Transforming Random, Determinate and Chaotic Sequences." Leonardo Music Journal 2, no. 1 (1992): 55-72.
4 Foundations: Historical and categorical perspectives Ames, C. "Automated Composition in Retrospect: 1956-1986." Leonardo 20, no. 2 (1987): 169-185. Ariza, C. "Navigating the Landscape of Computer-Aided Algorithmic Composition Systems: A Definition, Seven Descriptors, and a Lexicon of Systems and Research." In Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference, San Francisco, CA: International Computer Music Association, 2005. 765-772. (PDF)
5 History: Serialism, loops, tiling, and phasing Boulez, Pierre. Structures, Book I (1956-61). Alfons and Aloys Kontarsky, pianos. Boulez: Structures pour deux pianos. Wergo, 1993. Reich, Steve. Piano Phase (1967). Performed by Double Edge. Early Works. Elektra/Nonesuch, 1992. [Alternate version by Peter Aidu, via Internet Archive] Andriessen, Louis. Hout (1991). Bang on a Can All Stars. Giganitic Dancing Human Machine. Cantaloupe Music, 2001. Optional Babbitt, Milton. Composition for Four Instruments (1948). J. Wummer, S. Drucker, P. Marsh, and D. McCall. Babbitt/Bavicchi. CRI, 1960 (reissued by New World Records, 2010).
6 Workshop
7 History: Michele Gottfried Koenig Koenig, G. M. "The Use of Computer Programs in Creating Music." In Music and Technology (Proceedings of the Stockholm Meeting organized by UNESCO), 1971, pp. 93-115. ( PDF) ———. "Aesthetic Integration of Computer-Composed Scores." Computer Music Journal, no. 4 (1983): 27-32. ( PDF) Koenig, Gottfried Michael. Terminus X (1967) (Courtesy of Michael Gottfried Koenig. Used with permission.) Internet Archive (MP3 - 27MB)
iTunes U (MP3 - 27MB) ———. Three Asko Pieces (1982). Performed by Ensemble 13. Computer Music Currents 2. Wergo, 1989.
8 Approaches: Permutations, generators, and chaos Ames, C. "A Catalog of Sequence Generators: Accounting for Proximity, Pattern, Exclusion, Balance and/or Randomness." Leonardo Music Journal 2, no. 1 (1991): 55-72. Voss and Clarke. "’1/f Noise’ in Music: Music from 1/f Noise." J Acoust Soc Am 63, no. 1 (January 1978): 258-263.
9 History: Lejaren Hiller Hiller, L., and L. Isaacson. "Musical Composition with a High-Speed Digital Computer." Journal of the Audio Engineering Society 6, no. 3 (1958): 154-160. Republished as Chapter 1 in Machine Models of Music. Edited by S. M. Schwanauer and D. A. Levitt. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993. ISBN: 9780262193191. [Preview in Google Books] Hiller, Lejaren, and Leonard Isaacson, Quaret No. 4 (Illiac Suite) (1957). Released on these out-of-print LP recordings: Computer Music from the University of Illinois. LP, Helidor/DG H 25053 or MGM MG 848/849, 1967.
Reissued on Lejaren Hiller: Computer Music Retrospective. LP, Wergo WER 60128, 1986.
10 Approaches: Probability and Markov chains Ames, C. "The Markov Process as a Compositional Model: A Survey and Tutorial." Leonardo 22, no. 2 (1989): 175-187 Ariza, C. "Beyond the Transition Matrix: A Language-Independent, String-Based Input Notation for Incomplete, Multiple-Order, Static Markov Transition Values." 2006. (PDF)
11 Workshop
12 History: Iannis Xenakis Xenakis, I. "Free Stochastic Music." In Cybernetics, Art and Ideas. Edited by J. Reichardt. Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1971, pp. 124-142. ISBN: 9780821204313. ———. "Xenakis on Xenakis." Perspectives of New Music 25, no. 1-2 (1987): 16-63. Optional Ariza, C. "The Xenakis Sieve as Object: A New Model and a Complete Implementation." Computer Music Journal 29, no. 2 (2005): 40-60. Xenakis, Iannis. Achorripsis (1956-1957), Atrées (1960), ST/4 (1962), ST/10-1080262 (1956-1962). Instrumental Ensemble of Contemporary Music, Paris; Konstantin Simonovich, conductor. 20th Century Classics: Xenakis - Atrees / Nomos Alpha. EMI, 2010 (reissue). ———. ST/48. Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg; Arturo Tamayo, conductor. Iannis Xenakis Orchestral Works, vol. 5. Timpani Records, 2008.
13 Approaches: Non-standard synthesis Berg, P. "Composing Sound Structures with Rules." Contemporary Music Review 28, no. 1 (2009): 75-87. Hoffman, P. "A New GENDYN Program." Computer Music Journal 24, no. 2 (2000): 31-38. Optional Serra, M. "Stochastic Composition and Stochastic Timbre: GENDY3 by Iannis Xenakis." Perspectives of New Music 31, no. 1 (1993): 236-257. Xenakis, Iannis. S.709 (1978). Xenakis: Electronic Music. Electronic Music Foundation, 1997.
14 Approaches: Granular and concatenative synthesis Roads, C. "Introduction to Granular Synthesis." Computer Music Journal 12, no. 2 (1988): 11-13. Sturm, B. "Adaptive Concatenative Sound Synthesis and Its Application to Micromontage Composition." Computer Music Journal 30, no. 4 (2006): 46-66. Vaggione, Horacio. 24 Variations, 2002 (Courtesy of Horacio Vaggione. Used with permission.) Internet Archive (MP3 - 23MB)
iTunes U (MP3 - 23MB)
15 Approaches: Mapping, sonification, and data bending Marino, G., M. Serra, and J. Raczinski. "The UPIC System: Origins and Innovations." Perspectives of New Music 31, no. 1 (1993): 258-269. Ben-Tal, O., and J. Berger. "Creative Aspects of Sonification." Leonardo Music Journal 37, no. 3 (2004): 229-232. ( PDF)
16 Workshop
17 Approaches: Cellular automata Miranda, E. R. "On the Music of Emergent Behavior: What Can Evolutionary Computation Bring to the Musician?" Leonardo 36, no. 1 (2003): 55-59. Ariza, C. "Automata Bending: Applications of Dynamic Mutation and Dynamic Rules in Modular One-Dimensional Cellular Automata." Computer Music Journal 31, no. 1 (2007): 29-49.
18 Approaches: Genetic algorithms Biles, J. A. "GenJam in Perspective: A Tentative Taxonomy for GA Music and Art Systems." Leonardo 36, no. 1 (2003): 43-45. Magnus, C. "Evolving Electroacoustic Music: The Application of Genetic Algorithms to Timedomain Waveforms." In Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference, 2004. San Francisco, CA: International Computer Music Association. ( PDF) GenJam demonstration video by Al Biles MOV – 17.4MB)
19 Approaches: Grammars and L-Systems Mason, G., and M. Saffle. "L-Systems, Melodies and Musical Structure." Leonardo Music Journal 4 (1994): 31-38.
20 History: Mechanical musical automata Riskin, J. "The Defecating Duck, or, the Ambiguous Origins of Artificial Life." Critical Inquiry 29, no. 4 (2003): 599-633. (Reprinted in Bill Brown, ed., Things. Chicago, IL University of Chicago Press, 2004.) PDF- 4.1MB)
21 Workshop
22 Approaches: Agents and ecological models Rowe, R. "Machine Listening and Composing with Cypher." Computer Music Journal 16, no. 1 (1992): 43-63. Rowe, Robert. "Shells." Spasm: Works for Bass Clarinet. Michael Lowenstern, bass clarinet & electronics. New World Records 80468, 1996. Ariza, Christopher. to leave the best untold (2009). Internet Archive (MP3 - 28.4MB)
iTunes U (MP3 - 28.4MB)
23 Approaches: Expert systems and style emulation Ebcioglu, K. "An Expert System for Harmonizing Four-part Chorales." Computer Music Journal 12, no. 3 (1988): 43-51. Cope, D. "Computer Modeling of Musical Intelligence in EMI." Computer Music Journal 16, no. 2 (1992): 69-83. Cope, David. From Classical Music Composed by Computer: Experiments in Musical Intelligence. Mary Jane Cope, piano. Centaur Records, 1997. (Courtesy of David Cope. Used with permission) Three Inventions, after Bach: No. 2 (1997) Internet Archive (MP3 - 3.5MB) iTunes U (MP3 - 3.5MB)
Sonata, after Beethoven (1997) Internet Archive (MP3 - 4.5MB) iTunes U (MP3 - 4.5MB)
Audio podcast about David Cope's work. "Musical DNA." Radiolab, Episode 202 (September 2007). WNYC/NPR.
25 Sonic system project presentationsOTTAWA—The long-standing disagreement between National Defence and the auditor general over whether the salaries of soldiers and other operational expenses should be included in the estimate for F-35 fighter jets and other purchases threatens to blow the roof off the Harper government’s carefully orchestrated military spending plans.
The Conservative wish-list of defence purchases, including the controversial F-35 stealth fighter, was expected to cost taxpayers $115 billion over the next 16 years, according to internal documents obtained by The Canadian Press under access to information laws.
That substantial figure could rocket into the stratosphere, propelled by Defence Minister Peter MacKay’s grudging acceptance of both Auditor General Michael Ferguson and opposition demands to account for ordinary expenses, which the military incurs regardless of what equipment is purchased.
Both the opposition parties argued Wednesday that such transparency is essential.
Liberal House leader Marc Garneau said Canadians expect to know the full-cost of whatever the government buys and that the argument about operational expenses versus capital acquisitions is a red herring.
“I don’t think it’s a problem of terminology,” he said. “It’s unacceptable to try and throw fog on this thing by saying we’re talking about apples and oranges.”
But the Conservatives point out that when the Liberals were in power none of their defence announcements included such mundane expenses. Indeed, the Liberals went to great lengths to keep such figures out of the debate over the use of Defence Department Challenger jets when former auditor general Sheila Fraser blasted their use in 2003.
The Defence Department was accused last week of hiding the truth. Ferguson found that, had operational costs been included as per government rules, the real cost of the F-35 program would be more like $24.7 billion, instead of the reported $14.7 billion.
NDP defence critic David Christopherson said federal Treasury Board guidelines stipulate that such figures should be spelled out for public consumption.
“It’s not that the $24.7 billion dollar figure was wrong. It was that (the Tories) didn’t want that number out there because then they would have to defend it,” said Christopherson.
MacKay said Tuesday that from now on the defence department would clearly disclose those numbers in future procurements — a potentially mind-blowing proposition for military planners who will be asked to project the costs of salaries and fuel decades into the future.
Internal Defence documents show the Conservatives plan to spend just over $51.4 billion on capital purchases between now and 2028 on everything from new fighter jets and navy destroyers to trucks and tanks.
An additional $63.6 billion will be required to maintain the equipment. The estimate, penned by the vice-chief of defence staff last summer, does not include operation expenses. The briefing note to MacKay underscores the perils of trying to forecast numbers 20 years or more into the future.
“Equipment once delivered must of course be supported,” said the Aug. 12, 2011 document. “Expected sustainment costs are developed by (the assistant deputy minister) based on actual costs incurred to support similar fleets from industry and allies and projected inflation. Application of this information to new equipment, which is normally more capable and technologically complex than the equipment it replaces, is not an exact science and estimates are revised as better information and experience are available.”
A former senior defence official said the political firestorm surrounding the stealth fighter is not an accounting issue, but rather one of communication.
“We’re talking about the public saying, ‘Gimme the total cost and I’ll come to my own conclusions,’” said Alan Williams, who ran the Defence Department’s procurement branch until 2005.
Williams, a vocal critic of the F-35 project, also pointed out that the memo was signed by a military officer and cited that as another example of how the civilian administration has lost control over defence.
“When we made procurement presentations to cabinet, or cabinet committees, no military person was present,” he said. “They were only allowed to talk about their requirements. I don’t know who’s accountable for what is in the process any more.”
Both opposition parties demanded accountability Wednesday, but differed wildly on how to define it. The Liberals want both MacKay and Prime Minister Stephen Harper to step down.
Christopherson was more vague, saying only the NDP wants the Prime Minister to “do the right thing.” He didn’t spell out what that might be.
The Liberals were blistering and personal in their attack and pointed to a flub in Halifax on Tuesday where MacKay referenced the wrong statistical table in trying to make his case over the conflicting numbers.
Garneau says it speaks to minister’s credibility, declaring him either incompetent or “not too bright.”
When it was first released in 2008, the entire Conservative defence spending plan was estimated to cost a total of $490 billion over 50 years.Tensions are running high in the northern Nigerian city of Kano after thousands of protesters converged on the state governor's office, prompting police to push them back by firing tear gas and shooting live ammunition into the air.
Protesters on Monday also set two vans ablaze and tried to torch the home of the central bank chief, Lamido Sanusi, but police stopped them.
The office of the secretary of the state government, its highest administrative officer, was also set on fire, causing serious damage.
A Red Cross official said that at least 30 people were injured in the clashes, including 18 with bullet wounds. A hospital source said later that two of those shot had died.
The state government imposed a nighttime curfew on the city and it was unclear whether authorities would disperse thousands of protesters who remained at the city's main square.
In and around Lagos, the country's largest city, demonstrations mostly remained peaceful except for one reported incident of police gunfire that killed a demonstrator, according to witnesses and hospital sources.
Bonfires made of tyres burned along main roads as protesters marched past, with an estimated 10,000 or more converging at a designated location for a rally.
Protest leaders in Lagos were keen to avoid provoking police after authorities were accused of using excessive force against demonstrators last week and shooting dead one person.
Controversial move
The strike comes after the government |
It showed there were no black employees in a workforce of around 50 and thanked Enninful for appointing her as a contributing editor to the magazine.
However, in her article, Shulman questioned the value of appointing high-profile “contributing editors” asking again whether they were prepared to work hard enough to justify their status.
Shulman wrote: “It has been interesting and educative to see over the years which of the more dilettante or famous contributors really put some effort into their contributions and which liked the idea of an association to the magazine without the tedious business of actually doing any work.”
Enninful, the first male editor to be appointed to British Vogue in its 101-year history, started the job in August, replacing the privately educated Shulman, who had run the title since 1992. An outspoken advocate for more diversity in fashion, Enninful, who was born in Ghana and raised in London, was previously a style director at titles including W and i-D magazines, where he befriended Campbell and Moss.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Alexandra Shulman edited Vogue from 1992 to July 2017. Photograph: David Levenson/Getty Images
Since Shulman’s departure, several senior editors have left the Condé Nast-owned title in what appeared to be a clear-out orchestrated by her successor. Lucinda Chambers, the outgoing fashion director, gave an angry interview in which she said she had been fired and that the clothes in the magazine had become “irrelevant”.
But the former editor complained that the printed magazine was being starved of resources while its publisher was switching its focus towards digital content. She warned that British Vogue was in danger of losing some of its identity because “a massive investment” was being made in “a digital hub to service titles internationally with an element of one-size-fits-all content”.
Shulman said that while “the digital curveball thrown at print is powerful” that “doesn’t mean that magazine brands don’t require editors who actually edit … who sweat the small stuff”. She said that Vogue and titles like it would otherwise be at risk of “chasing clickbait that is mirrored in a zillion websites and cravenly following a small pool of short-term celebrity names”.
Shulman dedicates much of her article to defending the importance and value of print magazines over digital, describing them as “not only information and entertainment but also image-defining accessories, endowing the buyer with membership of a certain tribe when carried or even placed on a coffee table or kitchen counter”.
Condé Nast declined to comment on Shulman’s article. However, a source with knowledge of British Vogue also claimed that staff were concerned about their jobs under the Enninful regime, which they said was overly focused on celebrity figures.
The insider said that staff were “all so excited about this new chapter – and the reality is like working on the set of Zoolander. Hardworking staff … are being culled to free up cash for lavish shoots and celebrity appointments. Alexandra Shulman’s column is sadly spot on. In terms of positives, they’re very glad to see a genuine diversity of models and talent being represented in the upcoming issue.”
Others, though, have taken Enninful’s side. A blogger writing for the Spectator under the pseudonym Pea Priestly has been highly critical of Shulman’s editorship, claiming it will be “defined by mediocrity, idiocy and flip-flops”, that Vogue was “borderline racist” during her reign – because it had only two covers featuring solo black models since 2002 – and that Enninful’s first act should be “to get rid of the whole anaemic team – every last Sloaney sloth”.Border Patrol: Murderer, child molester arrested as they tried crossing Rio Grande into Laredo
U.S. Border Patrol agent Preston Schleinkofer looks out over the Rio Grande River near Laredo, Texas, Monday, Feb. 5, 2011, on a day when he didn't see one illegal immigrant cross on his shift. U.S. Border Patrol agent Preston Schleinkofer looks out over the Rio Grande River near Laredo, Texas, Monday, Feb. 5, 2011, on a day when he didn't see one illegal immigrant cross on his shift. Photo: GREGORY BULL, AP Photo: GREGORY BULL, AP Image 1 of / 185 Caption Close Border Patrol: Murderer, child molester arrested as they tried crossing Rio Grande into Laredo 1 / 185 Back to Gallery
U.S. Border Patrol said they have arrested a convicted murderer and a child molester as they tried to enter the country illegally.
Agents said they arrested Miguel Angel Flores-Jimenez and Miguel Castro-Santiago, both from Mexico, as they tried crossing the Rio Grande on Thursday, authorities said.
Castro-Santiago had been previously arrested and convicted for second-degree murder in Montgomery County, Kansas. In 2005, he was sentenced to prison and ultimately deported after completing his sentence in 2013.
READ MORE: Drugs, cash and guns seized in south Laredo home raid that nets 2 arrests
Record checks revealed that Flores-Jimenez was arrested and convicted in 2008 for lewd and lascivious sexual battery on a child younger than 16 years old in Jacksonville, Fla. He was sentenced to 23 days in jail and 5 years of probation. Flores-Jimenez was then deported in 2009.
Both were charged with illegal entry. They are facing deportation once criminal proceedings are done.
RELATED: Suspect delivered large quantities of Nuevo Laredo drugs to 61-year-old Laredo woman, authorities say
"The arrest of these criminal aliens and preventing them from committing another heinous crime in the United States is one of many examples that illustrate how the United States Border Patrol keeps our communities safe," said Laredo Sector Assistant Chief Patrol Agent Gabriel Acosta.
Border Patrol encourages to report suspicious activity such as alien and, or drug smuggling at 1-800-343-1994.The Bexar County Sheriff’s Office failed to file at least five state-mandated reports about people who died in police shootings since 2005, was late in filing a dozen more fatality reports and left out key details about two deadly shootings involving deputies.
The missing details include how one suspect had his hands raised above his head when two deputies opened fire. In another case, a report didn’t quote a deputy who can be heard on dash-camera video saying, “He started attacking me and I shot him.” The deputy then swears, saying either “(Expletive) him” or “(Expletive) it.”
State law requires all law enforcement agencies in Texas to file “custodial death” reports with the Texas attorney general’s office when someone dies at the hands of police or in jail. Each report must be filed no more than 30 days after each death. The law requires a “good-faith effort to obtain all facts relevant to the death and include those facts in the report.”
Walter Martinez, a former Bexar County state representative who wrote the law in 1983, said he intended the reports to be a resource for the public and that police should face consequences if they fail to comply with reporting requirements. A violation is a misdemeanor.
But Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office doesn’t take any steps to make sure law enforcement agencies are being diligent in filing the reports.
“We are simply a repository for this information,” spokeswoman Katherine Wise wrote in an email when asked if the attorney general’s office has any system in place to flag late reports.
The San Antonio Express-News checked the attorney general’s database of all 4,250 death reports filed in Texas since 2005. The records show that law enforcement agencies filed nearly 700 reports — 16 percent — after the 30-day deadline. Some reports were more than two years late.
Explore an interactive database of the late filings
Many of the records focus on prisoners who die from medical conditions in county jails or state prisons, while others offer details about police shootings.
In Bexar County, problems with custodial death reports came to light after the Aug. 28 shooting of Gilbert Flores, a combative suspect in a domestic violence case. The county’s report didn’t mention that Flores had his hands raised in apparent surrender when two deputies opened fire and killed him.
After the Express-News learned of the missing information in the Flores case, the newspaper began examining other shootings involving the sheriff’s office.
Records show that county authorities completed 74 custodial death reports since 2005. They haven’t filed reports for five fatal shootings from 2008 to 2011, and they exceeded the 30-day deadline in a dozen other cases from 2005 to 2015 — including a report that was filed more than a year late.
James Keith, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office, declined to comment on the Flores case because he didn’t want to jeopardize a lawsuit filed against the county by the Flores family.
Keith noted that the five missing reports of fatal shootings all occurred before Sheriff Susan Pamerleau took office Jan. 1, 2013. During her tenure, four custodial death reports were late. Keith blamed that on a misunderstanding that’s been cleared up.
“The investigator didn’t have a clear understanding of the law and the requirement that these had to be submitted within 30 days,” Keith said.
That report that was more than a year late was filed with the attorney general’s office Nov. 26, 2013. It described how Sgt. Frank Bellino had responded to a call Oct. 14, 2012, for a possibly intoxicated man who was walking along Culebra Road and creating a hazard for passing drivers.
The report says the unarmed man, Joe Guerra, 19, became aggravated and refused to obey instructions. “He charged at me,” Bellino was quoted as saying, and Bellino opened fire. Guerra later died at a hospital.
A federal civil rights lawsuit filed against Bellino and the sheriff’s office by Guerra’s family unearthed dash-camera footage from a patrol car that recorded Bellino moments after the shooting explaining what happened.
“He just went (expletive) nuts on me,” Bellino told a fellow deputy. “He started attacking me and I shot him.” Bellino then can be heard swearing, saying either “(Expletive) him” or “(Expletive) it.”
Sean Lyons, a lawyer representing the Guerra family, said there’s no question that Guerra was inebriated, but he disputed claims that Guerra was in any condition to fight. The custodial death report in Guerra’s case was not only a year late, he said, but paints an inaccurate picture of what happened.
“You’re basically learning the opposite of what went wrong,” Lyons said of the report. “Because the report goes out of its way to make it sound like Bellino did all he could to de-escalate the situation and that Guerra was the aggressor, when in fact, Bellino immediately threatened Guerra’s life, threatened to (expletive) shoot his ass, and used escalating language.”
Keith declined to answer most questions about the case, citing the litigation against the sheriff’s office. But he did say the office believes that the custodial death reports are supposed to be a general account of what happened.
“The thought is, the investigation is still ongoing, you’re not going to know every single answer, every specific detail within that 30-day time period,” Keith said.
In a court filing, the Bexar County district attorney’s office said Bellino did not use excessive force and that he didn’t know whether Guerra was armed.
The sheriff’s detective who filed the late custodial death report acknowledged that he didn’t know state law mandated the filing of such reports and didn’t know their purpose.
“I was unaware that we were supposed to send these things to the attorney general’s office, and once I was aware, I sent it to them,” said the investigator, John Perez, during a deposition in the lawsuit.
Lyons asked Perez about Bellino’s language in the audio recordings and why that information was missing in the custodial death report.
“The attorney general never learned those facts?” Lyons asked.
“I did not put that on there, sir,” Perez replied. “This is an oversight on my part.”
Perez did not respond to an email request for an interview. Guerra’s parents, Joe Guerra and Linda Carranza, said they don’t believe that the sheriff’s office is interested in fully investigating their son’s death and that the late custodial death report with missing information is simply a symptom of a bigger problem.
“I’m more than disappointed in the way things have been handled,” Carranza said.
“They feel that they’re above the law,” Guerra said. “They’re not following the necessary protocols.”
Martinez, who served as a state representative from 1983 to 1985, said the law governing custodial death reports might need to be revised and strengthened to clearly show who’s responsible for making sure the records are accurate and filed on time for the public to review.
“If no one’s following up or taking responsibility for ensuring that it’s done, then there’s a break in the chain,” Martinez said.
jtedesco@express-news.netAt first this all seemed rather familiar. Jack Wilshere, clad in England training gear, was shifting uncomfortably in his chair as the conversation turned to recent criticisms from former players about his form and development. Where it had been Paul Scholes’ withering assessment of his progress towards the end of last season, here the focus was on comments delivered by Jamie Redknapp and Jamie Carragher while picking the bones out of the opening weekend victory over Crystal Palace. The sense of deja vu was rather unnerving.
Yet, where he had felt compelled to seek out Scholes last May and engage with a midfielder he had so admired, soaking up any knowledge he could in the process, there will be no attempt at reconciliation this time – particularly, it seems, with Redknapp, who in fairness was rather more glowing of the youngster’s display against Besiktas in the Champions League qualifiers a week later. “I listen to the people who I work closely with and, with all due respect, if anything Redknapp should have a little bit more, not ‘respect’ but ‘sympathy’,” said Wilshere. “It’s easy for someone to go on television and say: ‘He should be doing this or that.’ But, if you look back, he was injured just as much as I was. Maybe more. And he was never injured at my age as well and it does take a lot of mental strength [to come back].
“So to hear people go on TV and say: ‘He’s got to get fitter,’ well, I don’t need that. I listen to people like the boss here, Gary Neville, people who talk a lot of sense and can help me with my game. It doesn’t ‘hurt’ me, hearing criticism from ex-players. It probably disappoints me a little bit more. I heard what Robbie Savage said and that was, if you like, the first ex-player to give me constructive criticism. I respected that. I’ll take criticism. I know that’s part and parcel of football. But when it’s just reckless and aggressive, I don’t listen.”
Those comments, delivered after Wilshere had been substituted 69 minutes into a game Arsenal went on to win in stoppage time, had reflected the 22-year-old’s sluggish start to a campaign that must, surely, prove to be his breakthrough. Too many others, after all, have been blighted by the wrong kind of breaks.
“Jack Wilshere’s problem is Jack Wilshere,” Redknapp had said. “He’s not performing. He’s got to take games by the scruff of the neck like two years ago. There are no excuses for this young lad any more.”
That is hardly revelatory and the youngster’s frustration is born of the reality that he does not need reminding of. He is already acutely aware that, after so many false dawns, founded largely in a fragile body, he must take the opportunities ahead for club and country if he is to fulfil his potential.
It will be a considerable challenge for him to hold down a regular place in the Arsenal side once Arsène Wenger’s complement are fully fit and available. England, almost in contrast, have lost Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard since the summer and Wilshere, a player who made his debut over four years ago but still has only 21 caps, must fill the void and make his mark in Monday’s opening Euro 2016 qualifier in Switzerland. That recurring ankle injury, with its associated aches and pains, is finally behind him. He has spoken to a psychiatrist at Arsenal who has drawn out some of the exasperation that had built up over wasted years. “It was the frustration,” he said. “Now I’ve learned to enjoy my football while I can. Every time I’m on the pitch I just enjoy it. I’m not as aggressive, not as angry.
“If something went wrong a couple of years ago I would have gone to the physio: ‘Look, my ankle’s not right.’ Now I’m on top of it, enjoying my football and I’ve grown up. I realise things aren’t going to go my way every week. Of course they’re not. But the main thing is to give your all and enjoy. I’ve worked with a psychologist at Arsenal and he’s taught me that, if your head’s not right, it can affect other parts of your body. So get that right and enjoy your football, and that’s what I’m trying to do. I would’ve liked to have played over 250 games and, if I’d been injury-free, I would’ve. So in that respect I’m not where I should be. But in terms of dealing with the injuries, adapting and accepting that, I’m where I want to be.”
In that context photographs of him smoking while on holiday in Las Vegas this summer might have been considered untimely, particularly given he had spoken to Wenger after coverage of a similar incident last season. “If I smoked 20 a day and scored 20 a season, it wouldn’t be a problem,” he said. “I’ve been caught a couple of times but I’m not a regular smoker. I’m not reckless. I have two kids. I don’t want them growing up thinking: ‘Look at Daddy, he goes out all the time. He smokes.’ I’m not one of ‘them’. It’s under control. I spoke with the boss after the first time and he was accepting, like ‘I’m French and I’ve been on a team bus with French players who are smoking’. And the second time it was: ‘Look, come on, Jack. This is a big season for you.’ I knew that already.
“I went on holiday and enjoyed it but as soon as I came back to pre-season training I said I’d be fit and I have been. It is an important season for me not just for my country but for my club. I’ve had a good pre-season, the first time in three or four years where I’ve managed to do every single session. I’ve stayed away from injury, trained here every day. I’m fit and in the gym. It’s a big season for me. There’s no point in me saying: ‘I’ve got another year to develop.’ I’m 22 now. Look at Germany. Mario Götze has won the World Cup and he’s my age. It is time to deliver.”
Wilshere welcomed three World Cup winners back to Arsenal last month in Mesut Özil, Lukas Podolski and Per Mertesacker, with their presence offering constant reminders of what can be achieved through the strength of the collective. “I asked Podolski who their best player was and he said: ‘We didn’t really have a Cristiano Ronaldo or a Lionel Messi. We were just a good team.’ That’s what they had. Don’t get me wrong: they’ve got world-class players but they work so well as a team and, when up against the Messis and Ronaldos, they came out on top because they worked together.”
Therein probably lies England’s best hope of progression, with the development of a selfless, industrious team who play to their strengths. It is a process which will take time, but one in which Wilshere hopes to be integral. “Germany won the World Cup and we went out in the group stages, so that’s how far we are away from them,” he added. “We haven’t got Messi or Ronaldo but we have good players. The team’s been broken up a little bit with Lamps and Gerrard going, so we’re trying to work together as a team. We’re moving in the right direction.” Their progress will be tested in Basel on Monday.JEREMY Corbyn snapped at Channel 4 presenter Jon Snow after he compared the Labour leader to Donald Trump over his failure to condemn the Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro.
He was pressed to specifically name the strongman as one of those responsible for the violence in the South American country.
Channel 4 3 Jeremy Corbyn was being interviewed by Channel 4 in Brighton
The leftie has previously condemned violence "by any side" in the failed communist state, where more than 150 have died amid months of protests against the Maduro regime.
The president, who took over from Hugo Chavez, has been accused of multiple human rights breaches while Amnesty has said attacks on demonstrators by the authorities indicate a "premeditated policy of violent repression of any form of dissent".
In a tetchy exchange during an interview at the Labour party conference in Brighton, Mr Corbyn’s condemnation of violence on all sides was compare to President Donald Trump's claim there was blame "on many sides" for violence at a far-right rally in Charlottesville.
A visibly angry Labour leader said: "No it's not. You seem to have a very strange view of what Donald Trump does."
Adding: "Obviously I am appalled at any violence that is carried out.
"There is, I hope, going to be an effective regional process that will help to bring about conciliation and a democratic solution in Venezuela.
"I have made it very clear that there shouldn't be any abuses of human rights or any violence by anybody - any actions which oppress free speech are wrong."
Reuters 3 The Labour leader has been criticised for his language about Venezuela's President Maduro
Challenged over why he did not specifically blame Mr Maduro and his government for abuses, Mr Corbyn replied: "I said 'any'. That includes the government."
Pressed again to actually name Mr Maduro as one of those responsible, Mr Corbyn said: "Look, it includes the government, he is the president."
Asked directly whether he condemned Mr Maduro, he snapped, responding: "Look, Venezuela has been through a process in which it has been subject to a lot of opposition.
"They have had an economic policy which I think has suffered because of the fall in oil revenues. There have been, quite rightly reported, abuses of human rights.”
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Mr Corbyn was condemned for his links with the oppressive Venezuelan government after his close allies held an anti-sanctions rally in solidarity with the regime.
Senior MPs rolled out the red carpet for the country’s ambassador at a fringe event Rocio Manerio - but she then pulled out of the event because of “urgent diplomatic business”.
Instead the diplomat sent a statement thanking Labour members for backing her government in the face of “systematic aggression” from the US government, which has slapped economic sanctions on the oil-rich Latin republic.
At the same event the hard-left Chris Williamson - one of his closest allies - was forced to deny he was an “apologist” for the Venezualan government - despite praising the regime in a 20-minute speech.
He also delivered a furious rant against the media for failing to report the authoritarian regime’s achievements.
But despite his tirade, journalists were denied any questions at the event. When one challenged Mr Williamson’s claims, she said: “Absolutely no questions”.
Channel 4 3 He snapped when he was compared to Donald Trump by Jon Snow
Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable said the series of events exposed the Labour leadership’s “deeply unhealthy obsession” with the authoritarian regime,
He told The Sun: “It is horrifying that some on the far left still see what is happening in Venezuela as a role model for the UK.
“Instead of rolling out the red carpet for dictators, I hope Labour MPs will use this opportunity to condemn the erosion of the rule of law and democracy in Venezuela.”
At the Venezuela solidarity event Mr Williamson said the role of the private sector was "part of the problem" in the difficulties faced in Venezuela.Cork Life Centre is a voluntary organisation offering an alternative learning environment to marginalised young people.
The Centre and its staff offer students 1:1 tuition in Junior and Leaving Cert subjects and support them in their preparation for these State Exams. The approach to education is a holistic one. The value is on the social education of young people as much as on the academic. The Centre provides students and teachers with:
- An open and friendly environment.
- Positive trusting relationships with peers and staff.
- Continuous support with issues and challenges a student might face during work.
With The Centre many young 12-18 year old early school leavers have achieved formal school certification. The success of the project is the mix of nurturance, individual programmes, educational certification, stimulation, fun, hard work, mutual respect and expectations.Although the season is only a few days away, that doesn't mean you shouldn't be looking to read every college football preview available. And while some might have better predictions for your team than others, more features, or more in-depth stats, there's pretty much a guarantee none of them have what the Daily Oklahoman has.
The NewsOK Sports account (@NewsOKSports) Tweeted out pictures of its Sunday paper this morning, including pictures of Oklahoma State quarterback Mason Rudolph, Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley and more.
Here's Rudolph as Luke Skywalker and Lincoln Riley as.. well I'm not entirely sure who they're trying to say he is, but he's clearly on the dark side, which makes sense.
Better look at Mason Rudolph as Skywalker:
Pick up @TheOklahoman Football Preview on Sunday to read about #okstate's new hope at QB @Rudolph2Mason pic.twitter.com/4eOdyhdJa4 — NewsOKSports (@NewsOKSports) August 29, 2015
But why stop at Oklahoma schools? Here's a look at TCU coach Gary Patterson and Ohio State coach Urban Meyer:
.@TCUFootball, the Air Raid's rise featured in @TheOklahoman's 2015 college football preview, on newsstands Sunday! pic.twitter.com/avDEldAEdZ — NewsOKSports (@NewsOKSports) August 29, 2015
The paper is out now, so you should probably go pick it up at news stands around Oklahoma.Rainy weather likely to continue all year as El Niño builds strength
1.5 month outlook
Blue means cooler-than average temperatures, red means warmer-than average temperatures.
Credit: NOAA 1.5 month outlook
Blue means cooler-than average temperatures, red means warmer-than average temperatures.
Credit: NOAA Photo: National Oceanographic And Atmospheric Administration Photo: National Oceanographic And Atmospheric Administration Image 1 of / 12 Caption Close Rainy weather likely to continue all year as El Niño builds strength 1 / 12 Back to Gallery
A wet year for Texas will probably get even wetter, and above-average rains will likely linger through next spring. That's according to a new forecast, released Thursday by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, which suggests the current El Niño event could become the strongest on record.
El Niño (Spanish for The Child in reference to baby Jesus) is a global phenomenon rooted in the Pacific Ocean that changes weather around the world. It happens sporadically, once every 4 to 10 years, and generally brings relatively cool, wet weather to Texas. It's been mounting in the Pacific for months, and the numbers show it's not going away.
RELATED: Rainy weather likely to continue through summer
"There's a greater-than-90 percent chance that El Niño will continue through the Northern Hemisphere winter and 80 percent chance it will last into early spring," said Emily Becker, a research scientist at the NOAA climate prediction center that produced the forecast. "That tilts the odds towards more rainfall in the fall and winter in Texas."
The phenomenon growing in the Pacific has already left its mark on Texas, in the form of severe floods that swamped the state in spring.
State climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon said, "I think that El Niño has been the primary factor leading to above-normal rainfall so far, especially in April and May, through El Niño's influence on the tropical jet stream."
Those rainy months made May 2015 the wettest month in U.S. and Texas history. The year to date is also the wettest on record for the Lone Star State, which got as much rain through June as it normally clocks by late October, Nielsen-Gammon said.
RELATED: May 2015 has smashed the previous record for wettest month in Texas history
The reasons El Niño brings more rain to Texas are complex. The pattern begins with rising surface temperatures in the Pacific, which eventually warm the air, cause it to rise above the ocean surface and throw a wrench into wind currents around the world. Typically, Texas taps into more tropical moisture, and the resulting wetter soils keep the air cool.
Ocean temperatures warmed throughout summer 2014, but El Niño never kicked in and the pattern fizzled. This year the lingering warm water helped to make this event among the strongest in history, nearly rivaling the record event of 1997-1998.
It's also been strengthened by some exceptional Pacific winds blowing opposite their typical direction. On three occasions since March, Pacific air about-faced and blew west, moving more warm water to the east where it piles up.
"The strength of these wind bursts was unusual," Becker said. "You usually see one here or there, but it was exceptional to see three strong ones in a fairly short period of time."
She said El Niño effects weaken during the summer, when weather is less influenced by global patterns, but should pick up in autumn and winter with more heavy rains for Texas.
Nielsen-Gammon said the strongest impacts should come in winter, which will likely be cooler and wetter than normal in Texas this year. In fall, he said, Texas should expect an enhanced chance of flooding from thunderstorms.
RELATED: Alaska was hotter than Texas in May
The phenomenon is also expected to create a quiet Atlantic hurricane season, and to raise temperatures along the West Coast and Alaska, which has already reeled from a dramatic heat wave.
Click through our slideshow to see the NOAA's full set of long-term predictions for Texas and the United States.SANAA (Reuters) - Unidentified attackers blew up Yemen’s main oil pipeline, forcing the country to shut down one of its most lucrative sources of income, government and tribal sources said on Saturday.
Yemen’s oil and gas pipelines have been repeatedly sabotaged by insurgents and tribesmen since anti-government protests created a power vacuum in 2011, causing fuel shortages and slashing export earnings for the impoverished country.
Witnesses said the pipeline linking production fields in the central Maarib province to the Red Sea was attacked on Friday night.
“We heard a blast in the Sirwah area followed by flames rising from the pipeline,” one tribal witness told Reuters.
Yemen’s stability is a priority for the United States and its Gulf Arab allies because of the country’s strategic position next to top oil exporter Saudi Arabia and shipping lanes, and because is home to one of al Qaeda’s most active wings.
A government source said production was halted after a device placed under the pipeline exploded.
“The army is on the trail of the saboteurs and technical teams will immediately start repairing the damage,” the source said.
A long closure of the line last year forced the country’s largest refinery at Aden to shut, leaving the small producer dependent on fuel donations from Saudi Arabia and imports.
On December 31, Yemen resumed oil pumping at a rate of around 70,000 barrels per day (bpd) after the latest repairs to a pipeline which used to carry around 110,000 bpd of Marib light crude to an export terminal on the Red Sea before a spate of attacks began in 2011.A Japanese leaflet promoting Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi was released a few days ago, and the promotion featured description suggesting that the movie is going to have a major surprise in it that will change everything – possibly giving Darth Vader’s unexpected parental reveal a run for its money. The description also hints at where some of the characters are headed.
Since we have so little to work with right now, it’s worth looking at any believable lead for story details – and a promotional ad seems like as good a place to start as any. The leaflet appears as follows (special thanks to The Cantina user Niamor for the scan/translation):
The text roughly translates to the following:
The Most Shocking Truth In Star Wars History Will Soon Be Revealed! A new generation’s tale of the struggles of light and dark, virtue and evil has begun with the death of Han Solo. In a Galaxy where First Order and the Resistance are fighting against each other in a war, the heroine, Rey, had the Force awaken within her. What will happen to the galaxy when Rey and the only remaining Jedi knight, Luke Skywalker, meet? Kylo Ren has fallen to the Dark Side of the Force and killed his father, Han Solo. As a successor of his grandfather, Darth Vader, and a high ranking enforcer in the First Order, where will his ambition lead him to? Furthermore, Kylo Ren’s mother, the leader of the Resistance, Leia, Poe, Finn, and BB-8, will embark on a new mission! The story has finally begun and it will lead to a mysterious climax! December 15. Be ready for the shocking truth surpassing the previous stories!
I find it interesting that the word used to describe Kylo Ren’s portion of The Last Jedi is “ambition” – from what we’ve seen of him so far, Kylo Ren seems like a character driven more by the misguided belief that what he’s doing is right than someone who seeks to gain more power beyond mastering his abilities in the Force. Also interesting is that the description suggests that Poe, Leia, Finn, and BB-8 as being part of the same mission when the story details that have leaked out about suggest that Poe and BB-8 stick around with Leia and that Finn goes on a mission with Rose. Perhaps these two stories are more connected than they initially appear.
But what’s really interesting is that the poster teases that we’re going to get a mind-blowing twist thrown in somewhere. That’s not entirely unexpected if the movie takes a few thematic cues from The Empire Strikes Back, but it’s hard to imagine Rian Johnson’s movie topping “I am your father” – and while such a feat isn’t impossible, it seems like that’s a really tough act to follow. There’s a lot of stuff that could make for big reveals in the movie – Rey’s parentage, Snoke’s identity, the reason that Luke went missing in the first place – but it almost seems like some (or all) of that is low-hanging fruit compared to what this is describing. Perhaps the big twist is going to be something that won’t be hinted at all in the ad campaign and we’ll only learn about it in the movie itself, much like the reveal that Kylo Ren was Han and Leia’s son in The Force Awakens.
Even with this information, don’t get too excited just yet. There’s a chance that this leaflet might not be 100% reflective of the content in the movie itself, as we’re far enough from the movie’s release that Lucasfilm would still likely continue to hold off on more plot details, so the person behind this ad’s copy might be writing a bit speculatively. After all, Lucasfilm hasn’t really said too much on the front of what many of these characters are up to in this movie, and it seems like this would be a really weird place to actually reveal all of that. In addition, Lucasfilm’s logo isn’t plastered anywhere on this poster – although there is a usual trademark near the bottom – and that’s something I find a little odd. Also odd is that the logo in the center is for The Force Awakens, but based on positioning of the font, I think the ad is emphasizing that this is the sequel to The Force Awakens as opposed to officially promoting it. (I only have a basic knowledge of the Japanese language, so I can’t tell what it actually says.)
Still, this at least gives us a bit of a potential lead as to where this story might be headed in future installments. We only have seven more months to wait until The Last Jedi comes out, so until then, we’ll keep our eyes peeled for more easy-to-miss stories like this one.
UPDATE
D. Hackerson has managed to track down a complete copy of the official Japanese “The Last Jedi” teaser pamphlet. Thanks “D”! Check it out below!
Finally got my hands on the #Japanese #TheLastJedi pamphlet. Asked the staff at my local theater and they brought some out for me. pic.twitter.com/M34A2MCrVV — D. Hackerson (@NorskAkiruno) June 3, 2017
Grant has been a fan of Star Wars for as long as he can remember, having seen every movie on the big screen. When he’s not hard at work with his college studies, he keeps himself busy by reporting on all kinds of Star Wars news for SWNN and general movie news on the sister site, Movie News Net. He served as a frequent commentator on SWNN’s The Resistance Broadcast.
Click HERE to check out and comment on this topic in our forum The CantinaEPA*REUTERS*IG Furious Vladimir Putin warned Turkey will face consequences after downing the jet
The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, giving a televised briefing said Russia will have to "seriously reassess" relations with Ankara after the actions by Turkish military. He did however rule out military retaliation, saying Russia is not going to war with Turkey. The comments come as US officials claimed the Russian fighter was in Syrian airspace at the time it was shot down by Turkish military.
A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity claimed the doomed jet had flown back to Syria after a brief incursion into Turkey's zone but was |
SamsungI am writing this off of three hours of sleep in the last three days. So, if this post gets a little hairy, its probably because I am either completely losing control of the faculties in place that regulate the differentiation of my stupid Neanderthal lizard brain and my actual rational, logical thought organization centers or I passed out and my face hit the keyboard. Before I start, anytime I bring these issues up with anyone, I get a lecture about sleep hygiene. Yes, I genuinely appreciate when people show empathy here and take the time to offer me advice. But, here is a list of things I have done to try to improve this situation:
Gotten rid of all light pollution/exposure in my room
ZMA, melatonin, valarian (actually helps for a couple days at a time), ambien (helps my sleep quality but turns me into a psycopath), zquil (gives me a terrible hangover the nex day), and changed my dietary habits in the evening.
I could drink 3 gallons of coffee or have 0mg of caffeine and it literally makes no difference. This is based off of months of trial and error.
I’ve done 2 sleep studies. Both of which were conducted during extended bouts of my issues. Everything was completely normal… except for the combined hour and a half I actually spent sleeping. I was half hoping that I just had sleep apnea so that I could get a CPAP to finally be considered eligible to live in Rhodestown
So, this begs the question, what the hell is my problem? I have a couple theories. The first of which is that I am just having 6 hour long panic attacks without actually panicking about anything. I am a pretty even keeled, laid back person for the most part. It takes a lot to get me genuinely riled up. I am pretty sure anxiety isn’t the issue.
Which leads me to my second theory. Sympathetic nervous system over stimulation. Our bodies aren’t as smart as we give them credit for. Many of the reasons for our emotional, physical, and hormonal reactions to certain situations/stimuli are merely left over cave man survival mechanisms. This is a reason I am not a fan of anxiety drugs and add medicine. Yes, there is a percentage of people that have borderline debilitating issues with these conditions and they actually need these medicines. But, think about what anxiety meant when we were hunter gatherers. Anxiety and worry were probably both elements relating to lack of food, the impending winter months, or inevitable attack from another tribe/grizzly bears/dinosaurs/whatever. Fear is a fucking awesome motivator. Anxiety kept humans moving and thinking. I know this because we are all alive today in a relatively comfortable time with very little to actually worry about. Sure, paying the bills is tough. But, there is a zero percent chance of having to watch your family get gored by a saber tooth tiger or trampled to death by a mastodon.
Anyway, what I am getting at is, the fight or flight response from lifting heavy stuff has about a zero differentiation from the same fight or flight that is cued from watching one of natures perfect killing machines sprint at you with its mouth open. I think at some point in our evolution, we lost the ability to better regulate that stimulation. Basically, I think the nervous response from heavy training is much harder to “turn off” for some people. Me being one of them.
Once I started considering this as the possible origin of the issue, I started experimenting with some different modalities/protocols that have made some difference. Basically, if I take the time to do some kind of parasympathetic driven activity, my sleep quality is slightly better. None of this is the end all be all of insomnia cures, but it helps me tremendously.
Light static stretching before bed. Basically, I will just hang out in a pancake stretch for 10-15 minutes, switch to something like a couch stretch for 5 mins on each leg, then maybe pick 2 or three smaller muscles to stretch.
Light extra workout. My favorite is 100 reps of each of these exercises with a mini band: facepulls, pull aparts, good morning, curls, tri. extensions, some bodyweight squats, maybe some short planks for 20-40 seconds.
Contrast shower. 20 minutes of 1:30 hot, 30s cold, and always end on cold.
Ice bath. Find a happy place and sit there for 20 minutes.
As you’ll notice, all of these are right around 20 minutes. This is because I never feel like its enough work if its shorter than 10 but I get incredibly bored at 30. Science.
Anyone else experience similar issues? I’d love to here what works for you.
Sprint. Kill. Sleep… please just go to sleep.
AdvertisementsOTTAWA, April 26, 2017 – The Canadian Biotechnology Action Network (CBAN), Ecology Action Centre, and GMO Free PEI have become aware of an application to the Prince Edward Island government from the biotechnology company AquaBounty that reveals the company’s intention to raise genetically modified (GM or genetically engineered) Atlantic salmon in PEI. If approved, this would be the world’s first GM fish factory.
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AquaBounty owns an aquaculture facility in Rollo Bay, PEI that it purchased in 2016. The company’s 2016 Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) clearly stated that it would not produce GM fish at the site, however their current amended EIS seeks permission to construct new large capacity buildings in order to produce 250 metric tons of GM Atlantic salmon each year. (1)
“We don’t want our island to be the global production site for the world’s first-ever GM fish,” said Sharon Labchuk of the coalition GMO Free PEI, “Less than one year ago AquaBounty reassured Islanders it would not grow GM fish here but now the company has revealed its true intentions.”
Last night Islanders attended an information session as part of the province’s environmental assessment process. There is now a 10-day comment period.
“PEI is a flip of a fish’s tail away from some of the best Atlantic salmon rivers in the world,” said Mark Butler of the Ecology Action Centre based in Halifax. “Commercial production dramatically increases the risk to wild Atlantic salmon but the impacts of a possible GM fish escape have not been federally assessed. Federal ministers McKenna and LeBlanc should put this project on hold until government scientists evaluate the full risks of GM salmon production.”
In 2013, the federal government approved GM fish and egg production but the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Scientific Response only examined the question of egg production. (2)
AquaBounty has been producing GM salmon eggs in PEI at a separate facility for shipping to Panama where it awaits approval from the Government of Panama for commercial GM fish grow-out. Now the company is shifting strategies and proposing to grow the GM salmon in PEI.
“The potential production of this GM fish is a huge global concern,” said Lucy Sharratt of the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network.
For more information: Sharon Labchuk, GMO Free PEI, 902 626 7327; Mark Butler, Ecology Action Centre, 902 266 5401; Lucy Sharratt, Canadian Biotechnology Action Network, 613 809 1103.
(1) Links to the 2017 and 2016 Environmental Impact Statements are available on the website of the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network at www.cban.ca/fish
(2) Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat, Science Response 2013/023 http://waves-vagues.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/Library/361091.pdf
From the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network, Ecology Action Centre and GMO Free PEIChanging wildlife: this article is part of a series looking at how key species such as bees, insects and fish respond to environmental change, and what this means for the rest of the planet.
Hundreds of metres below the surface of the freezing ocean surrounding Antarctica, the seafloor is teeming with life. The animals living there have no idea that an army is on the brink of invading their tranquil environment.
The army is composed of king crabs. Until 2003, there were no crabs in this fragile Antarctic ecosystem. Now, driven by warming waters, their arrival heralds a major upset.
The unique communities living on the continental shelf off Antarctica are found in no other place on Earth. Delicate brittle stars, beautiful sea stars, vibrant sea lilies, and giant sea spiders are among the spectacular inhabitants found there. The animals live side by side, with almost no predators to upset the balance.
For millions of years, the cold water temperatures in the Antarctic have stopped most predators from surviving in this harsh environment. But this situation is rapidly changing.
SeaSled, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Climate change is increasing temperatures across our planet, and the Antarctic is no exception. Sea temperatures in the Antarctic are rising at a faster rate than almost anywhere else.
With the increasing temperatures come new residents. Animals that have been absent from the continental shelf around Antarctica for millions of years are quickly returning.
The march of the king crabs
In every part of the world except the Antarctic, crabs are one of the major predators in seafloor communities. Their strong, crushing claws are deadly to snails, brittle stars, and other slow-moving animals.
However, on the continental slope and continental shelf surrounding Antarctica, icy water temperatures have kept crabs away. Crabs naturally take up magnesium into their blood from seawater, and they can usually control the level of magnesium in its blood. But at very low temperatures they cannot regulate it. Instead, the magnesium builds up in their blood.
It acts like an anaesthetic and eventually causes the crab to die. As a result, crabs have previously been unable to survive in Antarctic waters.
Water temperatures on the continental slope and shelf around Antarctica are now warming to levels that crabs can tolerate. Although they and other predators have been absent from the continental slope and shelf around Antarctica for millions of years, one group, the king crabs, have been living in the neighbouring deep ocean.
In the deep ocean around Antarctica, water temperatures have historically been warmer than on the continental shelf. But as shelf temperatures increase, the king crabs are beginning to move up the continental slope into shallower water.
In 2003, king crabs were seen on the continental slope off Antarctica for the first time. Since then, an increasing number of crabs have been reported. They are seemingly marching up the continental slope and towards the continental shelf, with nothing to stop them.
SeaSled, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
A smorgasbord of delicious treats
If king crabs move onto the shelf, they will be presented with a smorgasbord of invertebrates. King crabs do not care much what they eat. Any animal that falls into their path makes a delicious treat.
In the Antarctic, the native inhabitants are particularly at risk. These animals have evolved without any major predators for millions of years. In other parts of the world, animals living on the seafloor have thick shells or hard skeletons to protect them against predators like crabs.
But in Antarctica, they have very limited defences against predation. The animals have very thin shells, soft bodies, and light skeletons. They are an easy target for the rapidly approaching king crabs.
SeaSled, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Climate change is already allowing king crabs to move into shallower areas of the continental slope off Antarctica than ever before. As temperatures continue to rise, we can only guess that the king crabs will continue their invasion onto the continental shelf.
When the crabs arrive, they are very likely to have a huge impact on the unique animals that live there. If nothing stops the king crabs from moving onto the continental shelf, the defenceless animals that currently live there may well become yet another casualty of climate change.The Supreme Court could decide as early as Thursday whether its next term will include a major abortion-rights case.
Symbol of law and justice via Shutterstock
On Thursday the Roberts Court will decide whether or not to intervene in a case that is widely seen as the first major challenge to abortion rights since the landmark 1992 decision Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
The case, Pruitt v. Nova Health Systems, challenges a December 2012 decision by the Oklahoma Supreme Court that declared the Oklahoma Ultrasound Act, which requires the performance, display, and explanation of a pre-abortion ultrasound, to be facially unconstitutional. Like other mandatory ultrasound laws, Oklahoma’s law, HB 2780, claims to give women who seek abortions the benefit of an “informed decision” and makes the procedure part of the necessary “informed consent” required before a patient can access health care. The specific requirements of HB 2780 mandate physicians perform an ultrasound at least one hour before proceeding with an abortion, display the ultrasound images to the pregnant woman, and also provide a simultaneous medical description of the ultrasound images. This medical description has to include the dimensions of the fetus, the presence of cardiac activity, if any, and the presence of internal organs, if viewable. The physician is then required to obtain from the woman her written certification that the physician complied with HB 2780. The law contains exceptions for the ultrasound requirements if a woman faces an immediate medical emergency in which her life or physical health were in danger because of the pregnancy and specifies that nothing in the law’s requirements may be construed to prevent the woman from averting her eyes from the ultrasound images, meaning the state can’t force her to watch against her will.
As soon as the law was enacted, Nova Health Systems, a non-profit corporation that operates an abortion clinic in Tulsa, Oklahoma, sued in state court, challenging HB 2780 under the Oklahoma constitution. The trial court granted summary judgment to Nova Health Systems and issued a permanent injunction blocking the state from enforcing the law. In issuing the injunction, the trial court reasoned that the law was unconstitutional in part because “it is improperly addressed only to patients, physicians, and sonographers concerning abortions and does not address all patients, physicians, and sonographers concerning other medical care where a general law could clearly be made applicable.”
In a somewhat unusual move, the Oklahoma supreme court decided to retain the appeal of that injunction directly from the trial court rather than wait for an intermediate appellate court to decide the case. The Oklahoma supreme court rules state that the Oklahoma supreme court will retain a case upon consideration of three factors: (1) whether a case involves an area of law undecided in Oklahoma; (2) whether a split exists between the lower state appellate courts on the matter; and (3) whether the issue raised on appeal “concern[s] matters which will affect public policy” that, when decided by the Oklahoma supreme court, are “likely to have widespread impact.” Because no lower appellate courts had yet decided a challenge to HB 2780 and there had been no other abortion ultrasound laws in the state before HB 2780, the Oklahoma supreme court must have taken the appeal either because HB 2780 involved an area of law undecided in Oklahoma, or because the issue concerned a matter that would affect public policy and have widespread impact. This is just one of the possible discrepancies the Roberts Court could chose to address.
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In a cursory and unanimous opinion the Oklahoma Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of the trial court but overturned HB 2780 under the U.S. Constitution, not the Oklahoma constitution. In its opinion striking the law as unconstitutional the court cited Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the case that invalidated a Pennsylvania spousal notification requirement but upheld a 24-hour waiting period and informed consent and parental consent requirements under an “undue burden” standard as the sole basis for its decision. The court held:
Upon review of the record and the briefs of the parties, this Court determines this matter is controlled by the United States Supreme Court decision in [Casey], which was applied in this Court’s recent decision of In re Initiative No. 395, State Question No. 761. Because the United States Supreme Court has previously determined the dispositive issue presented in this matter, this Court is not free to impose its own view of the law. … The challenged measure is facially unconstitutional pursuant to Casey. The mandate of Casey remains binding on this Court until and unless the United States Supreme Court holds to the contrary. The judgment of the trial court holding the enactment unconstitutional is affirmed and the measure is stricken in its entirety.
“[U]nless the United States Supreme Court holds to the contrary”—it’s as if the Oklahoma supreme court was intentionally dishing the issue up for the Roberts Court to dig into.
Because the Oklahoma supreme court chose to strike down HB 2780 under the federal rather than the Oklahoma constitution, its ruling in Pruitt creates a potential split with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that has previously upheld a similar ultrasound requirement in Texas. This apparent disagreement in whether mandatory ultrasound laws represent an undue burden on abortion rights under Casey is just the kind of question the Supreme Court likes to answer. In Texas Medical Providers Performing Abortion Services v. Lakey, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit unanimously upheld a Texas ultrasound law in an opinion written by notorious ultra-conservative Judge Edith Jones, who is currently under investigation for judicial impropriety related to racist comments made at a recent speaking event. The Texas law upheld in Lakey is similar to HB 2780 in that it requires physicians to perform and display the ultrasound image of the fetus and exempts women facing medical emergencies. But the Texas law goes further than the Oklahoma law by requiring physicians to make the heart tones of the fetus audible to women, and then wait at least an additional 24 hours before proceeding with an abortion. Under the Texas law, a patient may decline to view the images or hear the heartbeat, but they may only decline to hear the explanation of the ultrasound images if their pregnancy meets one of three narrow exceptions. And just like HB 2780, under the Texas ultrasound law, pregnant women seeking an abortion have to certify their doctor’s compliance with the requisite procedures. From a legal perspective that means that one federal appeals court has ruled a mandatory ultrasound law that is more stringent than the Oklahoma law constitutional, but using the same reasoning employed by the Oklahoma supreme court to strike that state’s ultrasound law.
The Firth Circuit decision upholding the Texas ultrasound law is an example of conservative co-opting constitutional law coupled with the cognitive dissonance required to find an expensive, unnecessary, and invasive medical procedure “empowering” to women, and just the kind of decision abortion-rights advocates would like to keep away from the Roberts Court. In reaching its decision that the Texas law was constitutional, the Fifth Circuit expressly relied on Casey’s holding that an informed-consent statute does not consume any First Amendment right against compelled speech, in this case providers who are forced to recite the ultrasound script or women who are forced to listen to fetal heart tones, when it requires the giving of “truthful, non-misleading information” that is “relevant” to the woman’s decision regarding the abortion. The Fifth Circuit found that the images and audio produced by an ultrasound are the “epitome of truthful, non-misleading information,” and are not different in kind, though admittedly “more graphic and scientifically up-to-date,” than the disclosure requirements upheld by the Supreme Court in Casey, despite the fact that they have no direct bearing on the issue of whether a woman needs an abortion and can legally choose abortion care.
It is with this backdrop that the Roberts Court will consider stepping into the ultrasound debate, and with this reasoning supplied by Judge Jones the Court could weigh in next year. Should the Court decline to review the case then the Oklahoma supreme court decision permanently blocking the law will stand. But should the court decide to review the decision then by this time next year we will have a much better idea just how far abortion rights have receded in this country.(IPS) – In Meghalaya, India’s northeastern biodiversity hotspot, all three major tribes are matrilineal. Children take the mother’s family name, while daughters inherit the family lands.
Because women own land and have always decided what is grown on it and what is conserved, the state not only has a strong climate-resistant food system but also some of the rarest edible and medicinal plants, researchers said.
While their ancient culture empowers Meghalaya’s indigenous women with land ownership that vastly improves their resilience to the food shocks climate change springs on them, for an overwhelming majority of women in developing countries, culture does not allow them even a voice in family or community land management. Nor do national laws support their rights to own the very land they sow and harvest to feed their families.
Legal protections for indigenous and rural women to own and manage property are inadequate or missing in 30 low- and middle-income countries, according to a new report from Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI).
This finding, now quantified, means that much of the recent progress that indigenous and local communities have gained in acquiring legal recognition of their commonly held territory could be built on shaky ground.
“Generally speaking, international legal protections for indigenous and rural women’s tenure rights have yet to be reflected in the national laws that regulate women’s daily interactions with community forests,” Stephanie Keene, Tenure Analyst for the RRI, a global coalition working for forest land and resources rights of indigenous and local communities, told IPS via an email interview.
Together these 30 countries contain three-quarters of the developing world’s forests, which remain critical to mitigate global warming and natural disasters, including droughts and land degradation.
In South Asia, distress migration owing to climate events and particularly droughts is high, as over three-quarters of the population is dependent on agriculture, out of which more than half are subsistence farmers depending on rains for irrigation.
“For many indigenous people, it is the women who are the food producers and who manage their customary lands and forests. Safeguarding their rights will cement the rights of their communities to collectively own the lands and forests they have protected and depended on for generations.” said Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
“Indigenous and local communities in the ten analyzed Asian countries provide the most consistent recognition of women’s community-level inheritance rights. However, this regional observation is not seen in India and Nepal, where inadequate laws concerning inheritance and community-level dispute resolution cause women’s forest rights to be particularly vulnerable,” Keene told IPS of the RRI study.
“None of the 5 legal frameworks analyzed in Nepal address community-level inheritance or dispute resolution. Although India’s Forest Rights Act does recognize the inheritability of Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers’ land, the specific rights of women to community-level inheritance and dispute resolution are not explicitly acknowledged. Inheritance in India may be regulated by civil, religious or personal laws, some of which fail to explicitly guarantee equal inheritance rights for wives and daughters,” Keene added.
Pointing out challenges behind the huge gaps in women’s land rights under international laws and rights recognized by South Asian governments, Madhu Sarin, who was involved in drafting of India’s Forest Rights Act and now pushes for its implementation, told IPS, “Where governments have ratified international conventions, they do in principle agree to make national laws compatible with them. However, there remains a huge gap between such commitments and their translation into practice. Firstly, most governments don’t have mechanisms or binding requirements in place for ensuring such compatibility.”
“Further, the intended beneficiaries of gender-just laws remain unorganised and unaware about them,” she added.
Women’s land rights, recurring droughts and creeping desertification
According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), one way to address droughts that cause more deaths and displaces more people than any other natural disaster, and to halt desertification – the silent, invisible crisis that threatens one-third of global land area – is to bring about pressing legal reforms to establish gender parity in farm and forest land ownership and its management.
“Poor rural women in developing countries are critical to the survival of their families. Fertile land is their lifeline. But the number of people negatively affected by land degradation is growing rapidly. Crop failures, water scarcity and the migration of traditional crops are damaging rural livelihoods. Action to halt the loss of more fertile land must focus on households. At this level, land use is based on the roles assigned to men and women. This is where the tide can begin to turn,” says Monique Barbut, Executive Secretary of the UNCCD, in its 2017 study.
Closing the gender gap in agriculture alone would increase yields on women’s farms by 20 to 30 percent and total agricultural output in developing countries by 2.5 to 4 percent, the study quotes the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) as saying.
Why the gender gap must close in farm and forest rights
The reality on the ground is, however, not even close to approaching this gender parity so essential for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals 1, 2 and 5 which connect directly with land rights.
Climate change is ushering in new population dynamics. As men’s out-migration from indigenous and local communities continues to rise due to fall in land productivity, population growth and increasing outside opportunities for wage-labor, more women are left behind as de facto land managers, assuming even greater responsibilities in communities and households.
The importance of protecting the full spectrum of women’s property rights becomes even more urgent as the number of women-led households in rural areas around the world continues to grow. The percentage of female-led households is increasing in half of the world’s 15 largest countries by population, including India and Pakistan.
Although there is no updated data on the growth of women-led households, the policy research group International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in its 2014 study found that from 2000 to 2010, slightly less than half of the world’s urban population growth could be ascribed to migration. The contribution of migration is considerably higher in Asia, it found, where urbanisation is almost 60 percent and is expected to continue growing, although at a declining rate.”
“Unless women have equal standing in all laws governing indigenous lands, their communities stand on fragile ground,” cautioned Tauli-Corpuz.
Without legal protections for women, community lands are vulnerable to theft and exploitation that threatens the world’s tropical forests that form a critical bulwark against climate change, as well as efforts to eradicate poverty among rural communities.
With the increasing onslaught of large industries on community lands worldwide, tenure rights of women are fundamental to their continued cultural identity and natural resource governance, according to the RRI study.
“When women’s rights to access, use, and control community forests and resources are insecure, and especially when women’s right to meaningfully participate in community-level governance decisions is not respected, their ability to fulfill substantial economic and cultural responsibilities are compromised, causing entire families and communities to suffer,” said Keene.
Moreover, several studies have established that women are differently and disproportionately affected by community-level shocks such as climate change, natural disasters, conflict and large-scale land acquisitions, further underscoring the fortification of women’s land rights an urgent priority.
With growing feminization of farming as men out-migrate, and the rise in women’s education, gender-inequitable tenure practices cannot be sustained over time, the RRI study concludes. But achieving gender equity in land rights will call for tremendous political will and societal change, particularly in patriarchal South Asia, researchers said.
Manipadma Jena is an independent development journalist and communications consultant who works out of Bhubaneswar in eastern India. She specialises in environment, climate change, biodiversity, indigenous people and the MDG themes broadly. Website: http://manipadmajena.com/The cuts to Medicaid in the Senate Republican health care bill would almost overnight cut off access to life-saving treatment for diabetics, sending them to the emergency room where they would incur enormous financial costs.
Donald Trump’s budget director said months ago that he did not believe diabetics deserve health insurance. Now, in their recently revealed health care bill, Senate Republicans are working to enshrine this callous mindset into the law.
Senate Republicans have finally released the text of their health care bill, devised and negotiated in private by 13 men, handed off to insurance lobbyists while the public was shut out of the process.
What came out of that sealed-off process is legislation targeting Medicaid, the government system designed to provide access to health care for the most vulnerable and at-risk Americans. The Republican bill, dubbed the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017, does this while fulfilling the ongoing Republican initiative to cut taxes for the extremely wealthy.
Obamacare expanded Medicaid, increasing the likelihood that diabetics would be diagnosed early, and providing coverage so that expensive medication like insulin can be paid for.
In a video released by Indivisible, a young woman visited Republican Sen. Susan Collins’s office to highlight the thousands of dollars in medication treating her diabetes requires. Before Obamacare, Indivisible noted that “Phoebe’s mother had to skip mortgage payments to pay for Phoebe’s supplies.” With the Medicaid expansion, those costs are now taken care of.
.@SenatorCollins Phoebe had Type 1 since she was 10. Before ACA, Phoebe's mother had to skip mortgage payments to pay for Phoebe's supplies. pic.twitter.com/njlioWDqlF — Marg #DreamActNow Suozzo (@msuozzog) June 21, 2017
The Republican proposal ends that. The bill not only undoes the Medicaid expansion, but it also builds on the destructive cuts passed in the House by Republicans on a party-line vote. It would change the process by which states receive federal money for Medicaid recipients, cutting the amount of aid those patients receive and impacting the type and quality of care millions of Americans would have to deal with.
When those funds are cut off, diabetics can no longer afford their medication, and often will end up in the emergency room in a life-threatening situation and with massive hospital bills to contend with if they survive the stay.
A coalition of 120 patient organizations – including AARP, the American Diabetes Association, and the American Heart Association – have called on the Senate to defend Medicaid, pointing out it is a “as a critical lifeline for patients and consumers with ongoing health care needs.” They point out that the plan to turn Medicaid payments into block grants, instead of funding the program based on need, will cut off patient access to breakthrough treatments and reduce the ability to respond to emerging health threats. Similarly they pan the proposed repeal of Medicaid expansion, as the program is a “critical source of coverage for people with chronic diseases.”
Andy Slavitt, former acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the bill represents “the destruction of Medicaid” and is “far, far worse than even the House bill.”
The bill would penalize states for spending more than the average Medicaid recipient, not allowing any leeway for the nuances of individual situations depending on differences in the economic conditions between the states. This would incentivize states to do the least possible for their Medicaid patients.
Diabetics are just one group of people who will suffer if the Republican legislation passes.
The budgetary games in the bill translate into an effect on lives from the first moments of existence. Nearly half — 48 percent — of births in America are covered by Medicaid, which means that the proposed Republican cuts would reduce the money needed to take care of those children. They would be left behind.
Medicaid also covers 69 percent of nursing home residents, 40 percent of poor adults, 60 percent of children with disabilities, and 76 percent of poor children.
Attacking the way Medicaid is funded, as the Republican bill does, limits the money available to help those vulnerable populations, reducing their quality of life as Americans.
Donald Trump said he would not cut Medicaid when he was campaigning for president, but he backs both the Senate and House bills, which have Medicaid squarely in their targets.
In fact, many of the areas of strongest support for Trump are also some of the regions that rely the most on Medicaid, including rural hospitals for which the program is a critical lifeline. As Trump and his fellow Republicans have so often done, they are sacrificing their voters for the benefit of well-heeled patrons.Abstract Human menopause is an unsolved evolutionary puzzle, and relationships among the factors that produced it remain understood poorly. Classic theory, involving a one-sex (female) model of human demography, suggests that genes imparting deleterious effects on post-reproductive survival will accumulate. Thus, a ‘death barrier’ should emerge beyond the maximum age for female reproduction. Under this scenario, few women would experience menopause (decreased fertility with continued survival) because few would survive much longer than they reproduced. However, no death barrier is observed in human populations. Subsequent theoretical research has shown that two-sex models, including male fertility at older ages, avoid the death barrier. Here we use a stochastic, two-sex computational model implemented by computer simulation to show how male mating preference for younger females could lead to the accumulation of mutations deleterious to female fertility and thus produce a menopausal period. Our model requires neither the initial assumption of a decline in older female fertility nor the effects of inclusive fitness through which older, non-reproducing women assist in the reproductive efforts of younger women. Our model helps to explain why such effects, observed in many societies, may be insufficient factors in elucidating the origin of menopause.
Author Summary The origin and evolution of menopause is understood poorly and explanations remain contentious. Virtually ignored among explanations is the effect that mate choice can exert on an evolving population. We designed and used a computational model and computer simulation to show that male mating preference for younger females in humans could have led to the accumulation of mutations deleterious to female fertility and thereby produced menopause. Our model demonstrates for the first time that neither an assumption of pre-existing diminished fertility in older women nor a requirement of benefits derived from older, non-reproducing women assisting younger women in rearing children is necessary to explain the origin of menopause.
Citation: Morton RA, Stone JR, Singh RS (2013) Mate Choice and the Origin of Menopause. PLoS Comput Biol 9(6): e1003092. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003092 Editor: Mark M. Tanaka, University of New South Wales, Australia Received: October 24, 2012; Accepted: April 26, 2013; Published: June 13, 2013 Copyright: © 2013 Morton et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: This research was was resourced partially by the Origins Institute and Shared Hierarchical Academic Research Computing Network at McMaster University and funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (Discovery Grants RGPIN235-07 to RSS and 261590 to JRS; http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca). 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 Evolutionary theories of life history predict that selection should operate against living beyond the age of reproduction [1]–[3]. Postmenopausal survival is, however, a characteristic that almost is uniquely human [4], reported otherwise only in whales [5], [6] or captive chimpanzees [7]; data for other nonhuman primates [e.g.], [ 8,9] or animals [e.g., 10] are equivocal and controversial. Human life histories are exceptional in having extended dependence by juveniles and support of reproduction by older, less fertile females (i.e., through rearing). Thus, a decline of reproduction in older women constitutes an evolutionary puzzle. Solutions may be grouped into two general explanatory categories [7], [11]–[49] (specific explanations are summarized in Table 1): 1) trade-offs between prolonged life span and reproduction; 2) fitness benefits for older, non-reproductive women through increasing the reproductive success of their offspring. Explanations in the first category are based on unique aspects of human life history, such as intelligence, social organization, and cultural transfer that allowed the evolution of longevity [45]–[51]. Female menopause (decreased fertility with continued survival) follows as a consequence of being the (assumed) ancestral state or as a trade-off favoring longevity over reproduction in women. For explanations in the second category, menopause has been considered as an adaptation that drives extended longevity beyond the decline in female fertility. Williams [3] recognized that reproduction could be extended to include individuals who promote the transmission of their own genes and that this inclusive reproduction could explain human menopause. Hawkes et al. [52] proposed that grandmothers could increase their inclusive fitness sufficiently to counteract their loss of reproduction and termed such mechanisms “grandmother effects”, although they have been recognized as being applicable to mothers as well [26]. Research in support of this hypothesis, theoretical and empirical, has focused on the possible kindred advantages of post-reproductive life and if such contributions are sufficient to explain the maintenance of menopause [2], [40], [53]–[58], as they would have to overcome the twofold cost for a grandmother to raise each grandchild rather than one of her own. PPT PowerPoint slide
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Table 1. Hypotheses of menopause. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003092.t001 Hamilton [1] provided the fundamental theoretical observation that genes imparting deleterious effects on post-reproductive survival will accumulate, yet human females experience menopause. More recently, researchers have recognized that Hamilton based this death barrier paradox on an inappropriate model of human demography. In his one-sex model, female [demographics] were treated as the predominant factor because they bear offspring. Male demographics were treated independently but, in fact, may differ from female demographics. Pollack [59] described a two-sex model in which a “mating preference matrix”, [M ij ], connected male and female life histories. The mating preference matrix represented the propensity for a male of age i to form a bond with a female of age j, which might have yielded offspring if both were fertile. Such two-sex models are mathematically much more complex than are one-sex models because of the inherent non-linearity introduced by the mating preference matrix. Tuljapurkar et al. [60] showed that a two-sex model could explain life expectancy beyond the age of reproduction. In their model, older fertile males provided selection against age-dependent, mortality-causing mutations. Thus, their accumulation was prevented, and the survival of males and females was prolonged even though female fertility declined. To further test the consequence of mating preference on the evolution of menopause, we modeled the effect of mutations having delayed age of onset, using stochastic, computer simulation of a population with constant size, without pre-existing diminished fertility in females, and involving mutations that affected fertility as well as mortality. Discrete age classes and time intervals were taken to correspond to five-year periods. Intrinsic fertility and survival probabilities were fixed |
to his loss) but is considering e-mailing Obama to ask him to talk about tears.
"I know he is a compassionate man," Glickstein says, "and we assume he cries at home. If he admits at a press conference that he cries, that would be a huge step in (ending) the cycle of violence. And it would only take a few seconds."India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country (with over 1.2 billion people), and the most populous democracy in the world. Its capital is New Delhi. Some other major cities are Mumbai, Chennai, and Ahemdabad....read more. India is a overpopulated Hell. No proper infrastructure, no jobs even for educated, no respect for human beings, Rich people sees poor people as livestock ready for being exploited. No government support, government support only rich and people with influence in government. It does not matter whether you are engineer, doctor, or MBA You will not get good job unless you have some some reference or political influence for the job you are trying. In recent years Indian job market is almost collapsed with pay scales going down or stagnant with very high inflation, no wonder why Indian economy is not growing. Indians in general lack entrepreneurship skills, but more-ever most indians don't have financial support to convert their entrepreneuual dreams into reality. India have resources only enough to support 250 million people, not 1.25 billion people. So there is 100 extra people for every 125 people. If india does not care for its problems then soon indian society and economy is going to...more India is the world's largest democracy. India has a population which is very diverse in almost all aspects. All men do not harass women. Not everyone is poor. The rate of crimes again women is more in usa and other countries compared to India. The population density here is far lesser compared to Japan, Korea, etc. some people say there are very less resources in India, what would you talk about Japan? India has human resource and we haven't used in a proper way yet. What government support do you need? Support your earnings? Give you money when you don't find a way to earn?
If the country is filthy or dirty it's because of those people who throw garbage on the roadsides in India while they don't drop a pinch of waste in western countries. If you have so much to talk about India, what did you do to make it better? If your not happy with it change it.
There are so many problems with the government because of the vast democratic setup. The decision taken must be...more India will suffer from further overpopulation problems even they surpassed China. Almost every corner of India will be overcrowded. Resources will be more limited especially for tourists. Many Indians will starve as one of the consequences of overpopulation. Families will have to wait in long lines for immune shots. There will be traffic jam on every street. These are the disadvantages of living in India. India is not as bad as you people are making up...The south Indian states are way too developed than you think... especially Kerala.The place has one of the best climate..It's clean and you can enjoy every bit it.. The people here are almost fully literate and healthy..And moreover they all have a loving and caring heart 😇 V 370 Comments
North Korea The Democratic People's Republic of Korea, also known as North Korea, is a country in Eastern Asia. Its capital is Pyongyang. It is currently ruled by the dictator Kim Jong-Un, after inheriting the title from his father, Kim Jong-Il, who in turn inherited it from his father, Kim Il-Sung....read more. Communist people are trapped their and are killed for trying to go to another country I'm a child of South Korea (emphasis on South) who does not even know the basics of history. However, I know that North Korea has spread absolute chaos to the entire world. Definitely the worst place to live in. by the way, I'm only 13... I'm a South Korean child not knowing even the basics of history. However, I know that North Korea has done horrible things and caused absolute chaos to the entire world. It is definitely the worst place to live in. Do I have to explain? V 95 Comments
Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located within South Asia and Central Asia. I think here the problem is due to illiterate and uneducated people. If here will be a good education then this country can be developed. Someone should see this. First thing is to spread peace in all, end the and war. Has many political disturbances. Poorest country in Asia. I escaped Afghanistan V 14 Comments
Pakistan Pakistan was established in 1947 and is located in South Asia. Islamabad is the capital city of Pakistan and is known as the world's second most beautiful capital city. Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar are other major cities of Pakistan. Urdu and English are official languages of Pakistan. World's second...read more. I am a Hindu and I am a proud Pakistani, our country is down in few things only because of our government, and because of India's conspiracies... But we have way many positives... people here are living well... it's our media only that makes it look bad... This country is rich with resources, it has a marvelous beauty, the people are very kind, it's festivals, just everything, our education system is way better than India's... my father was in pak army, and I'd join it too... may our country get rid of all it's enemies... - lovepakistan India's conspiracies? Better education system? Stop making stupid baseless comments. It is the main source of terrorism...! I am a Muslim and I hate my country Pakistan it sucks. No electricity extremely hot or cold. Terrorism. Security issues unstable political state and unwanted hassle with neighbours. Pakistan has become China's slave and no one respects Pakistan in the international stage. Lack of jobs no booming economy like India ; China ; Indonesia or even Bangladesh. Corruption. I hope authorities take action and don't blame India for all our issues. I am Pakistani Hindu and I think Pakistan is the best country in this earth as it has some of the most beautiful cities for example Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore, and please if you can't say some thing nice about my country then don't say any thing bad.
Pakistani zindabad! long live Pakistan V 99 Comments
China China, officially the People's Republic of China, is a sovereign state in East Asia. It is the world's most populous state, with a population of over 1.388 billion. It was established in 1949 by Chairman Mao, the president of the communist party. Its capital is Beijing. The major cities are Shanghai,...read more. Worst country ever, I was sent there on a project by my company for 2 years, just came back home recently. While there I basically could have lived in a bubble and never have to deal with the annoyances, but I am an open minded and curious person so I made the BIG mistake to try to meet local people and fit in with society. Here is what I have found:
-Xenophobia and racism are mainstream sentiments. Non-Chinese people are being singled out on a normal basis even if they speak the language and know about the local customs/etiquette. Having a normal exchange with local people is nearly impossible, everything has to be a dick waving contest. Most Chinese people automatically make assumptions based on your race or nationality.
-Sickening nationalist sentiment, "China this, China that", look down on barbarians (everyone else) and claims of racial superiority based on rather shaky national myths. “Facts” in China are accepted through wishful thinking or sheer repetition...more I have lived in China for 4 years, and this is what I can say:
- Constant propaganda
- Almost nobody speaks English, because they don't want to learn. And their language is extremely hard to learn, because if you say something wrong, they laugh at you, and that kills your self esteem.
- Banned are: Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat.
- They spit and always make that throaty, disgusting sound in the streets. Not counting the times I had a butt up my face, wondering, "will he fart on me? "
- Air pollution is awful, the case why now that I live in Switzerland, I'm still skeptical about the air (even though Switzerland is the nicest, cleanest country I've ever lived in)
- People push to get into the subway. I've been pushed and squeezed while I was trying to get in.
But it's an interesting country, nevertheless. I liked traveling in China, exploring the lands, trying their food. And some people I've met at...more - redhawk766 I have many great Chinese friends, so this doesn't include every Chinese citizen, but AIMS:
1) AIR POLLUTION - sometimes over 20 times worse than Japan's
2) IMPOLITE - the subway doors open and the people can't get out
3) MEDICAL CARE - hospitals always crowded with patients feeling symptoms from air pollution
4) SPIT - there is no day you won't see someone who almost hits you with saliva
Bad to live in, but GOOD to travel in Depends on the area. Some are really horrible while others are fine. - MChkflaguard_Yt Worst inhumane country on Earth,extremely islamophobic V 72 Comments
Philippines The Philippines was established in March 16, 1521 and named in honor of a Spanish King whose name is King Philip of Spain II. It is located at Asia, specifically at Southeast Asia. The capital is Manila. 89% of the people there currently are native, while 11% of people there are foreigners. Okay, okay, calm down here people, I am a filipino so you expect me to know about this place. I will show my patriotism and be hones with what I am saying here.
Bad things :
-Very Weak Government
-Very Corrupt Government
-Very Bad Transportation on Regular days
-Very Filthy Environment at most places
-Hates China because of their bad behavior on territorial issues
-Bad food at most places
-Most people will do anything for money
-Many Fake Merchandise at most places ( except inside malls and shop branches)
Good things :
-Loves Everybody
-Loves Everything
-Great Tourist Spots ( Beaches, Mountainous regions, fields, etc. )
-Takes care of Foreigners
-Very Kind People
-Great Athletes
-Even Criminals are nice, well most of them
-Loves other Countries
-Loves Comedy and great at Comedy
-If Determined for their dreams, they can Achieve it
-Religious
-Respectful
-If bad things happen, they find time to be...more - Life_Sanchez What the heck this in here?
Many people saying this better than Singapore, Japan, South Korea etc?
I want to say that this country is so bad and people only trying to look at good things which opposite of people always try to look at bad things about Saudi Arabia, Iran etc.
THIS COUNTRY IS SO OVERRATED...
I think most of voters who voted for Philippines didn't go to Philippines yet. They don't know how dangerous and corrupted Philippines is.
Good things about Philippines.
1. Kind kind kind people (Yes! )
2. Manny Pacquiao and his famous childhood story. Such a great guy.
3. Hot girls? Of course they have but not that much. Just I suggest to go to South Korea for meet them.
4. Beautiful Beaches? Beautiful beaches are everywhere in the world- not only for Philippines.
Bad things about Philippines.
1. Poor country. Very very poor- like no difference with Africa.
2. Politicians like Pacquiao are great guys but very corrupted...more There are nice people, super awesome beaches and great sceneries. Yes that's true but I still don't recommend to go in this country for many many good reasons:
For white people : If you are white in this country you will flash even if you dress down and many people will bug you. Everyone will look at you because white people are very rare there. You will see very few white people in major big cities but that's about it. In countryside (barios) you wont see any. Most Filipino women dream to be with a white man so it will be very easy for you to meet some.
Security: There is no security in this country. It's almost a country without laws. Nobody respect the laws and the police don't do their job. They are not qualified nor professional. If something bad happen to you, you're on your own. The Filipino Government is very weak. Dealing with Filipino Government employees can be a huge challenge. They are payed very cheap so they do what they want. We can't rely on...more This place is bigger third world wreck than El Salvador or Honduras V 80 Comments
Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia in the Pacific Ocean. It lies off the eastern coast of the Asia Mainland (east of China, Korea, Russia) and stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and near Taiwan in the southwest....read more. Are you kidding? Japan is an amazing place, I love it. The people are nice, the technology is advanced, the food is great, the lifestyle is good, the culture is fascinating, the facilities are good, and the stuffs there are very well-made. I know that Japan still has its own cons, but still Japan is a good country.
To me, North Korea is the worst country in Asia. I agree that Japan doesn't deserve to be on this list, because Japan's a great place with great people. It's not right to say that Japan is bad whenever there are good and bad people everywhere all over the world it's not just one place. There are plenty of good people in Japan and everywhere else in this world you just have to find them. I'd love to vacation for awhile in Japan, but living there would be hell, since their government is almost as bad as ours. - benhos It shouldn't be on this list. There might be some bad things in this country, but the country have good things in perspective of the culture, people, lifestyle and miscellaneous habits in this country. Japan may not be perfect, but it have good cultural traits on life. - yamionthetrap V 53 Comments
Burma Myanmar (formerly Burma) is a Southeast Asian nation of more than 100 ethnic groups, bordering India, Bangladesh, China, Laos and Thailand. Yangon (formerly Rangoon), the country's largest city, is home to bustling markets, numerous parks and lakes, and the towering, gilded Shwedagon Pagoda, which contains...read more. No one actually know the real situation in Myanmar then locals. It is not just burmese people's fault, the Muslims are really rude too. (Ruder than burmese people) U haven't even heard them swearing. I hate their human rights policies. It is not that bad as you saw, but until 2011 it really bad since Myanmar was under military persecution. Now NLD's in government I hope good thing happen in Myanmar now. One thing I hate about Myanmar is only Buddhism come first and Christian come last, they build pagoda in Christian state. They are just like Japan during WWII, they are rapist and brutally murderer. I think Myanmar is a pretty cool country.I was born in Myanmar and I love it here. Myanmar is cramped with shiny pagodas so tourists call this country "GOLDEN MYANMAR". V 15 Comments
Syria Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in Western Asia. Syria has been involved in a civil war since 2011. Stupid dictator destroying his own country just because the people there demanding freedom, poverty of every thing, not even a mega super earthquick can cause as much destruction, what a shame! Allah is not -snip- satan. Consider 1.3 billion people practice Islam. You really think all area Syrian terrorists? Thick head. The ruler is stupid and twisted! - TwilightKitsune Hah.this quiz is hell.a list'worst countries in world'ranked syria in no.4 and in this it is no.6 V 7 Comments
Iraq Iraq, officially the Republic of Iraq, is a country in Western Asia....read more. 10 Who cares about football? ISIS has executed thousands of innocent people including children, because the victims want to believe what they believe, instead of the crap that their government wants them to. - benhos They try to think of themselves as the most westernized Asian country but I think they don't know English because instead of using the word westernized they should use terrorized Iraq is Witch war Witch ISIS also I hate this country why The hell Russia isn't here I hate Russia so much than China Syria And Iraq also Serbia sometimes Mexico And north Korea It is definitely worse than China! V 11 Comments
The Newcomers
Georgia Georgia is a country in the Caucasus region. Located at the crossroads between Eastern Europe and Western Asia it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russian Federation, to the south by Turkey and Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The country's capital and a largest city...read more.
Armenia Armenia is a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located in Western Asia on the Armenian Highlands, it is bordered by Turkey to the west, Georgia to the north, the de facto independent Republic of Artsakh and Azerbaijan to the east, and Iran and Azerbaijan's exclave of Nakhchivan to the...read more.
The Contenders
Bangladesh Bangladesh, on the northern coast of the Bay of Bengal, is surrounded by India, with a small common border with Myanmar in the southeast. The country is low-lying riverine land traversed by the many branches and tributaries of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers. 11 Traffic and insane people. Most of the Bangladeshies even don't know what's pollution. Noise, air, water pollution is everywhere. They don't know about waste disposal and I guess they don't even care. Political situation is the worst. Politicians knows only how to gather money from the population. We pay tax but there is no benefit. I don't hate Bangladesh, but I hate these insane population. As a Bebgali I just hope and wish that they will learn to care about Bangladesh. I don't think you have to be so rude Dirtiest people ever Its because Bangladesh is a sick Japan V 22 Comments
Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially known as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, is an Arab state in Western Asia (Middle East) constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula. The official Language is Arabic. The capital city is Riyadh. 12 As a Muslim I really hate Saudi Arabia. They take Islam to the extreme and don't follow it themselves. Women are given a lot and I mean A LOT of rights in Islam. These pathetic Saudis just make up their own version of our religion and give the real Islam a bad name. That's the same problem with all the terrorists out there. Islam strictly condemns the killing or murdering of an innocent person, Muslim or non Muslim. These terrorists destroyed the true meaning of the word jihad and made people from around the world think that Islam is what they are when in reality that is not true. Worst country, heat, Conservative clerics all around, I just hate that Is the worst country ever. Saudi Arabia made a Bad South park ripoff called Block 13. V 17 Comments
Maldives Maldives, officially the Republic of Maldives, is an island country and archipelago in the Indian Ocean. 13 This is the worst country on the planet. They are drug addicts, among every 5 people one is a drug addict. They are rapists and have low IQ 82. Full of corruption. No one follows the rules because even the police are rapist drug addicts. It's a pure failed country
No human rights. Children are murdered by their own mothers. Majority of the parliament use illegal drugs and hire foreign prostitutes.
The most wicked person among this nation is now the president, and he supports Israel.
The people here are racists of their own kind. People who come to work here are persecuted, raped and even killed because of their race, sex or religious beliefs.
They think the world revolves around them. They are so racist and evil that when a country like India offers them financial aid they reject it but accept it from the Chinese.
People here are filthy, and filthy minded. The words they use against their best friends will make you vomit and I don't even want to...more Atheist get executed There Looks like you know nothing about Maldives. Hater gonna hate, but I am unable to imagine who would. Will eventually sink under the ocean... and not too long this will happen. Islands have disappeared! V 8 Comments
Iran Iran, also known as Persia, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, is a sovereign state in Western Asia. The capital city is Teheran and the major city is also Tehran. The country's official language is Persian....read more. 14 Dictator country!, they force you what to wear, listen, no parties no freedom, its the worst country EVER! "MORAL POLICE" piss you off all the time! As an iranian with armenian origins I can safely say it surprisingly isn't the worse country. I mean sure you get treated very differently than "Muslims" but at least you have basic rights and are treated equally among the people. So that's gotta count for something. Noob pepoles V 22 Comments
Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia. Ruled by the Dutch for over 300 years and Japan for 3 years and 6 months, the country gained independence in 1945, or exactly in 17th August 1945. Jakarta is the capital city, located in the island of Java. Major languages...read more. 15 Racism, religion fanatics, corruption, and bad school system. As a Chinese living at Indonesia, I often hear a lot of racist comments about Chinese (not everyone is racist). And as a Christian, I have to hear crap from fanatic people who force Muslim to me (not saying every Muslim is like this, I also met a lot of nice Muslims who is kind even to other religions, but I also met a lot of crazy fanatics). The school system is basically piece of crap, "Full Day School", a lot of homework, bad school facilities (I went to public school once because there's a family problem, and yeah, it's really bad. For the private school, the facilities are really great, but the school fee is very expensive and usually it's Christian/Catholic school, so most of the people prefer public school), not mentioning the very low education here (most of people here only made it until junior high school, and some only made it to elementary school or they never been to school at all). The country's...more Religious extremists and racism are two of biggest problems in Indonesia. And yeah the ignorant people pretend to care but not. Other than that Indonesia is an OKAY country to live in. - wackonicko The people in Indonesian is very nice and very smart people, BUT, the government is rubbish they are corrupt and stupid. But Indonesian is not bad to live in. Indonesians are the antithesis of the Chinese and Japanese. If a Chinese was brutally killed, I bet they would laugh and joke about it. V 27 Comments
Laos Laos, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic (LPDR), or commonly referred to its colloquial name of Muang Lao is a landlocked country in the heart of the Indochinese peninsula of Mainland Southeast Asia, bordered by Myanmar (Burma) and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to...read more. 16 Lots of hungry people who constantly hassle tourists for money. Kinda sad once you think about it though. I enjoyed staying in Laos for a winter holiday, because it was warm and nice, but it's dirty. And they kept on wanting my money for some junk. - redhawk766 Communist has never been good Laotians are the worst, they are the laziest people you probably have ever met and very selfish V 6 Comments
South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea, is a sovereign state in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korean Peninsula. 17 They are arrogant and think Chinese people are monkeys. They claim that Confucious was korean which is absurd. Hate how South Korea wants to be so "asian". South Korea is an asian subculture and will always be one. China and Japan are better asian nations. Bad attitudes are happening in this country. Hates its own neighbor. High class. Pointing at weird looking foreigners. Arrogant. This is kinda what people have to change here but we shouldn't look at this country bad because not all people do that. - ashlyn I love this country bur if I went there they keep pointing and calling me a black monkey because I'm a filipino Ugly people V 37 Comments
Sri Lanka Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka and known from the beginning of British colonial rule until 1972 as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia near south-east India. 18 Sri Lanka is a poor country and there are so many beggars on the street, etc, etc. There are good people and there are bad people. But, there are good rules here. Gay and lesbian marriages are illegal. Incest is illegal here as well unlike in America. These are the things that I love about Sri Lanka. Children could be taught to do the right things without the parents being sent to prison for child abuse. There are no gay and lesbian couples kissing on the road. I have to agree that there were a lot of rape incidents here but that isn't a huge problem compared to things like homosexuality and incest. There are homosexual couples here but it isn't legal and it would be a really stupid thing to do to start protests asking for it to be legal. Even if it was to be made legal, then majority of the people would be against it, which would be a good thing. Some idiots here tend to pick up bad qualities from people in western countries without picking up the good ones. But overall, this is a...more We have some money problems, but live in peace. Realty is, this is the one best country to live. I'm an Australian, working and living in Sri Lanka. My job requires me to travel and I've lived in 14 different countires in the last 16 years. This is probably the second best country I've lived in after Germany (And Oz). The people are great, all the urban areas are pretty well developed. The rural areas have to be improved though. Main positive is definitely the people, very friendly and polite. Heaven on earth V 12 Comments
Malaysia Malaysia is a Southeast Asian country occupying the Malaysian Peninsula and part of the island of Borneo. It's known for its beaches, rain forests and mix of Malay, Chinese, Indian and European influences. The sprawling capital, Kuala Lumpur, is home to colonial buildings, busy shopping districts such...read more. 19 Racist government, always say we Chinese go back to China, Indian go back to India. Government treats us like crap. I always thought that your country is better in handling racism than mine. Chinese Indonesian here. Shocked - wackonicko Democratic? My a**. Race do importance to control a country, Indonesia is crap, Malaysia is crap as well. Look at which race is the most in this two country, and look at result and people of the country. Two country is poor, the people is poor, and the government try to make it worst. If all other race such as Chinese or Indian or other leave this country, and left all those racist one, I can guarantee that this country will soon, become stone age. Not only that, The Police never catch the robbers and thieves especially the motorcycle. It will be harmful for Children aged 15 and below who went to school alone and Public Transport is very horribly maintained.
If Children were not aware, it will also harmful for them. Most tourist will not going to visit Malaysia again Currently living in Malaysia. I am on a 2 years contract, but thinking of going before it ends. I don't think I ever want to come back here or visit. V 28 Comments
Yemen Yemen, officially known as the Republic of Yemen, is an Arab country in Western Asia, occupying the southwestern to the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. 20 Why is this country not at least in the top 5? It is considered one of the worst nations to be a woman, plus, constant bombings and famines. It is nearly as bad as Syria but often tends to be overlooked. The poor place is basically a drone testing range :/
Israel The State of Israel is a country in the Middle East and the only country with a Jewish majority in the world but arab, african and east asian communities still can be found....read more. 21 Racist white Jews who stole Palestinian land. Hostile people, disgusting people who keep on pulling the 2nd world war card and say "oh look what to us"the say they are the"only" democracy in the Middle East but really that's a lie cause look at the way they have oppressed the rights of the Palestinian people. Apartheid state we needs to be sanctioned like the old South Africa. It's not even a country. Just land taken by force and then called it's own country. Heck some of the other legitimate countries don't even consider Israel as a country... Stupid terrorist people their book of Jews told to kill and destroy. I just hate them. There are no israel land V 31 Comments
Bhutan Bhutan, officially the Kingdom of Bhutan, is a landlocked country in South Asia at the eastern end of the Himalayas. 22 Land of peace... Long live our king and may God bless our country The worst country in the world. Check a few YouTube videos about their racism and you will be shocked Best country in the world An above average country. Small and peaceful. Less people, less crimes, less corruption
Vietnam Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. 23 Well, Vietnam is messed up right now, all thanks to the Communist (aka North):/The south had lost the war and the north took control of Vietnam (current flag:the red one with a big fat yellow star on it) ever since. And life in Vietnam isn't pretty either. I watched this vietnamese channel here in the US (SBTN, is what it is called), and they show a person getting beat up in public, just because they speak out that the policy didn't like. Basically, now you don't have rights over there:(And if you ever see a vietnamese person having the a yellow flag with three red stripes on it (South Flag), means they still consider that flag as flag of Vietnam. I belong to that flag:)
So, right now isn't a perfect time living there:(So this is right (rating). Vietnam's a great country and all but 2 things, 1. Communism and 2. They are poor due to the war. and all of this wouldn't happened if it wasn't for the stupid French! Vietnam is a safe country but only 3 things that I don't like about it. First the stupid communism, second I can't breath well in the some kind of big cities, third the education is not very good enough. The president of Vietnam is messed! V 7 Comments
Thailand Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand, formerly known as Siam, is a country at the centre of the Indochinese peninsula in Mainland Southeast Asia. 24 I highly recommend going to Thailand before you display your opinion here. It is different for everyone. I have been there several times to many cities and all I have seen are extremely kind people, extraordinary food, and a culture that will blow you away. This is my opinion. Say what you want, but I LOVE THAILAND! Thailand is the best place to live. Thailand is a very nice country A dream tourist destination but...
-Sexually exploited childrens
-In conflicts with neighbors,Malaysia and Burma
-Corrupted monarchy
-2ND country with the most car accidents
-Terrorism in southern provinces
-A lot of others problen
For me Thailand is the worst country in Asia V 5 Comments
Nepal Nepal, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a sovereign state located in South Asia....read more. 25 I am from Nepal. Our country is very small, its locked between the two biggest countries in the world I.E. India and China, our country is not even the size of one state of India so it will take some time to develop. The crime rate is very few here as compared to other countries in Asia like India and Afgansthan. There are bad people in every part of the world also in Nepal but mostly people are good and satisfied with whatever they have. Many tourists visit our country, people are poor but very few people die of hunger. However most die due to lack of health care :( Yes 100% true. People are very friendly and generous I've visited many asian countries. I was shocked to see Nepal being wonderfully clean and peace place even though they have a such corrupt and weak government. There is somewhat pollution in their capital city, Kathmandu, but it's not bad as it's in India and Chin. Beautiful mountains, rivers, forests, flowers and most importantly people. I can't wait to visit it again. Too many Indians V 8 Comments
Kuwait 26 Kuwait is good and not too religious like Saudi Arabia! They friendly and rich! The Kuwait city is very rich and one of the happiest city! This whole nation is happy! I don't think so I am an Indian that also a girl living here it is very good place to live very comfortable a luxury life but missing India Nothing' to say, talk positive.
Palau 27 Palau isn't in Asia Who ever put this here needs a lesson in geography Palau is in Oceania Not Aisa plus who put that here GO TO FRIKIN SCHOOL V 1 Comment
Oman Oman, officially the Sultanate of Oman, is an Arab country in the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula. 28 Oman is in the Middle East... The only African Middle Eastern country is Egypt... This place is stupid I thought Oman was in Africa? - benhos
Mongolia Mongolia is a landlocked unitary sovereign state in East Asia. Its area is roughly equivalent with the historical territory of Outer Mongolia, and that term is sometimes used to refer to the current state. 29 NOTHING without Genghis Khan. Dirty, poor, and polluted. DISAGREE PEOPLE HERE ARE MONGOLOIDS WAHAHA!
Bahrain 30 Great place to live! Liberal, with history and culture, tax free... Are you kidding me! This is the best place in Asia! - darthvadern Quite boring place to stay more than 3 days.. Bahrain is VeRY good
Taiwan Republic of China was established in 1912. After the Chinese Civil War (1949), the Chinese government relocated to Taiwan. Its capital was originally Nanjing but now it's Taipei. Mandarin is the most spoken language. 31 A independence country, with lots of freedom. I'm a Canadian, I love Taiwan so much. People there are narrow thinking square heads, very unfriendly and self centered, the country is only notable for the Palace Museum Plenty of rare wildlife, lots of freedom, and independent from China. Good
Turkmenistan Turkmenistan is a country in Central Asia, bordered by Kazakhstan to the northwest, Uzbekistan to the north and east, Afghanistan to the southeast, Iran to the south and southwest, and the Caspian Sea to the west. 32 Turkmenistan is the most corrupt country in Asia! That country is the part of the 10 corrupt countries in the world! They don't have laws and government! Turkmenistan never did anything to anyone!
Macau 33 With similar GDP per capita to Switzerland, our living environment is worse than the third world. Corruption is never shocking to local people. Foreign people might not be able to understand how much unfairness the government created after the casino industry started to grow. The government also stole our living standard and probably transferred it to a tremendously huge number in their bank account somewhere overseas. The worst environment in the world. People only care about gambling and don't have a social life. They are also very unfriendly and don't want to communicate with other people. I know people from macau and they often insault other countrys and think they are the best.
Qatar Qatar, officially the State of Qatar, is a sovereign country located in Southwest Asia, occupying the small Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula. 34 Oil money, but will it be everlasting? Uh hello this is the most richest country in the world small but rich get this country of the list Don't forget the filipino slaves! ROR Don't THINK SO...PEOPLE SO MEAN...LIVED THERE UNFORTUNATELY
Hong Kong 35 Children have to do a lot of homeworks every day, so they don't have much time for do whatever they want Most polluted city in the world Rude is part of criminal behaviour. Money, money, money?
Money, money, money, money?
Money, money, money, money, money?
Russia Russia, known as the "Russian Federation", was formed on Dec 25, 1991. It is located mainly in Asia, while a portion of it remains in Europe. The capital and largest city is Moscow, followed by Saint Petersburg in terms of population. The country primarily speaks Russian, a Slavic language....read more. 36 Russia is an Asian country, geographically. But when the descendants of Romans conquered it killing all the peaceful nomads living in the Far East the proclaimed all the land and selfishly considered it as their own Wait, nobody told me Russia is a asian country.
I didn't see their flag in Asian Games 2018. - starryrcad Russia is mostly in eorpe than Asia. My mom was born in Russia so you're kind of rude. Russia is the worst country ever along with america may these two bitchy bastard insensitivve inhumane bloody countries disappear forever and for good America is not a bad country dude. Liberals however are trying to ruin our country. - LordDovahkiin
Brunei Brunei, officially the Nation of Brunei, the Abode of Peace, is a sovereign state located on the north coast of the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia. 37 Religiously oppressive country, |
as the successor to the famed Hubble Space Telescope. The Canadian Space Agency dubs it to be the "most powerful space telescope ever."
The plans are outlined in a new policy framework announced by Industry Minister James Moore on Friday morning at the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa.
"As we approach Canada's 150th birthday in 2017, we want to continue to support a strong, competitive and innovative space sector that will be here with us for the long-term, making us proud," Moore said.
Joining him was the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) president and former chief of defence staff Walter Natynczyk, as well as Canadian astronauts Jeremy Hansen and David Saint-Jacques.
'The hub' of Canada's space program
Aside from additional funding to the Webb telescope project, the government did not pledge any more money to the CSA, which means expansion of Canada's space program will involve more non-governmental players.
The new space policy framework will emphasize the work of the private sector to support space activities and pushes for co-operation with international partners "to pool data for mutual benefit and obtain services and technologies that would otherwise be unavailable."
A Canadian space advisory council will also be established, to be comprised of "stakeholders in the public and private space domain" and chaired by the CSA president.
Natynczyk said the agency is really only "the hub of the Canadian space program." He said there are more than 200 companies involved in space projects, 30 universities with space studies and 21 government departments whose mandates include contributing to space solutions.
"And what's key here is this policy allows the space agency to enable all their success," Natynczyk said in a media scrum after the announcement.
"So it's not only the great astronauts like David and Jeremy, but it's also the great engineers that we have and those who are putting the projects together."
Canada's space industry employs about 8,000 people and contributes $3.33 billion to the economy each year.
Future Chris Hadfields
The government is committing to continue Canada's astronaut program, to have Canadians aboard future space laboratories and research centres, leaving the door open for future Chris Hadfields.
"He opened up our eyes and our minds to the possibilities of future exploration in space," Moore said of Canada's first commander of the International Space Station.
During Hadfield's mission in 2013, more than 100 scientific experiments were conducted on the ISS.
Students from a local elementary school were on hand for the announcement.
"You know, the first human being who will walk on Mars has probably already been born. It might be you. It might be one of your classmates," Moore said to the students.
"Yes, space is an industry for Canada, but it's also an adventure. An adventure of the intellect, an adventure of discovery."
Space program still needs money: Garneau
Friday's announcement signals a renaissance for the CSA, which was hit by blistering budget cuts over the past few years.
Liberal MP and former astronaut Marc Garneau said it is "a good framework" but the real test is the execution.
"I will wait to see whether the grand words of this framework are going to turn into something positive for Canada's space program."
Garneau, who was also the CSA president, acknowledged the $17-million funding promise is a start, but noted that the space agency lost $30 million from its budget last year.
"Fine words have to be backed up by actions and that involves money as well."
The NDP had harsher words, saying that the Conservatives are "compromising middle-class jobs in this innovative sector."
“Thanks to Conservative ineptitude, important projects like the Radarsat Constellation Mission are late, over budget and jobs have been lost,” said industry critic Chris Charlton in a statement.
In December, Moore said the government would reveal Canada's new space plan in 2014, in response to a report written by former cabinet minister David Emerson. The report criticized the country's space program and said the agency responsible had "floundered" for a decade.This article was originally posted at Scientific American. It’s reprinted with permission.
The sun strikes every square meter of our planet with more than 1,360 watts of power. Half of that energy is absorbed by the atmosphere or reflected back into space. Seven hundred watts of power, on average, reaches Earth’s surface. Summed across the half of the Earth that the sun is shining on, that is 89 petawatts of power. By comparison, all of human civilization uses around 15 terrawatts of power, or one six-thousandth as much. In 14 and a half seconds, the sun provides as much energy to Earth as humanity uses in a day.
The numbers are staggering and surprising. In 88 minutes, the sun provides 470 exajoules of energy, as much energy as humanity consumes in a year. In 112 hours — less than five days — it provides 36 zettajoules of energy – as much energy as is contained in all proven reserves of oil, coal, and natural gas on this planet.
If humanity could capture one tenth of one percent of the solar energy striking the Earth — one part in one thousand — we would have access to six times as much energy as we consume in all forms today, with almost no greenhouse gas emissions. At the current rate of energy consumption increase — about 1 percent per year — we will not be using that much energy for another 180 years.
It’s small wonder, then, that scientists and entrepreneurs alike are investing in solar energy technologies to capture some of the abundant power around us. Yet solar power is still a minuscule fraction of all power generation capacity on the planet. There is at most 30 gigawatts of solar generating capacity deployed today, or about 0.2 percent of all energy production. Up until now, while solar energy has been abundant, the systems to capture it have been expensive and inefficient.
That is changing. Over the last 30 years, researchers have watched as the price of capturing solar energy has dropped exponentially. There’s now frequent talk of a “Moore’s law” in solar energy. In computing, Moore’s law dictates that the number of components that can be placed on a chip doubles every 18 months. More practically speaking, the amount of computing power you can buy for a dollar has roughly doubled every 18 months, for decades. That’s the reason that the phone in your pocket has thousands of times as much memory and ten times as much processing power as a famed Cray 1 supercomputer, while weighing ounces compared to the Cray’s 10,000-pound bulk, fitting in your pocket rather than a large room, and costing tens or hundreds of dollars rather than tens of millions.
If similar dynamics worked in solar power technology, then we would eventually have the solar equivalent of an iPhone — incredibly cheap, mass distributed energy technology that was many times more effective than the giant and centralized technologies it was born from.
So is there such a phenomenon? The National Renewable Energy Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy has watched solar photovoltaic price trends since 1980. They’ve seen the price per Watt of solar modules (not counting installation) drop from $22 dollars in 1980 down to under $3 today.
Is this really an exponential curve? And is it continuing to drop at the same rate, or is it leveling off in recent years? To know if a process is exponential, we plot it on a log scale.
And indeed, it follows a nearly straight line on a log scale. Some years the price changes more than others. Averaged over 30 years, the trend is for an annual 7 percent reduction in the dollars per watt of solar photovoltaic cells. While in the earlier part of this decade prices flattened for a few years, the sharp decline in 2009 made up for that and put the price reduction back on track. Data from 2010 (not included above) shows at least a 30 percent further price reduction, putting solar prices ahead of this trend.
If we look at this another way, in terms of the amount of power we can get for $100, we see a continual rise on a log scale.
What’s driving these changes? There are two factors. First, solar cell manufacturers are learning — much as computer chip manufacturers keep learning — how to reduce the cost to fabricate solar.
Second, the efficiency of solar cells — the fraction of the sun’s energy that strikes them that they capture — is continually improving. In the lab, researchers have achieved solar efficiencies of as high as 41 percent, an unheard of efficiency 30 years ago. Inexpensive thin-film methods have achieved laboratory efficiencies as high as 20 percent, still twice as high as most of the solar systems in deployment today.
What do these trends mean for the future? If the 7 percent decline in costs continues (and 2010 and 2011 both look likely to beat that number), then in 20 years the cost per watt of PV cells will be just over $0.50.
Indications are that the projections above are actually too conservative. First Solar corporation has announced internal production costs (though not consumer prices) of $0.75 per watt, and expects to hit $0.50 per watt in production cost in 2016. If they hit their estimates, they’ll be beating the trend above by a considerable margin.
What does the continual reduction in solar price per watt mean for electricity prices and carbon emissions? Historically, the cost of PV modules (what we’ve been using above) is about half the total installed cost of systems. The rest of the cost is installation. Fortunately, installation costs have also dropped at a similar pace to module costs. If we look at the price of electricity from solar systems in the U.S. and scale it for reductions in module cost, we get this:
The cost of solar, in the average location in the U.S., will cross the current average retail electricity price of $0.12 per kilowatt hour in around 2020, or 9 years from now. In fact, given that retail electricity prices are currently rising by a few percent per year, prices will probably cross earlier, around 2018 for the country as a whole, and as early as 2015 for the sunniest parts of America.
10 years later, in 2030, solar electricity is likely to cost half what coal electricity does today. Solar capacity is being built out at an exponential pace already. When the prices become so much more favorable than those of alternate energy sources, that pace will only accelerate.
We should always be careful of extrapolating trends out, of course. Natural processes have limits. Phenomena that look exponential eventually level off or become linear at a certain point. Yet physicists and engineers in the solar world are optimistic about their roadmaps for the coming decade. The cheapest solar modules, not yet on the market, have manufacturing costs under $1 per watt, making them contenders — when they reach the market — for breaking the $0.12 per Kwh mark.
The exponential trend in solar watts per dollar has been going on for at least 31 years now. If it continues for another 8-10, which looks extremely likely, we’ll have a power source which is as cheap as coal for electricity, with virtually no carbon emissions. If it continues for 20 years, which is also well within the realm of scientific and technical possibility, then we’ll have a green power source that is half the price of coal for electricity.
That’s good news for the world.
Photo: Evening sun by dingbat2005, on Flickr
Sources and further reading:UEFA is investigating claims by Dutch giants Ajax that it was given controversial advice on sectarianism by Scottish football bosses.
The report by the game's European governing body alleges the Scottish FA told Ajax terms such as 'Fenian' and 'Orange' were viewed as a "badge of honour" by half of Old Firm fans and it did not warn clubs about the use of such discriminatory language.
The claims emerged in the findings of disciplinary action taken against Ajax after its fans displayed a banner with the words ‘Fenian B*******’ when it last played Celtic in Amsterdam nearly two years ago.
But, days before the Dutch side again take on Celtic in the Netherlands, the SFA has vigorously denied it offered Ajax any advice on the matter and was seeking answers from UEFA as to why the submission was included.
A UEFA spokeswoman told The Herald: "We are aware of this case. We are currently in touch with the SFA and Ajax to check this situation. That is ongoing.
"There is no information at this stage on whether a case will be opened on the matter or not so we can't comment any further on our side."
Ajax said that it had contacted the SFA "regarding that certain banner" but said it would not comment further on an incident from 2013, especially with a game against Celtic so close on the horizon.
The UEFA report criticised its Scottish counterparts as "reckless" amid claims allegedly passed on to Ajax officials that it viewed sectarian terms as part of the national game.
One SFA senior source said it was "deeply unhappy" Ajax had made the claim and "disappointed" Uefa did not check the comments with Glasgow.
Ajax were fined £25,000 for the banner and ordered to close part of their stadium during a European game as punishment.
Uefa claimed that when preparing its defence over the use of the term 'Fenian' by its fans, Ajax had been told by the SFA's disciplinary services manager that half the Celtic support used the word "as a badge of honour while the other half might consider it unpleasant".
It added: "The Scottish FA did not consider the word 'Fenian' racist. It neither warned nor punished Celtic FC or Rangers FC for calling each other 'Orange B*******' and “Fenian B*******” respectively, since it considered such provocative words part of the game."
It continues: "The fact that the Scottish FA, for its own internal reasons, does not consider references to 'Fenian B*******' as an offence cannot prevent the Uefa disciplinary bodies from punishing such behaviour, since they are independent bodies.
"This argument, which therefore is clearly unfounded and even reckless, does not merit a more detailed assessment."
But while the SFA has confirmed it was approached by Ajax to provide a statement as part of their case, it has insisted none was provided.
A spokeswoman said: "The club was advised, in writing, that we would not provide any such statement. For the avoidance of doubt, the Scottish FA did not present the information outlined in the submissions and we are seeking clarification on this matter from Uefa."
A senior source added: "Even if such a banner was displayed at a Scottish ground it would be a matter for the SPFL. "Uefa operates strict liability. We don't. We agree with it but its our members who decide."MNT
CHICAGO (Feb. 2, 2016) – U.S. head coach Jurgen Klinsmann made two changes to the January camp roster following the team’s 3-2 win against Iceland, releasing defenders Brad Evans and Michael Orozco back to their respective clubs.
Evans experienced tightness in his hamstring during the victory and is being removed as a precaution in order to be ready for preseason with his club Seattle Sounders FC. Per an agreement with Club Tijuana, Orozco was only scheduled to play against Iceland and returned to his team following the match.
Evans started at right back and Orozco started in central defense in Sunday’s 3-2 win against Iceland to open the MNT’s 2016 campaign at StubHub Center in Carson, Calif. Evans was replaced at halftime while Orozco played the full 90 and tallied his fourth career international goal in the 59th minute to tie the game at 2-2.
The now annual training camp, which began on Jan. 11 and runs through Feb. 6 contains a mix of Senior Team members and a host of players age-eligible for the U-23 MNT. The roster heading into the team’s match on Friday, Feb. 5 against Canada at StubHub Center stands at 24-players. Kick-off is set for 7:15 p.m. PT, and the game will be broadcast live on FS1, UniMas and Univision Deportes Network.
U.S. Roster by Position:
GOALKEEPERS (3): David Bingham (San Jose Earthquakes), Sean Johnson (Chicago Fire), Luis Robles (New York Red Bulls)
DEFENDERS (7): Kellyn Acosta (FC Dallas), Matt Besler (Sporting Kansas City), Steve Birnbaum (D.C. United), Eric Miller (Montreal Impact), Tim Parker (Vancouver Whitecaps FC), Matt Polster (Chicago Fire), Brandon Vincent (Chicago Fire)
MIDFIELDERS (8): Michael Bradley (Toronto FC), Mix Diskerud (New York City FC), Jermaine Jones (Unattached), Perry Kitchen (Unattached), Darlington Nagbe (Portland Timbers), Lee Nguyen (New England Revolution), Tony Tchani (Columbus Crew SC), Wil Trapp (Columbus Crew SC)
FORWARDS (6): Jozy Altidore (Toronto FC), Ethan Finlay (Columbus Crew SC), Jerome Kiesewetter (VfB Stuttgart), Jordan Morris (Seattle Sounders FC), Khiry Shelton (New York City FC), Gyasi Zardes (LA Galaxy)The fight against the Dakota Access pipeline is NOT OVER! Donald Trump is trying to seal the deal on getting this dirty Bakken oil project completed and we need your help to demonstrate that we are not alone in this struggle!
The Department of Army has filed a notice of intent to complete an Environmental Impact Statement for the Lake Oahe crossing by the proposed Dakota Access pipeline - and they are now accepting public comments on the project!
The Indigenous Environmental Network has created a pretty simple form for you to submit comments for the Dakota Access Pipeline Environmental Impact Statement (EIS)! We have created a pre-filled form but...we strongly encourage you to personalize your comment.
Please Stand with Standing Rock and the Oceti Sakowin! Leave a comment!
We have until February 20th, 2017 to leave comments!
Pidamayayapi do! Thank you!Roseburg, Oregon City Leaders: Obama IS NOT WELCOME to Come Grandstand at the Funerals of Shooting Victims (VIDEO)
David Jacques, publisher of the Roseburg Beacon, told Bill O’Reilly on Monday that the people of Roseburg would not welcome Barack Obama if he came to town to politicize the funerals of the Umpqua College shooting victims.
Madman Chris Harper-Mercer murdered eight students and a teacher last week in a shooting spree on campus.
David Jacques and community leaders do not want Obama to come grandstand at the funerals:
Well I think the president will not be welcomed into the community. And that is not just my opinion. We talked to dozens upon dozens of citizens, some family members of the victims, our elected officials. And you may have a copy, if you don’t I’d be glad to read from it on the air that our Douglas County commissioners along with our Douglas County sheriff, who is very popular, and our chief of police all came to consensus language about him not being welcome here to grandstand for political purposes.
David Jacques said Westboro cult is also planning on politicizing and protesting the funerals.
Via The O’Reilly Factor:While AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal is the most preferred chief ministerial candidate for Delhi, a survey shows that the BJP has a slight edge over the two other contenders in a triangular contest. The opinion poll by ABP News-Nielsen suggests that the BJP is likely to get 28 out of the 70 seats in Delhi.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) party which will be contesting in Delhi for the first time is likely to get around 18 seats. The survey also suggests that the Congress will bag around 22 seats, with the AAP eating into the 15% of its vote share.
While the BJP is likely to get maximum seats, its possible chief ministerial candidate Vijay Goel does not enjoy the popularity among the masses. The good news for the BJP is that AAP or no AAP, it is expected to gain another 15% share from the Congress vote bank. Three times chief minister Sheila Dikshit has been rated poorly by the young voters of Delhi. She enjoys 27% of popular vote along with Goel, while Kejriwal leads with 32%.Paul Ryan at the Capitol on March 2. Win McNamee/Getty Images
Congressional Republicans led by right-wing think tank test-tube baby Paul Ryan have been claiming for a solid eight years to be putting the finishing touches on a workable alternative to Obamacare. On Monday, Paul Ryan finally, really unveiled an Obamacare replacement bill. Everyone hates it.
No, seriously. Obviously liberals/leftists/Democrats were almost certainly not going to like it no matter what, and indeed, there has been nary a whisper of a rumor that even the most moderate Dems are interested in voting for the bill. But what’s been really remarkable is how much heat it’s gotten immediately from both the moderate and hard-line and insider and grassroots segments of Ryan’s own party.
But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the rollout of your Affordable Care Act repeal-and-replace legislation?
*Correction, March 7, 2017: This post originally misspelled Sen. Shelley Moore Capito’s first name.Well, this is rather surprising: Microsoft is in talks to buy Minecraft's developer, Mojang, according to a few different sources. The Wall Street Journal says that the ever loose-lipped "person familiar with the matter" has noted the deal is valued at over $2 billion, while reps for both Redmond and the Swedish developer remain mum on the subject. We've reached out to Microsoft and, as expected, were told by a company spokesperson that the outfit doesn't comment on rumors or speculation, as well. If true, this doesn't come too far after outspoken Minecraft mastermind Markus "Notch" Persson recently changing his stance on the Facebook/Oculus VR purchase. Maybe he's come around to the idea of no-longer being one of the world's largest indie developers? Hopefully we'll know rather soon. Until then, you'll find us playing with Steve on Xbox One.
Update: A few new developments have surfaced, including details on the deal and when it should be completed. The New York Times reports that Microsoft approached Mojang as early as three months ago and the purchase should be finished by the end of this month. Perhaps most interesting though is that should the deal go through, Notch might not stay past six months after the ink has dried. Why? He likely wants to make sure his employees are being well taken care of. According to Bloomberg's sources, Notch (not Microsoft) actually made the approach to Redmond given the positive experience Mojang had bringing Minecraft to the Xbox One. Bloomberg also reports that Notch will help with the transition into ownership, but doesn't plan on staying long beyond that -- this isn't Microsoft forcing him out, it could be him looking to try his hand at something else.
Update 2: Reuters hears that Microsoft could unveil the deal (reportedly up to $2.5 billion) on September 15th.TuNur, a small company based in the UK, has applied to the Tunisian Government to begin construction of a 4.5GW concentrated solar power (CSP) project in the Sahara Desert. If successful, the energy generated will be transported via underground cables to Italy, Malta and France, providing Europe with a new, carbon-free, alternative baseload power source.
“The TuNur project is a fully integrated solar export project, so it combines the generation of solar energy in Tunisia with dedicated transmission links to the European network,” explains TuNur chief operating officer Daniel Rich.
The project will be located close to Réjim Maâtoug in the Kébili Governorate, in the south-west of Tunisia where TuNur has agreed to lease land from a local tribe. In the summer, temperatures here reach highs of 34°C with as much as 12 hours of sunshine a day.
When fully constructed, the project will cover an area three times the size of Manhattan. Hundreds of thousands of parabolic mirrors will be arranged to direct the intense Saharan sun at CSP towers reaching as tall as 200m. Heat will be stored in molten salts that run through these towers, heating steam to turn turbines but also, as the salt can hold heat for hours, power can be generated long after the sun stops shining.
If given the go-ahead, Sahara solar could provide power to two million European homes. This concept is not new, but until now it has been unsuccessful. So what makes TuNurs different?
Tackling a lack of clean baseload power
Adoption of renewables has ramped up and continues to grow year on year. In 2016, 86% of new installed capacity in the EU came from renewables. But the question of how to provide reliable baseload power to balance intermittent solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind has persisted.
“Before policymakers decide the nature of future electricity grids, some basic questions about the diversity of an electricity grid should be addressed and a re-examination of the role of baseload technologies appears in order,” noted Benjamin Matek and Karl Gawell in The Benefits of Baseload Renewables: A Misunderstood Energy Technology, a paper published by The Electricity Journal in 2015. “Instead of assuming one technology is preferred, a range of renewable supply options should be considered,” he adds.
While some have advocated for a greater reliance on nuclear energy to provide baseload power, anti-nuclear sentiment has limited its adoption. In Germany, commitment to ending use of nuclear following the Fukushima disaster has led to an increase in new coal-fired power stations. Between 2011 and 2015, the power generated by coal grew by 10.7GW despite the expansion of Germany’s renewable sector.
TuNur’s clean, alternative energy must compete with traditional forms of baseload power such as coal and gas, but also other storage-based renewable sources. As efforts to decarbonise are increasing throughout Europe, so is the need for reliable, clean power, especially as the electrification of transport systems gains momentum. Currently, however, Europe imports 60% of its power in the form of gas, oil and coal from Russia and the Middle East, with few import alternatives.
“What we’re doing is essentially competing against the other forms of high-capacity factor or storage-based low-carbon technologies in Europe, so that’s PV with electrical storage or things like offshore wind, new nuclear and so on,” says Rich.
CSP vs PV
When the project was first proposed, TuNur had not made a firm decision on which solar technology to pursue. However, it was confident of the need for energy storage capability, to ensure it was not simply another renewable provider in the European market, but able to offer something unique.
“Because we had to integrate storage in some form, do we go with CSP with integrated storage or do we go with PV with batteries, or a hybrid of the two?” says Rich.
TuNur argues that CSP offers the most economic source of stored power at present. “CSP is thermal generation and therefore the storage element is actually thermal storage rather than electrical storage,” Rich explains. “Today, thermal storage is cheaper and more efficient than battery storage.”
The first stage of Sahara solar will see a 250MW CSP tower constructed, along with a dedicated transmission line through the Mediterranean Sea to Malta. This phase is estimated to cost €85m, and a further €1.6bn for the cable link.
As such, the cost of power is expected to be 8.73 cents per kilowatt hour (c/kWh). Solar PV is estimated to cost 7.7c/kWh for generation alone in Tunisia. Elsewhere within the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) region, the price of CSP has already seen dramatic reductions.
Earlier this year, the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority announced that the fourth phase of its 200MW Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum solar park included bids as low as 6.3c/kWh, while SolarReserve in South Australia achieved prices as low as 5.2c/KWh, and its project in Chile in 2016 hit 5.7c/kWh.
As the cost of CSP has dropped it has become increasingly competitive with other sources of dispatchable power. “We believe that by deploying CSP in Tunisia and generating the power there, that even with the additional costs of the transmission links to Europe we are a much more competitive solution for the Europe markets than those alternatives,” says Rich.
Furthermore, CSP offers a host of local benefits. TuNurs alone promises up to 20,000 new jobs. “With CSP technology, up to 60% of capex can, in theory, come from local companies, so there’s a huge foreign direct investment and socio-economic development opportunity for Tunisia without restricting Tunisia from also doing this for their domestic supply,” says Rich.
CSP arguably provides greater local investment opportunities than a PV project would, as there is a higher percentage of local manufacturing; PV panels are generally imported, so require less on-site construction, creating fewer local jobs. “CSP is more of an infrastructure project whereas PV has become quite a simplified commodity almost,” Rich says, adding that “There are more challenges, but the construction industry is gearing up and has already geared up to be able to accommodate that.”
Is the Sahara the Holy Grail of solar?
For years solar power projects in the Sahara have been talked about, hailed as a potential Holy Grail of renewable power. The Great Saharan Desert is more than 3.6 million square miles of dry, hot land, 1.2% of which could power the whole world, theoretically, if it were to be covered in solar PV.
But the Sahara’s solar potential is yet to be realised, with only the Noor project in Morocco currently operating in the area. There are a number of reasons for this, including political instability in the MENA region putting off potential investors. Furthermore, the cost of transmission, solar panels and plant maintenance has dissuaded investors in the past.
The Sahara has long been viewed as a potential battery for Europe, using CSP. In 2013, the €400bn Desertec project collapsed after the two advocates, Desertec Foundation and the Desertec Industrial Initiative, fell out, each accusing the other of poor communication.
TuNur believes that now is the time for solar in the Sahara to finally take off. “If you look at the fundamentals, I think there have been technical challenges to overcome up until now in terms of what is the right technology to deploy in the Sahara, including the development of the transmission, in particular submarine transmission sector,” says Rich.
If the TuNur application is successful and the project comes to fruition, it could mark an important step for Saharan solar, CSP technologies and European green goals. As Rich says, “Our focus today is getting all the permits and the authorisation in place in Tunisia and in Europe.
“At the moment, based on the work that’s been done to date and the remaining development steps, we believe that we could enter into financial close and begin construction for phase one by the end of 2019. We estimate two and a half to three years’ construction time before commercial operations.”Dozens of talented musicians have contributed toward combating the globalist agenda – we have them on video!
As the battle heats up, Infowars is pleased to announce a one week extension to our popular Alex Jones Folk Song cover contest, with $20,000 in cash prizes.
Entries will now be accepted through August 11 at 4pm Central time.
The winner will be announced Aug 25th during the Alex Jones Show broadcast.
In the meantime, we’ll be showcasing entries and posting them to our own Youtube.
**By entering (send to [email protected]) you agree to let Infowars post your video to Infowars.com and to re-upload your video to our Youtube and Facebook channels.**
Check out the latest entries and enter for your chance to win!
Monty Stasis
Rusty Cage 2
J Kozlowski
Chelsea Eiben
Gabriel BG
OMFG LAZERGUNS
Pete Starks London
Red Pill Reality ****
Simon King
the White Shoe Boys
Tyler North
Eepsta Jah
Three separate rewards totaling $20,000 will be given to whoever produces:
(1) The best cover – $10,000
(2) Filmed from the best location – $5,000
(3) Best audience participation – $5,000
Contest rules are as follows:
– Video and audio must be posted to FaceBook, YouTube or Periscope
– “Infowars.com” must be featured in the video
– Participants must sing the entire song as written
– The song must use instruments or have a musical backing
Send a link of your entires to [email protected] with “Folk Cover Song Contest” in the subject line. Submissions must also have contact information including name and email or phone number. All winners will be payed via PayPal.
Watch previous entries in the links below and good luck!
• Musicians Unite Against Globalist World Poverty Plan
• New Lord of The Rings Film Shows Horrors of The Migrant Invasion
• Entries are Pouring in for Infowars’ $20K Contest Exposing the Globalists
• Artists Unite to Battle Globalism: Infowars $20K Folk Song Contest
• Video: Freedom Fighters Expose Illegal Migrant Invasion Run By Pedophile Globalists
• Infowars Folk Song Cover Contest Is Blowing Up The Internet
• Infowars Announces $20K in Prizes for Best Cover Song Exposing Hillary, UN Plan to Implode BordersMy heart is hurting so bad no one can make me believe this is real Father God I pray that you send clarity over this cause I just don’t understand My heart hurts it’s broken no one can convince me that this is real…. Prayer warriors please pray real hard for his only child, his daughter and family… #HeartOfAnAngel13YrsFamilyForever WeJustCelebreatedYour40thBirthday….. My God… My God… I can’t believe I’m writing this. – Tyrese Gibson (Fast & Furious co-star)
The world has lost yet another one of Hollywood’s greatest talents. Paul Walker was more than just a handsome face with sparkling blue eyes. He was more than just one of the leads in one of the biggest movie franchises in the world – Fast & Furious. He was more than one of the most talented actors of his time. He was a father, a friend, a brother, and a humble human being.
The world lost Paul Walker yesterday, November 30th, in Santa Clarita, California at the scene of a fatal car accident. Some are calling it ironic that the star known mainly for his work in the Fast & Furious franchise died doing what he did on screen so effortlessly, although he was just the passenger in this tragic incident. While Paul Walker was seen as a handsome and talented action star, there are many things the public didn’t know about him.
In memory of Paul Walker, here are 5 things you may not have known.
1. Marine Biology Major
Surfing soothes me, it’s always been a kind of zen experience for me. The ocean is so magnificent, peaceful, and awesome. The rest of the world disappears for me when I’m on a wave. – Paul Walker
Many people don’t know that Marine Biology was actually Paul Walker’s first love and continued to stay with him even through his success as an Actor. He majored in Marine Biology at a California community college and was a huge fan of Marine Biologist Jacques-Yves Cousteau. He went on to join the Board of Directors of the Billfish Foundation in 2006 and went on to do many projects including the National Geographic series “Expedition Great White” in 2010.
2. Full Time Dad
Just recently they came at me with an offer of something going in the summertime, and I wanted to punch them in the face for even coming to me with it. ‘You know what my priorities are right now, why are you even tempting me with this?’ I got home and I was just pissed off and my daughter was like ‘What’s the matter?’ And I told her what happened and she mellowed me out and she’s so funny. She sits me down and she’s like ‘When does it go? What months? I like to travel in the summertime anyway.’ So I said ‘We should actually entertain this one?’ and we both sat down and read it. We’re thinking about it. – Paul Walker
Meadow Rain Walker, his only child, was born on the 4th of November 1999. While many people knew that he had a daughter not many people knew that he had just decided to take on the role of being a full time father.
3. He was religious
While many celebrities keep silent about whether or not they believe in a God, Paul Walker opened up about his religion:
I’m a Christian now. The things that drove me crazy growing up was how everyone works at fault-finding with different religions. The people I don’t understand are atheists. I go surfing and snowboarding and I’m always around nature. I look at everything and think, ‘Who couldn’t believe there’s a God? Is all this a mistake?’ It just blows me away.
4. Professional Race Car Driver
Paul Walker was known for his role as Brian O’ Conner in the Fast & Furious series.
While he drove fast cars throughout the series some may not know that he actually drove fast cars in everyday life as well.
He was a professional race car driver and worked with AE Performance.
I have a performance shop called AE Performance and we do race prep and all that stuff out in Valencia. So I have a couple partners and we all race together. It’s a family business basically. We brought in friends and people coming from different economic backgrounds, let’s just say, but it’s cool because everyone gets to have their cake and eat it too. Eric Davis, Roger Rodas, Rich Taylor, Casey Adamo are just a handful of the guys involved. – Paul Walker
5. Humanitarian
I’m a doer, and whether it was the tsunami in Sri Lanka or the earthquake in Indonesia, I was always saying, ‘I should be there; I should be helping out.
So he connected the dots.
My mother’s a nurse, my sister’s going to nursing school right now, and my friends have construction backgrounds. God willing, the next time there’s a natural disaster I’m going to be there with 11 or 14 people and a handful of doctors. And the next time, it’ll be 150 people with 30 to 35 doctors. –Paul Walker
Paul Walker made sure to give back to the community whenever he had the opportunity.
Helping Chilean victims after the earthquake as well as victims of the earthquake in Haiti, he was a true humanitarian. In 2010, he helped found the non-profit organization Reach Out Worldwide (ROWW), |
workers and politicians with all the irrational cauldron of human emotions. Propaganda, as Churchill knew so well, is as much a part of war as killing enemy soldiers.
The most important impact of the Dambusters raid may indeed have been in convincing people on both sides that the Allies were winning, and that, often, is how wars are won and lost.
You can follow the Magazine on Twitter and on FacebookBetsey Stevenson is chief economist of the Department of Labor.
Nearly all Americans identify as either working or middle class. Only 3 percent consider themselves to be upper class and slightly more — 5 percent — identify as lower class. These patterns have been stable over the past four decades in which the General Social Survey has asked about social class; they hold whether the economy is booming or busting.
Years of economic setbacks have not fundamentally changed what the middle class wants out of life.
So what defines the middle class? Not income. Your current income is a poor predictor of the social class with which you identify. For example, among families with incomes between $60,000 and $75,000, roughly equal numbers considered themselves working class and middle class, with 2 percent reporting to be lower class and 1 percent upper class.
Current income is a poor predictor of social class because income changes throughout our lives, while social class is more enduring. Economists would prefer that we knew your lifetime average income as we suspect that this would be more highly correlated with the social class with which you identify. But even with a better measure of one’s lifetime income I suspect that we would still find that income alone doesn’t predict social class.
This is why the White House’s Middle Class Task Force defines middle class families by their aspirations, more than their income. Middle class families share an aspiration to own a home and car, to send their kids to college, and to take occasional family vacations, all while maintaining health and retirement security. This understanding of the middle class also helps explain why so many people identify with this group so consistently through time.
In our current economic climate many people have faced temporary setbacks. Unemployment is too high, home values have declined, and many have seen their savings shrink. But this hasn’t fundamentally changed the middle class. Their aspirations remain the same.
While the middle class has been hit particularly hard by this recent recession, the assault on the middle class has been occurring for decades. The middle, working, and lower classes have received little of the income gains over the past several decades. Meanwhile, the costs of housing, education and health care have all risen faster than incomes.
Supporting the middle class requires a multi-pronged approach. Jobs, education, housing, health care and a secure retirement must be within reach of most Americans.
This is why the Middle Class Task Force is a major initiative of the Obama administration. To touch on just a few examples: Labor Secretary Hilda Solis has made it her mission to support good jobs and to ensure that workers are able to access the training necessary to land these jobs. Students and their parents must be able to pay for a college education, and financial concerns shouldn’t distract students from completing their degrees. This is why reforming student lending and increasing Pell Grants has been an administration priority.
More recently, the tax bill extended a tax credit to help more than eight million students and their families afford the cost of college. We are also making an unprecedented investment in community colleges, including increasing partnerships with businesses to ensure that these programs are providing training for the jobs that employers need to fill — now and in the future.The captured Luftwaffe fighter pilots were swapping shocking stories about the raids they had flown over Kent during the opening stages of the Battle of Britain. They had no idea that their room was bugged and their conversation was recorded by Allied intelligence.
"I was over Ashford," said one who recalled flying low over the town in a so-called "disruption attack". "Some sort of meeting was being held on the market square. Masses of people, speeches and all that. They didn't half get spattered! That was fun!" he added.
Not wanting to be outdone, his colleague countered: "We did a low level attack on Eastbourne. We got there and there was this big house with a ball going on. There were lots of women in evening gowns and a band. The first time we just flew past. Then we turned round and gave it to them! My dear fellow, THAT was fun!"
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.
Yet another boasted: "In our squadron, I was known as the 'professional sadist'. I knocked off everything: buses, a civilian train in Folkestone. I gunned down every cyclist."
These macabre exchanges are among some 13,000 bugged conversations between captured German servicemen at the Trent Park detention centre in north London during the Second World War. The Allies recorded them in the hope of obtaining strategic information and excerpts from the 150,000 pages of transcripts will be published for the first time next week in Soldaten – which means "soldiers".
It is a disturbing book by two German historians which reveals the barbaric attitudes of some of the ordinary men who fought for Germany in the war and dispels the myth that chivalry played a role in the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain. It also suggests that millions of servicemen became brutalised almost as soon as hostilities began.
As one pilot said of the invasion of Poland in 1939: "I had to bomb a station but eight of the 16 bombs fell on houses. I didn't enjoy that. By the third day, I didn't care and on the fourth day, I enjoyed it. It was a pre-breakfast pleasure to chase soldiers through the fields with machine-gun fire."
The authors, Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer, discovered the recordings while searching in British and US military archives for material about the German U-boat war. They expose a German U-Boat rating's glee at having "knocked off a child transport" carrying more than 50 refugee children which his submarine had just sunk in the Atlantic.
In another case, a senior German army officer voiced his disgust at a junior lieutenant's giggling account of how he and his men raped a so-called woman "spy" in Russia and then threw hand grenades at her. "She didn't half scream when they exploded near her," the lieutenant jeered. The recordings also show, not for the first time, how the regular German army, or Wehrmacht, often delighted in taking part in the Holocaust: "The SS sent out an invitation for a Jew shoot," recalled one lieutenant colonel on the Russian front. "The whole company went along with rifles and gunned them down. Each could choose who he wanted to knock off." The book is certain to cause a stir in Germany. It may also reopen a major controversy that erupted in 1995 when historians staged a travelling exhibition about the regular army's role in the Holocaust.
Crimes of the Wehrmacht sparked protests and led several critics to dismiss it as a falsification. It was never turned into a permanent exhibit.
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 nowMedia playback is not supported on this device Win at Tottenham 'beautiful' - Pellegrini
Manchester City boss Manuel Pellegrini says Chelsea have matched the feats of his side last season - but without City's attacking flair or goals.
Chelsea won the Premier League title after a 1-0 win over Crystal Palace, having already lifted the League Cup.
Pellegrini says it was not done with the same swagger as City a year ago.
"It is important for the fans to play attractive football. We did exactly the same that Chelsea did this year, but we scored 158 goals last year," he said.
"We scored more goals in another style."
Pellegrini spoke after his City side clinched a 1-0 win over Tottenham thanks to a goal from Sergio Aguero which effectively secured a Champions League place.
The 61-year-old Chilean says he will not deviate from his attacking approach to the game, even though Jose Mourinho's team have taken the title off them.
"This team continues as the most scoring team," Pellegrini added. "That side is important, to continue winning in that sense."
In this season's Premier League, Chelsea have scored just two goals fewer than Manchester City's league-high 71.A team of entomologists from the University of Toronto Mississauga, Canada, and the University of Lincoln’s Joseph Banks Laboratories, UK, has discovered a new species of leaf-mimic bushcricket living in the Andes, from Western Ecuador to the middle Central Cordillera in Colombia. The team has also studied the wing mechanics and resonances of the new species, named Typophyllum spurioculis. The results are published in the Zoologischer Anzeiger, a Journal of Comparative Zoology.
Typophyllum spurioculis mimics dead leaves to the point of near invisibility and has vivid orange eye spots on its legs and wings. The species sings so loud humans can hear it, according to the study.
To uncover the biophysical properties, behavior and ecology of the insect, University of Lincoln student Andrew Baker and colleagues produced the anatomical description of Typophyllum spurioculis using illustrations to infer the arrangement of veins in its wing, and examined the sound producing structures of the wings in the males using advanced bioacoustics research techniques.
“We found that when the males sing the entire wing resonates at the frequency of the call — something which does not happen in other species of bushcrickets,” the researchers said.
“Usually the resonating call of a bushcricket is localized to the region where the sound originates, and is created by a plectrum on the right wing being plucked by a tooth-covered file on the left wing to produce sound vibrations.”
“The plectrum is connected to a drum-like structure that works as a speaker to radiate and amplify the signal.”
“Significantly, we found that in Typophyllum spurioculis, it is actually the whole wing, which resonates and amplifies the generated sound signals.”
“The unusual whole-wing-resonance might partly explain why the male’s song is particularly loud and also in the range audible to the human ear, while its closest relatives are all singing at higher frequencies which we cannot detect with our ears,” added Dr. Fernando Montealegre-Z, also from the University of Lincoln.
Dr. Montealegre-Z, Baker and co-authors also found that the females are larger than the males and also remain silent, with only the males employing their unusual acoustic abilities.
In another twist on the conventional rules of nature, the scientists found that Typophyllum spurioculis’ bright orange spots are not to deter predators, but instead are likely to be involved in visual communication between the sexes.
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Andrew Baker et al. 2017. Wing resonances in a new dead-leaf-mimic katydid (Tettigoniidae: Pterochrozinae) from the Andean cloud forests. Zoologischer Anzeiger, a Journal of Comparative Zoology 270: 60-70; doi: 10.1016/j.jcz.2017.10.001Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) gives a thumbs up while campaigning with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. (AP File Photo)
(CNSNews.com) - Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Hillary Clinton's former running mate, says Democrats "are so excited that the American public is energized to speak out against the abuses of this administration," and he believes it will work to their advantage.
He pointed to recent rallies in support of health care, in support of women, and against President Trump's executive orders on immigration, saying Democrats must "take advantage" of the "tremendous public outcry."
"What we've got to do is fight in Congress, fight in the courts, fight in the streets, fight online, fight at the ballot box; and now there's the momentum to be able to do this," Kaine told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Tuesday.
"And we're not afraid of the popular outcry, we're energized by it, and that's going to help us do our job, and do it better."Asked what recourse he has as a senator to "stop" some of the things Trump is trying to accomplish, Kaine pointed to the nomination of Rex Tillerson to be secretary of state."This executive order about immigration, because it affects our relationship with the world, is exactly the kind of thing that should cause us to really chew up some time on the Tillerson nomination and expose our concerns about the executive orders," Kaine said.
(President Trump has complained about the Democrat delay in confirming the people he needs to help him do his job, tweeting on Tuesday morning: "When will the Democrats give us our Attorney General and rest of Cabinet! They should be ashamed of themselves! No wonder D.C. doesn't work!")
Kaine said Democrats are “going to use our time and use the nominations going forward, especially 18 nominations, to demonstrate where we are in contravening these administration policies."Kaine also indicated that the Democrats will take advantage of divisions in the Republican Party in an attempt to block Trump’s temporary ban on immigrants from seven nations where terrorism is a problem.“We're going to introduce legislation to rescind or dramatically revise it," Kaine said."Now look, we're realistic. We're the minority party in both houses, but there are a number of Republicans, especially in the Senate, who have spoken out against this and are very embarrassed by it. So look, we'll be pushing legislatively and we'll be pushing in the court, and we will be energized by this activism.”Asked who is the current leader of the Democrat Party, Kaine demurred: "I think that's old time thinking...I think it's old time thinking to think you gotta organize this in a pyramid with one person at the top.”But pressed on the issue, Kaine finally pointed to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), because he leads the Senate Democrats, who have the tools -- including holds, filibuster, cloture -- to slow things down or stop them."And we're going to use all those tools," he added.New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie shakes hands in downtown Cleveland on Wednesday. (Photo: Associated Press)
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie got up close and personal with a Cubs fan at Miller Park Sunday afternoon.
In a video posted on Twitter by WISN reporter Ben Hutchison, Christie is shown leaning over and getting eye-to-eye with a fan sitting in the stands during the Brewers-Cubs game. Hutchison said the governor was getting "razzed" by fans.
At #Cubs#Brewers game. #ChrisChristie was getting razzed by fans, so he got in the face of one of them. 5:30 on @WISN12Newspic.twitter.com/sx8euMgFy2 — Ben Hutchison (@BennyHutch) July 30, 2017
Christie can be heard sarcastically calling Brad Joseph, the fan, a "big shot" as he walks away. Joseph replied, "I appreciate that."
Joseph told WISN-TV he yelled at Christie from about 30 feet away, telling him he sucked and was a hypocrite.
"It needed to be said," Joseph told the television station.
According to Joseph, Christie then turned around and got in his face, calling him a tough guy and saying he should have another beer.
Hutchison began recording at the end of the confrontation. Joseph estimated it lasted about one minute.
Christie's son works for the Brewers, according to the Washington Examiner.
RELATED: Cubs beat Brewers, 4-2, in front of sellout crowd
Read or Share this story: https://jsonl.in/2wc66StBEIRUT – The Syrian regime has reportedly began a scorched earth policy in the south of the country, bombing crops in opposition-held territory as it moves its own grain reserves out of the region.
“Assad’s forces continue to target agricultural land outside of its control in the Daraa province with various weapons in order to destroy crops, especially wheat,” the pro-opposition Masar Press reported.
A local activist told the outlet that regime forces had targeted agricultural establishments in a number of areas, “especially those situated between the town of Izraa and the villages of Malihat al-Atash and Busr al-Harir, where they blew up more than 20 farms, on the pretext that [they could be] infiltrated by rebels.”
“Assad’s forces are punishing locals by setting fire to their crops,” Salim al-Howrani told Masar Press.
“The collective punishment campaigns against residents of Daraa province have not been limited to crop farming,” he added.
“They have also affected livestock facilities, like cattle, sheep and poultry farms.”
Amid reports of the regime targeting agriculture in rebel-held areas of Daraa, videos circulating on YouTube have shown fires blazing in farm fields throughout the southern province of Syria, where the rebel Southern Front coalition has notched military victories against the regime in past months.
In one instance, covered by anti-Damascus news outlets on Monday, Syrian jets reportedly conducted strikes in the Bahar area on the southern outskirts of the provincial capital, setting alight agricultural crops and injuring a number of people.
Syria’s harvest season normally begins in early June, and this year the Agriculture Ministry expects a bumper crop that will yield over 3 million tons of wheat.
However, Reuters reported Wednesday that the regime is facing severe challenges buying wheat, as more than half the crops are now grown outside regime-controlled areas.
Instead of dealing with the regime farmers are selling their produce to middle-men who move the wheat to Turkey and Iraq.
Rebel-held areas of Daraa were expecting an extra high yield on-level with the rest of the country following plentiful rainfall in the winter.
Khaleej Online reported Thursday that this year’s “strategic and important” wheat yield in Daraa will come to around 80,000 tons, and may exceed that figure.
The Council of Liberated Daraa Governorate’s agricultural office chief Nazih Qaddah told the outlet that the 2015 season “was abundant because of high rainfall and the distribution of [that] rainfall over [several] months.”
The report also stated that crops would be harvested earlier than in previous years.
Moving grain reserves out of Daraa
As the Syrian regime has taken steps to hamper the harvest season in rebel-held areas of Daraa, it has also moved a massive quantity of grain reserves out of an area of the province under government control, one opposition website reported.
On Tuesday, the regime completely emptied the grain silos in the town of Izraa, some 30 kilometers north of the provincial capital, local sources told All4Syria.
The sources told the outlet that the silo’s contents—estimated at over 24,000 tons of durum wheat—were moved to Sbeneh, a small urban area between the south Damascus suburbs of Sayeda Zeinab and Daraya.
All4Syria added that conflicting stories have circulated in recent days on the reason behind “the emptying of one of the most important grain silos in Daraa province.”
According to the outlet, sources inside the regime have confirmed that Syrian officials fear Izraa could be attacked and seized by rebel fighters, which would mean the loss of a large quantity of wheat, as happened when opposition fighters seized the silos in the Gharaz area near the city of Daraa.
All4Syria cited other sources as saying that the regime was having problems securing enough wheat to feed residents of the capital.The hooks seem to grab everyone’s attention (pun intended). Other squid families have hooks on the arms, or the tentacles, or both, but the colossal squid is the only hooked squid in its family (the Cranchiidae, about 20 species). It possesses hooks on each of the eight arms, and also on the two long tentacles, but the arm-hooks and tentacle-hooks are very different.
The tentacular hooks (above and below) are the swivelling hooks. Each sits on a short stalk, flush with the oral surface of the tentacle club, in a flattened depression that allows the flattened ‘back’ surface of the hook to rotate. The hooks can swivel 360 to 720 degrees, but it is not known whether the squid actively controls each hook individually, or whether the hooks swivel passively once latched onto the prey, in order to keep the best grip. There are 22 to 25 hooks in two rows on the middle part (manus) of the tentacle club, and each row is flanked by a row of tiny marginal suckers. The swivelling hooks are smaller than those on the arms and have only a singe main ‘claw.’
The arm hooks (below) do not swivel. They are set in a double row in the middle of each arm, preceded and followed by the more standard toothed suckers. The arm hooks are set in fleshy, very muscular sheaths and are strongly attached to the arms. They are likely to assist in holding and immobilising struggling prey as it is being killed and eaten. Most of the arm hooks have the main strong ‘claw’ (visible below), and also two smaller auxiliary cusps closer to the hook’s base, making them three-pointed and maximising their ability to hold and dig in. The base of each hook also has a complex structure that is set deep into the surrounding musculature.
Kat BolstadAs more Kiwi homes are connected to fibre, prices for the packages are dropping.
New Zealand has finally reached "broadband parity" where it now costs the same for some normal broadband packages as it does for fibre.
That's good news for Kiwis who are gobbling up internet data faster than ever, but the bad news is that this may be as cheap as it gets.
Broadband parity happened recently when Spark started charging $69 a month for its naked (no phone included) fibre package which gives you 80GB of data with a 30Mbs download speed.
Its naked ADSL (basic copper broadband) deal costs the same but only promises a maximum download speed of 10Mbs.
By New Zealand standards these are pretty good prices as the cost of broadband has dropped a lot in the past few years.
In 1999 a basic broadband plan (phone and 40Gb data) would have cost $13,500 per month. Even three years ago that plan would have cost $105 a month.
The future doesn't look too bad either. Spark's naked 1000Mbs plan with unlimited data is being offered to eligible Dunedin residents for $99 a month.
However, when you compare what we pay per megabit per second compared to other countries it doesn't look so good.
According to data from broadband tester Ookla, we place 42nd in the world when comparing broadband prices per Mbs.
So it's hard to celebrate our broadband parity when countries such as Malta and Romania have more affordable broadband than we do.
Slingshot general manager Taryn Hamilton said the race to secure fibre customers and reduction in international data costs were the reason behind recent price drops for fibre.
"Companies have priced reasonably aggressively to try and build the [fibre] uptake."
"Competition is very fierce at the moment and that is good for the consumer."
However, he said there was a regulated price increase for fibre for the next several years.
"Overall broadband is about as cheap now as it's ever going to get. I can't see any further reductions in price, either on copper or fibre in the foreseeable future."
This is because of pricing criteria set by the Commerce Commission which is also the reason why broadband prices in New Zealand are high compared to overseas.
He said the economics of this continues to be discussed but the upshot was the more ISPs paid infrastructure providers, the more customers paid for broadband.
However, one industry expert says there is a slight chance intense competition may offer some hope.
Chief executive of the Telecommunications Association of New Zealand Craig Young said increased competition in the market could push some packages down.
"Price war is not the right word, but it certainly is competitive and ISPs are looking to maintain their market share."
Young said he doesn't expect movement around the lower 30Mbs plans though there could be competition for the faster packages and unlimited data plans.
He said there was an increase in the number of people signing up for 100Mbs plans as people finally realised that to get the content they want, such as movie streaming, they need to get a fibre plan.
Young said now was a good time to sign up to a fibre plan.
"While fibre installation is generally free, get it in and once it's done you can then upgrade or change if needed."
This comment was backed up by Hamilton who said: "Consumers should take advantage of UFB while installation charges are still free. It's not going to last forever."
This is because funding of fibre installation is provided by Crown Fibre Holdings and that money will eventually run out.
Other ISPs are also bullish on the uptake of fibre plans.
"Fast fibre has never been more attractive to customers, as the cost of these plans starts to line up with our popular ADSL and VDSL broadband plans," said Spark executive Chris Quin.
Spark said it was difficult to predict the trend for fibre broadband prices, as price was dependent on a range of factors – such as what the regulated wholesale charge will be.
"However, the market for fibre is hugely competitive which can only be a good thing for consumers, and as more New Zealanders access fibre this competition will only increase," the company said in a statement.BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombian authorities have arrested a Costa Rican man accused of trafficking shipments of cocaine to the United States on behalf of Mexico’s infamous Sinaloa cartel.
Oscar Antonio Berrocal, 52, was detained late on Thursday after arriving in the Colombian capital Bogota on a flight from Ecuador, where he lives.
“Berrocal, known to authorities under the aliases Charlie, the Chef, Finquero and Rolex, is required by U.S. authorities for alleged cocaine trafficking,” migration officials said in a statement. “In Colombia there is a valid order for his arrest and extradition.”
Authorities said Berrocal is accused of coordinating the shipment of large quantities of cocaine to the United States for the Sinaloa cartel, one of the world’s largest drug trafficking organizations, often via smuggling networks in Central America.
The cartel is infamous in Mexico, where its leader Joaquin Guzman, alias ‘El Chapo’, was captured in February after 13 years on the run.
Colombia is a principal producer of cocaine, with an annual output of about 290 tons, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
The country’s once-prolific drug cartels have been weakened by U.S.-backed police offensives over the last two decades and now act mainly as suppliers for Mexican organizations.A MAN has admitted handling a haul of precious ornaments stolen from graves over a four-year period.
Last October, Newton Aycliffe Police discovered a large quantity of cherubs, angels and other sentimental items at David Gary Ryan’s home in School Aycliffe.
Many of the ornaments had been reported stolen from graves in nearby West Cemetery, including those of babies and children.
At Durham Crown Court today (Monday, April 28) Ryan, now of Hargreave Terrace, Darlington, pleaded guilty to handling stolen goods between September 2009 and November 2013.
Paul Abrahams, prosecuting, said Ryan, 42, had previously denied theft charges.
“The reason we are accepting the plea to handling stolen goods is that we cannot provide evidence as to who took the items,” he added.
Judge Christopher Prince heard there were 14 victims, including Joanne Newman, who was horrified when she discovered glass ornaments and a commemorative plaque had been stolen from the graves of her baby sons, Caleb and Isaac, last September.
The young mother regularly visits West Cemetery with her husband, John, and their three daughters, Imogen, Ebony and Harmony.
“When we realised ornaments had been stolen we were mortified,” said Mrs Newman, of Newton Aycliffe.
“Every object you put on a grave is put there for a reason. It has a special connection to the person you lost.
“Caleb was still born and was my first child, a lot of the glass pieces were for him.
"Isaac was a little fighter. He survived for four weeks and the objects we chose relate to that.
“They were not of high value, but they mean a great deal to us.”
The Newman family and other victims have since been reunited with some of their stolen possessions.
Mrs Newman added: “I am just so pleased we reported the matter. In the past, when things went missing, we put it down to kids messing around. It is good to see justice being carried out.”
Judge Prince adjourned the case until Friday, May 30, for probation reports.
Ryan was remanded in custody to await sentence.The challenge to minarchism – the impossibility of sustaining a libertarian state
While minarchist philosophers claim that the emergence of a state is inevitable and that therefore efforts must be concentrated towards establishing a “minimal state” to protect freedom, thorough analysis points to the inverse problem, that no minimal state can prevent its collapse to anarchy without compromising all of its laws and principles.
A few years ago I presented the following challenge to libertarians who consider themselves “minarchists”, that is to say they believe that freedom can only be preserved by a traditional state which is limited to the minimal possible powers that can be afforded to a traditional state. The challenge rests on the only basis for how such a state can be formed – only through a revolutionary libertarian wave that overthrows an existing, non-minimalist regime.
Suppose that a glorious revolution overthrows the government of your country and the revolutionaries assemble in order to draft a new constitution. The two main factions are the majority Sons of Liberty (pro-state) and the Congress of Free Courts (anti-state). As per the minarchist ideology, the new constitution establishes a monopoly on justice that grants legislative power to an elected body. The minority Congress of Free Courts walks out of the assembly in disgust and vows to disobey the new government.
Once you have been elected president of the new minarchist republic, would you launch a war against the CFC in order to subjugate them to your new government?
Most minarchists abstained from answering for the simple reason that the challenge overturns the very basis for their belief in the state – that any system of power must collapse into a monopoly and that this monopoly must be controlled by libertarians. In the above scenario, the system of power is very unstable, and a breakaway faction declares itself an independent force. In order for a minarchist state to remain an exclusive sovereign, it must then organize and fund a permanent war to root out those breakaway factions. To fund this permanent war, the executive of this state will have to levy taxes that the members of rebel societies do not have to pay, thus causing the exit of an even greater number of citizens to the rebels. In fact, the only way to prevent any kind of upstart rebellion from challenging the minarchist state is to transform into a police state, thus causing the total contradiction of the libertarian ideal.
Suppose that the president of the new state decides not to fight and destroy the rebels, what then will happen to this state? It will be compelled to obey a law above its own and be deprived of the power of legislation, since there will exist within its borders a society capable of opposing its force. The constitutional constructs of this new state will therefore be irrelevant – the true constitution of the country will be whatever arrangements are made with the independent society and any other future upstart society in order to create a common framework of justice. This, however, is a total contradiction of the statist ideal of a single, unchallenged sovereign over the nation. Unless all competing societies are destroyed, the libertarian state remains externally limited in its power, instead of being internally limited by its own constitution as minarchists seek.
Some minarchists try to avoid this problem by proposing some compromise, for example dividing the country between a libertarian state and a free state. However, because the rebels do not recognize the necessity of a libertarian state, they have no reason to surrender any of their possessions or leave any of their homes in order to fulfill their ambitions. They can continue their lives under the protection of their own society wherever they did beforehand. It is still necessary to make war on the rebels to compel them to accept a “two-state solution.” If the libertarian state compromises to the point that all rebel property can exit the libertarian state’s dominion, then, once again, nothing stops any other upstart rebel society from doing the same, and the libertarian state collapses into an anarchy once again.
In conclusion, not only is minarchism impossible to sustain, it is also an impossible objective to pursue, as it requires the conquest whole of an entire traditional state to bring about. The creation of a rebel society capable of opposing the traditional state and thus compel it to reduce down to a libertarian state is a much more realistic and attainable objective, and the process through which it can liberate a country I will detail in an upcoming post.
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Evidence
Posner questions basis for ‘archaic’ hearsay rule, proposes flexible approach
Judge Richard Posner is proposing a rewrite of the hearsay rule and its exceptions in a concurring opinion in a gun case decided by the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Posner derides the approach taken by the Federal Rules of Evidence (PDF) in his Feb. 13 concurring opinion (PDF). “The ‘hearsay rule’ is too complex,” Posner wrote, “as well as being archaic.” How Appealing and EvidenceProf Blog note Posner’s comments.
Posner instead suggests a flexible approach based on the catchall Rule 807, which allows the admission of some hearsay in the interests of justice even if it is not covered by a specific exception.
Posner wrote in a case in which two exceptions to the hearsay rule were at issue: the “excited utterance” and the “present sense impression.” A trial judge allowed statements from a woman’s 911 call using both justifications; the 7th Circuit decision by Judge Ann Claire Williams said the statements were admissible as an excited utterance made under the stress of a domestic battery. Williams did not reach the issue of whether the statements were admissible because they amounted to a “present sense impression” by the woman.
In the 911 call, a woman said the defendant, Darnell Boyce, had hit her and he was “going crazy for no reason.” Asked if Boyce had a weapon, the woman replied yes. When asked what kind of weapon, the woman said it was a gun. The woman said she had just run upstairs to her neighbor’s apartment and didn’t know if the man was still in her apartment. Police responding to the call spotted Boyce outside the woman’s apartment and saw him toss a gun over a garage into a yard. Police recovered a.357 Magnum in the area.
The 911 caller, who had children fathered by Boyce, did not testify at trial. The 911 statements were admitted and Boyce was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm.
Posner notes that the 911 call was hearsay because it was an out-of-court statement offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted—namely, that Boyce had a gun. The 911 statements were no doubt both an excited utterance and a present sense impression, Posner said, “but there is profound doubt whether either should be an exception to the rule against admission of hearsay evidence.”
The rationale behind the “present sense impression” exception is that the immediacy reduces the likelihood of deliberate or conscious misrepresentation. Not true, Posner said, citing studies that say less than one second is needed to fabricate a lie. He offered an example of how it is easy to lie with little chance for deliberation:
“Suppose I run into an acquaintance on the street,” Posner wrote, “and he has a new dog with him—a little yappy thing—and he asks me, ‘Isn’t he beautiful’? I answer yes, though I’m a cat person and consider his dog hideous.”
Posner also questioned the justification for the excited utterance exception, based on the assumption that excitement can produce utterances free of conscious fabrication. How can there be any confidence that a statement made under psychological stress is reliable? Posner asked.
“Like the exception for present sense impressions,” Posner writes, “the exception for excited utterances rests on no firmer ground than judicial habit, in turn reflecting judicial incuriosity and reluctance to reconsider ancient dogmas.”
Posner says he does not have a goal of reducing the amount of hearsay evidence in federal trials. Rather, he is proposing an alternative that would “swallow” the exceptions in Rules 801 through 806 in the Federal Rules of Evidence.
Posner says he would use a simplified version of Rule 807, the “residual exception,” and allow hearsay in these circumstances: “when it is reliable, when the jury can understand its strengths and limitations, and when it will materially enhance the likelihood of a correct outcome.”About me:
I’m an embedded systems engineer, currently working for a small engineering company in Las Cruces, New Mexico. I graduated from New Mexico Tech in 2007, with degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Like many people, I first became interested in algorithm competitions with the Netflix Prize a few years ago. I was quite excited to find the Kaggle site a few months ago, as I enjoy participating in these types of competitions.
Explanation of Technique:
Though I tried several different methods, I used a weighted combination of three predictors to come up with the final forecast.
#1: After reviewing Athanasopoulos et al, it became obvious that the naive predictor was a good algorithm with which to start. It is both easy to implement and performed well when compared to the other algorithms in the paper.
After graphing a few of the time series, it became apparent that many of the series increase with time. Indeed, the second sentence of the Athanasopoulos paper states that globally tourism has grown “at a rate of 6% annually.” In order to take advantage of this knowledge, I multiplied the (Naive algorithm’s) predicted value by a factor to take this growth into account. With some testing, I determined a 5.5% growth factor to yield the lowest MASE.
prediction1 = last_value * (1.055 ** number_of_years_in_the_future)
#2: I examined |
objectives, and a prize each month for overall most mileage completed. These are outdoor miles only, not trainer rides, unless you use your trainer outside. To participate sign up for our event Strava Club.
You are encouraged but not required to also post pictures and videos to social media. Use the official game tag if you post any images to social media outside the app! #getoutbuffalo
Challenges do not need to be done in any particular order.
Unless impossible because of distance (and we expect people to stretch the limits of their winter mobility), challenges are to be completed either using Bike, XC Skis or Snowshoes, we do understand that a small number of items outside the city might need to be driven to.
When taking photos of people make sure to get their consent.
Don’t cheat the spirit of winter, participate in good spirit and good faith.
Additional Bonus Points may be awarded at the discretion of judges for going above and beyond in terms of awesome. Since this is our first year, rules and challenges are subject to change.
THE PRIZES
CAMPUS CYCLING COLLECTIVE KITS (NUMBER TBD)
5 REDDY BIKE SHARE ONE YEAR MEMBERSHIPS
2 GENERAL ADMISSION TICKETS TO SKYRIDE (~$30 VALUE EACH)
1 VIP TICKET TO SKYRIDE ($100 VALUE) 2 GOBIKE BUFFALO MEMBERSHIPS TATTOO FROM HOD
45NRTH STUFF!Beijing, August 5
India will be more appealing to Chinese firms after the clearance of much-awaited Goods and Services Tax Bill in the upper house of Parliament, a state-run daily said on Friday.
An op-ed piece in Global Times said China was willing to work with India to make GST Bill a “reality”.
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It said the passage of the bill could boost Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s political legacy and give him a better chance for a second term.
(Also read: GST Bill likely to be tabled in Lok Sabha on Aug 8; BJP issues whip)
“This (GST) could certainly boost India’s appeal to multinationals, including Chinese firms, as a myriad of existing federal, state and inter-state levies in the country had previously increased their tax burdens and barred them from further exploring potentials in the world’s fastest-growing major economy.
(Also read: Shah to meet CMs of BJP ruled states on Aug 27)
“China is more likely to see this reform, which aims to make India a better destination for investment, as an opportunity rather than a threat,” the daily said.
However, the Global Times lamented that Chinese companies still faced complicated and cumbersome tax system in India.
“Chinese companies are certainly welcoming the move. Along with other restrictions, the country’s complicated and cumbersome taxation system as well as bureaucracy related to tax-collection remains a hurdle for the firms doing business in India.”
“China will be happy to see the reforms go through as it sees this improved investment environment as an opportunity rather than a threat and will be willing to work with India to make it a reality,” the write-up said.
“The move is both politically and economically significant. Politically, it showed that the Modi government can compromise to get reforms made in the national interest. It could add momentum to the world’s already fastest growing economy,” it said. IANSForget heat—drying laundry is about cranking up the volume. At least, that’s how it goes in a lab at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where researchers have built an ultrasonic clothes dryer that uses far less energy than conventional devices.
If you can be bothered to find out, you’ll find that clothes dryers are hugely energy hungry. A 2014 report by the Natural Resources Defense Council suggested that a typical household’s dryer used as much energy over the course of a year as its refrigerator, dishwasher, and clothes washer combined. Dryers account for as much as 4 percent of all domestic energy consumption, according to the Energy Information Administration.
That didn’t escape the attention of Oak Ridge’s Ayyoub Momen, who has been developing a new way to wrench moisture out of fabric over the last few years. His vision: a clothes dryer whose drum is lined with piezoelectric ultrasound transducers to blast laundry with high-frequency sound rather than heat.
The theory is that the ultrasound vibrates small water droplets out of a piece of fabric, forming a fine mist—as you can see happening in the GIF above. The mist is then driven to the edge of the drum, where it can be siphoned off, much the way it would happen in a regular dryer.
A prototype built by Momen and his colleagues shows that it seems to work in practice. The full-size dryer his team assembled is able to dry a medium-size load in 20 minutes, compared with 50 minutes for a regular machine. It’s also claimed that the device uses 70 percent less energy than a regular dryer.
And the good news is that this isn’t idle research. The project was carried out in collaboration with General Electric Appliances, which is now planning to use the ultrasonic approach in a press dryer and, at some point in the future, a regular drum dryer. So you might soon be able to turn up the volume on your laundry, too.
(Read more: Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy, BBC)The last time Graziano Pelle can remember playing in a such a one-side game was in the tiny square outside his house in Lecce, southern Italy.
It was there that the young Pelle would score goals and celebrate like Alan Shearer, trying to replicate his Premier League hero.
He wanted to be like Shearer: a powerful, bustling striker with a bullet header and shot like thunder. Little did he know that, at the age of 29, he would realise his dream.
VIDEO Scroll down to watch An unbelievable result - Koeman
Graziano Pelle scored twice (he wants to claim a third) as Southampton beat Sunderland 8-0 on Saturday
Pelle claims he idolised former Newcastle striker Alan Shearer, and Marco van Basten, when he was younger
Pelle strikes home his second goal during the thrashing of the hapless Black Cats at St Mary's
SUPERSTAT 7 Graziano Pelle has had a hand in seven goals in his last six games, scoring six and assisting one. 4 Dusan Tadic joined Santi Cazorla, Emmanuel Adebayor, Cesc Fabregas, Jose Antonio Reyes and Dennis Bergkamp as the only men with four PL assists in a game.
Nor that it would be at Southampton, the club where the teenaged Shearer broke through to become one of the greatest forwards in English football.
Pelle claimed two more strikes in the thrashing of Sunderland — making it six goals in eight Premier League appearances since he signed in the summer — and ran the opposition’s back line ragged. He said: ‘When I was young and I scored, it was “a great Van Basten” or “a great Shearer”. When you are young, you want to be someone who is already in the Premier League or Serie A.
‘Now I’m happy that I am here. I see a lot of love from kids who want to be me. I have to always show them that with work you can reach what you want to reach.’
Pelle was only denied a hat-trick by the combination of a half-save from Sunderland goalkeeper Vito Mannone and the ineptitude of midfielder Liam Bridcutt.
Pelle wants to keep the match ball as his shot was heading in before Liam Bridcutt (r) bundled it over the line
Santiago Vergini got a miserable day going for Sunderland with a sliced own goal
Pelle and Ronald Koeman picked up the Players' and Manger of the month awards for September
VIDEO An unbelievable result - Koeman
His strike was powerful and Mannone could only push it to one side. The ball was creeping towards the goal-line until Bridcutt got it caught in his feet and bundled it over the line. But Pelle is determined to keep the match-ball for scoring three.
‘We are going to ask them to give me the third goal,’ he explained. ‘The club is going to fight for it. One goal counts! For a striker, it always counts.’
Considering goals were few and far between in the early part of Pelle’s career, struggling in Serie A in his teens and early 20s, it is understandable he is so keen to add as many to his name as he can. Scoring has come far easier in the past two seasons.
Moving to Holland’s Eredivisie, first to AZ Alkmaar where he played for Louis Van Gaal and then Feyenoord under Ronald Koeman, ignited Pelle.
He won the league but was not prolific at Alkmaar. In two seasons at Feyenoord he struck 50 goals in 57 league games before Koeman took Pelle with him to Southampton for £8million.
The Italian striker was not prolific at AZ Alkmaar before joining Feyernoord
Pelle scored on his Italian debut against Malta in a Euro 2016 qualifier last week
Continuing that form into this season has finally earned him a call-up to the Italy side and he netted on his debut, against Malta, during the international break.
A few days later he was named the Barclays Premier League player of the month and celebrated by starring in one of the biggest wins in league history.
‘It was the best week of my career,’ he added. ‘I had great moments in the past. I was happy in many situations. But this is something I am doing in a higher league, the best competition in the world. I believe in myself, I believe in the team. I just want to keep going, it’s just the beginning. We are in October. It will be really bad to stop now because it doesn’t have meaning. If we stop now, at the end of the season nobody will remember.’
He is scoring goals which Shearer would surely have been proud of. For instance, against Queens Park Rangers when he flicked the ball up and sent it into the top-right corner with an overhead kick.
But while Pelle is earning plaudits for finding the net, Serbia’s Dusan Tadic — another Koeman recruit bought from FC Twente — is pulling the strings.
Against Sunderland, not only did Tadic score, he set up four of the other goals. Pelle said: ‘When I was in Holland, I had a question: which player would you like to play with? I said: “Dusan. Many No 10s are a bit selfish. Not Dusan. He always wants to be dangerous”.’
Summer signing Dusan Tadic jumps into the arms of Italian forward Pelle after scoring his side's sixth goalPHOENIX – Phoenix Rising FC added another young standout to its squad on Wednesday as it announced the signing of 2017 USL 20 Under 20 selection Collin Fernandez, formerly of the Chicago Fire, for the 2018 USL season.
Fernandez spent much of the 2017 season on loan in the USL with Tulsa Roughnecks FC from the Fire, where he made 28 appearances and notched a goal and two assists. A former member of the U.S. U20 National Team, Fernandez landed the No. 18 position on the USL 20 Under 20 earlier this year to cement his place as one of the top young players in the league.
“I’m very excited to be a part of Phoenix Rising Football Club,” Fernandez said. “I can’t wait to get to work with my new teammates and the staff. To all the fans, I look forward to meeting you all and giving you something special in 2018.”Cross-posted from LAB|Log.
One evening about a year ago, staff members at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., did something a bit unusual as they prepared to close the LEGO building area for the evening. Charmed by its simple beauty, they spared a rather handsome yellow pyramid created by one of the museum’s visitors from their ruthlessly thorough daily LEGO disassembly process. Instead of completely “wiping the slate clean” for the next day’s visitors, on this evening they broke with tradition and positioned the pyramid in a prominent place in the building area.
Not long after the museum’s opening the next morning, I shuffled into the LEGO room. It was filled with the typical assortment of visitors, happily building … pyramids, in every imaginable shape, size, and color. In fact, the room was beginning to positively overflow with them.
Walk into the LEGO “free-play” building area at the Building Museum on any given day, and you will see a room filled with people of all ages and backgrounds, eagerly building away. Many of these people — architecture students, 10-year-olds, grandfathers with their grandchildren, tourists — spend entire Saturdays in this room, building things.
With thousands upon thousands of LEGOs, consistently diverse groups of people, and scores of posters challenging you to build the various pieces of architecture that comprise our cities, it seems probable that the room would be a sea of creativity. And yet on most days, instead of a sweeping diversity of creations, one building pattern or formal expression completely dominates. Sometimes the room is jam-packed with towers; on other occasions by houses, animals, or people’s names spelled with LEGOs.
Despite this regular conformity, it is always possible to find a few individuals — of no consistent age or background — doing something completely different from everyone else. Their creative motivations became one of the focal points of my research during my Field Fellowship last year at the Building Museum.
In many ways, their “outlier” creations appear to be the epitome of how we typically conceive of creativity, often completely challenging the basic rules dictated by the general form of the LEGO. However, curiously, while they couldn’t always point out their inspiration, every single “outlier” claimed that they were simply expanding on some combination of LEGO pieces that they had seen elsewhere in the room. Even the most “creative” people in the room began, like their tower-building brethren, by copying something or mimicking someone in their general visual proximity.
Equally interesting was the lack of response to the museum’s design cues, intended to inspire architectural greatness and the creation of certain building types. These cues include numerous text- and image-based prompts, as well as a significant nearby exhibit of exemplary architecture, such as the Burj Khalifa, made out of LEGOs.
I began to wonder whether it would be possible to influence the LEGO room’s collective building pattern in an intentional fashion and get everyone building completely against the room’s regular patterns and the “rules” embedded in the form of the LEGO. One evening, I lingered well after the museum closed and built three of my own “outlier” creations, with layered planes, shifting abstract forms, and blocks tipped on their sides.
Despite the rather alien nature of these objects, the next morning I found a 5-year-old girl wrapping up her own amazing “outlier” creation. Expanding on my shifting planes and rotated blocks, she had created a form that I couldn’t have imagined, a true thing of beauty that, to this day, I am not sure how she managed to construct.
As soon as she placed her completed object on the central building table, it was immediately surrounded by a gaggle of 10-year-old boys. Forming a tight, admiring circle, they excitedly discussed her structure before going their separate ways to build their own “outliers.” Adults soon joined in the building fray, working intently to attempt to outdo the children around them. Both the girl’s and my original efforts having shown new possibilities, the room quickly became a sea of new creations.
Of the many different new tools for participating as a citizen in our communities, I currently find the ones that are focused on “doing” and “showing” the most consistently compelling. Similar to LEGOs, temporary or tactical urbanism — as practiced by the Guerrilla Benchers, UX (the French city-hacker group), performative flash mobs, and many others — taps into our urge to make something, whether an object or an experience, that allows us to even momentarily take control of or impact the world around us.
As a means for stimulating civic innovation and larger engagement, the experiences in the LEGO room offer helpful “diagrams” of basic human behavior. They are reminders of how much more influential the simple physical actions and creations of those immediately around us can be than just about any other “input,” whether word or image or something else.
These are not groundbreaking concepts. The research of Stanley Milgram and Solomon Asch introduced these ideas a long time ago. Current work around such things as connecting obesity to the peer pressure of group eating habits continues this thread. However, the wonderful “outlier” creations by the little girl and others show a much more nuanced view of these understandings, providing opportunities to fundamentally question our notions of expertise, collaboration, creation, and our own agency as citizens or designers.
On the one hand, they remind us that if we are thoughtful about when, where, and how we take action as members of a community, we can positively influence a system or the world around us, even building a movement. On the other hand, it is both exciting and humbling to know that if we put a 5-year-old girl next to a seasoned designer, they are most likely going to influence each other’s work. The seasoned designer or “expert,” better able to recognize patterns, is going to be able to more quickly expand on them. The 5-year-old girl, unencumbered by those patterns, will head off in an entirely different direction. Proximity allows both of them to “scaffold” off one another, reaching a point of creation that neither could have reached alone.
Prototyping and “showing” new behaviors, expertise, and relationships is essential to best meeting the substantial needs of society today. As we all know, many systems and organizations for solving our cities’ most pressing problems are broken, and by extension our understanding of how to solve them and who participates is also often broken. As such, we need more places and generative opportunities, like LEGO rooms, to fundamentally rethink how people might engage with one another to make our cities great.Written by Patrick Howell O'Neill
Thousands of academics, professionals and award-winning computer scientists from dozens of countries are organizing global efforts to aid foreign students whose academic careers in the U.S. have been clouded by President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration.
In a weekend of social media organizing, more than 100 information security and computer science academics added their names to a directory for graduate and postdoctoral computer science students who face an increasingly uncertain future in the United States. The academics listed are volunteering as a point of contact for foreign students who suddenly need help because of Trump’s ban on visitors from seven predominantly Muslim countries.
“In the world today, particularly in the United States of America, there is a war for talent. It is truly international,” said Kenny Paterson, a professor in the information security group at Royal Holloway at the University of London, who helped first organize and promote the list. “I collaborate with people in the U.S., with people in France and Germany. Science knows no borders and these kinds of immigration controls get in the way of the advancement of the United States and the advancement of humanity.”
Inspired and energized by protests at airports across the United States, the effort was pushed by Paterson and Emiliano De Cristofaro, a cryptographer at the University College London. First spread by academic email lists and then social networks, the list now includes prominent security researchers from around the world, including the British cryptographer Nigel Smart.
Trump’s order comes at a critical time for international security students looking to land positions at universities around the world. The application process for graduate and post-doctorate programs is currently at its height and finishes in early spring, mirroring the 90-day length of Trump’s order, which blocks visitors from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
“The order creates enough uncertainty at a difficult time that it’s going to blow people off course for a long period of time,” Paterson said. “It also creates an atmosphere where people don’t feel welcome. I think if people were thinking of studying and then the ban was lifted, they’re probably not going to return to the U.S. immediately.”
“Of course, the [directory] is just a drop in the bucket,” said Martin Albrecht, another Royal Holloway, University of London cryptographer. “Many people being targeted have no connection to information security or academia. However, if we can organize support for at least some of those now suffering the effects of the executive order, it’s worth going for it.”
As legal battles continue, the exact long-term impact of Trump’s executive order remains to be seen. On Sunday morning, the White House appeared to roll back key parts of it while detainees were still being held in airports around the nation.
Whatever the exact legal ramifications, the order has injected chaos into the international cybersecurity community. Academic institutions and companies search globally for needed security employees.
On Saturday, as thousands of individuals protested Trump’s order at airports across America, prominent theoretical computer scientist Scott Aaronson posted a petition called Academics Against Immigration Executive Order. The list includes 37 Nobel Laureates; 35 winners of Fields, Dirac, Clark, Turing, Poincare Medals, Breakthrough Prize, Pulitzer Prize and the MacArthur Fellowship; as well as 178 Members of the American Mathematical Society and National Academies of Arts, Sciences, Engineering. The petition boasts about 7,000 American signatures as of Sunday.
“Right now, I have an Iranian Ph.D. student who came to MIT on a student visa in 2013,” Aaronson wrote. “He’s spent the whole day pacing around, terrified about his future. His original plan, to do a postdoc in the U.S. after he finishes his Ph.D., now seems impossible (since it would require a visa renewal).”
This suspension might last just 30 days, but might also continue indefinitely—particularly if, as seems likely, the Iranian government thumbs its nose at whatever Trump demands that it do to get the suspension rescinded. So the upshot is that, until further notice, science departments at American universities can no longer recruit Ph.D. students from Iran—a country that, along with China, India, and a few others, has long been the source of some of our best talent. This will directly affect this year’s recruiting season, which is just now getting underway. (If Canada and Australia have any brains, they’ll snatch these students, and make the loss America’s.)
Iran, a focal point of Trump’s ire, produces an inordinate amount of intellectual talent in computer science and cybersecurity. Iran boasts a strong and egalitarian educational tradition, a highly competitive system of universities and guaranteed free education for all citizens. The best universities in the world, including many of those in the U.S., host numerous Iranian students and professors.
Mohammad Taghji Hajiaghayi, the Minker Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland who was born in Iran. His Iranian friends and students, including those employed at some of the most prestigious academic institutions in America, now feel afraid and uncertain about their future. Even though Hajiaghayi, his wife and his children are U.S. citizens, he expresses fears about his future as an Iranian Muslim in Trump’s America.
Hajiaghayi’s research is funded by U.S. institutions like the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, and DARPA. Additionally, Hajiaghayi chairs a high-level computer science conference in Washington, D.C., that attracts talent from around the world.
“If there was such policy in place back in 2001, I could not be in such a place to run such an important conference, let alone win other awards such as Office of Navy Young Investigator Award in 2011,” he said.
Additionally one of Hajiaghayi’s students traveled to see his family in Iran and now cannot return to the United States due to the executive order.
“I think this is just the beginning,” Hajiaghayi said. “There is no limit.”
Yet Paterson, who first organized that list of academic contacts for immigrant students, says he will keep working to help figure out a solution for the U.S. tech sector.
“Look, people’s lives are being damaged, your talent pool is being diminished, here’s an idea: Why don’t we get together and fund some scholarships for these students so they can study in countries that are not the United States of America supported by U.S. companies,” Paterson said. “What a fantastic way to build that internationalism and overcome these artificial barriers that are being put up.”
He’s currently on the hunt for anyone looking to aid that effort.Five picks in the first round. Six picks in the second. Four in the third. Twelve in the fourth. Nine in the fifth. Nine in the sixth. Twelve in the seventh. John Schneider has made a total of 56 draft picks in his time as the Seahawks General Manager. Many have been brilliant. Few have been predictable. Schneider takes aim at another pivotal draft next week, which he has described as the best since he has been here, with over 200 players worthy of being drafted. As fans and pundits attempt to decipher what he may do, clues can be found in what he has already done.
Schneider draft approach
Each year, Schneider gives little glimpses into his draft philosophy. Stitch them all together and you have end up with some meaningful context for what drives the big decisions on draft day. Three important tidbits stand out, and one was just revealed last week.
1. Need directly impacts grade
KJR AM radio host Mitch Levy got a surprising admission from Schneider during an interview last Wednesday. The Seahawks GM told Levy that they rank their draft board according to their team, not by pure value. He has said similar things in the past when explaining why the team took a player higher than where many pundits pegged him, but he provided more detail this time. James Carpenter, for example, was not the best player available when the Seahawks selected him in the first round in 2011, but he was the highest on the Seahawks draft board because of the team’s need on the offensive line. You may read that and think, “Well, duh.” It is rare, though, for a GM to openly admit that need plays such a significant factor, especially in early round picks. Most espouse the best player available philosophy, even if they clearly do not always follow it.
2. Dropoffs at a position drive players up the board
Seattle drafted Frank Clark in the second round last year, in part, because Schneider said there was a major dropoff in pass rushers after Clark. They drafted Justin Britt in the second round because there was a huge dropoff in offensive lineman after Britt. Combine this knowledge with the previous insight, and you could come to the conclusion that if Seattle decides running back is a need, and there is a major dropoff due to short supply this year, it would not be a shock to see them spend an early pick on that position.
3. Deep positions lead to trading down
This is really the inverse of the second insight. Say Seattle is on the clock at #26 and there are five offensive lineman available, and they like Taylor Decker best of all. That does not mean they will stay put and take the top guy on their board. More likely, they will look to move down and get an extra pick or two and lose out on Decker. They did this in 2012 when they liked both Mychal Kendricks and Bobby Wagner at linebacker in the second round, and made the calculated gamble to trade back a few picks. Kendricks, according to my sources, was higher on their board, but the team was happy to snap up Wagner when Kendricks was taken by the Eagles.
Schneider draft patterns
Seattle has made a first round pick in only three of the six drafts since Schneider took over. Three of the four first round picks have been lineman (1 defensive end, 2 offensive tackles). The only non-lineman they ever took in the first round was S Earl Thomas. That worked out pretty well.
Many folks, including myself, love center Ryan Kelly as a possible pick for Seattle in the first round. That would break tradition as the team has only drafted one center since 2010, and that was technically a defensive lineman taken in the sixth round (Kristjan Sokoli).
The Seahawks cornerbacks have been admired around the league. None have been drafted earlier than the fourth round, and six of the seven they have selected were in round five or later. In fact, Thomas is the only member of the secondary selected before the fifth round.
The following chart shows every pick Schneider has made by round and by position.
Besides the observations made above, a few other things stand out:
1. Running backs are taken early
Seattle has not drafted many backs, but if you throw in the fourth round pick Seattle sent to Buffalo for Marshawn Lynch, a pretty clear pattern emerges that they want that kind of talent early. They always add undrafted backs as well, like Thomas Rawls, but they place a pretty high value on talent at that position.
2. Receivers are taken early
The team has never drafted a receiver after the four round, and they have taken six receivers. Only two positions have been drafted more often during Schneider’s tenure. Given the team’s lesser need at that position this year, it could open up the early rounds for other positions.
3. Defensive ends early and often
Schneider has spent nine draft choices on defensive ends, more than any other position, and he has taken them up and down the draft. Bruce Irvin, despite winding up at linebacker, was drafted to be a defensive end. He loves to take fliers on edge rushers late in the draft. Guys like Dexter Davis, Greg Scruggs, and Ty Powell were all seventh round picks.
4. Defensive tackles, especially run stuffers, not highly valued
Jordan Hill is the highest pick Schneider has ever applied to a defensive tackle, and that was in the third round. Hill was believed to be a pass rusher. The highest the team has ever drafted a run-stuffing tackle was the fifth round (Jesse Williams, Jimmy Staten). This draft is loaded with great defensive tackles, but many of them are run stuffers. As much as many of us would love to see a guy like Andrew Billings added early, history makes that unlikely.
5. Linemen, linemen, linemen
Twelve picks have been spent on offensive linemen and fourteen picks have been spent on defensive linemen. That’s a whopping 26 picks on the line, making up 46% of all the draft choices Schneider has made. In a draft stocked with line talent, and the team having clear needs on both lines, there is little reason to think this will change. We may see as many as five linemen selected.Terrible scenes unfolded on Thursday night as the merry europhobic frog Nigel Farage locked horns with randy scarecrow Russell Brand in what was probably the most stressful line-up on the BBC's Question Time since that episode when a nonplussed pigeon flew in.
And in fact, this was rather a pigeonlike performance from the two populist posturers: lots of squawking, and rarely a leg to stand on.
I watched it so you didn't have to. Here are the best (or worst, depending on how at peace you are with our political life) bits:
Slamming our terrible "adversal" politics
The first question was about petty, adversarial British politics and what should be done about it. A treat for both Brand and Farage, who like to position themselves precariously outside the establishment, even though they represent everything that is wrong with the way politics is shaped and covered.
"We're not doing real politics anymore," Nigel Farage asserted, gravely. With Russell Brand facing him, shirt unbuttoned to dangerously sub-Tony Blair levels, this must be the truest phrase ever to be uttered on a QT panel.
Brand seemed uncharacteristically nervous. His voice trembled and he appeared to have forgotten his incessant inner thesaurus when answering a question he is usually so well versed in. He slammed the "petty, adversal nature of politics" before rounding on Farage for his background in the city: "That dude... had the perfect training to be a politician":
Brand also called Farage a "fella", and a few choice audience members "mate". A patronising "love" was reserved for Tory minister Penny Mordaunt: "Excuse the sexist language; I'm working on that."
On that subject, Labour's shadow international development secretary Mary Creagh politely suggested people don't like men interrupting women all the time, only to be interrupted by David Dimbleby, who was ostensibly chairing the debate.
"A pound shop Enoch Powell"
Brand did redeem himself slightly by coming out with the soundbite of the night, warning the audience that Farage is not a "cartoon character", but rather "a pound shop Enoch Powell - and we've gotta watch him".
Audience member yelling at Brand
A disabled man in the audience tore Brand to shreds, telling him he doesn't "like people preaching", nor the accusation that Farage has criticised the disabled. His question ended in him repeatedly challenging Brand to "STAND" for parliament.
"I would stand for parliament but I would be afraid I would become one of them," Brand replied limply, his Medusan curls wilting under the pressure and sadness of it all. This led to the man shouting, "RUBBISH" at him for quite some time. Dimbleby either didn't notice, or was simply enjoying the scene.
Here it is:
Audience member yelling at Farage
And then it was Farage's turn, as a woman continuously screamed at him for being "racist", before issuing the ultimate Kent-based threat: "I live in South Thanet and I'm coming for you, Farage." She was accused of being the "rudest woman I've ever met", by a woman who was interrupted calling for immigrants to be "vetted". Which is also pretty rude.
Here's the now iconic blue-haired offender:
Dimbleby also let this go on for some time, for purposes of balance presumably.
Mary Creagh being sensible on immigration
Perhaps not the night's most electric moment, but shadow cabinet member Creagh had what Labour's message should be on immigration down to a tee, addressing the housing shortage, public service problems and low wages rather than giving credence to the tale of Britain being "overcrowded" with immigrants.
Another rock in a stormy televisual sea was the journalist Camilla Cavendish, who gave measured views on each subject and gently admonished the media, which shot Brand's tired old "mainstream media, vested interests, etc etc" fox.
"Weaponising" the NHS
"Weaponising": the strange, Brandesque fake verb Ed Miliband apparently used about the health service, according to Mordaunt. Even Creagh couldn't be bothered to display loyalty to her leader on this one, appearing as baffled as the rest of them.
More telling was Farage's answer to the question about private money in the NHS. His party has been embarrassingly all over the place about its stance on the health service in the past few months, as it attempts to take a populist stance on the subject to creep further into Labour's core vote.
Farage's revealing language about ruling out outsourcing "in the short term", and his insistence Ukip would "fight the election" on the grounds of outsourcing to private providers having "not delivered" adequate results, suggests that the party will change its stance on this after the election.
But he went to a private school
The whole sorry affair ended comfortingly with the obligatory ad hominem attacks on panel members' views on education: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
Men maintain friendships by going to the pub and watching football rather than talking, new research has found.
Scientists investigating why some friendships last longer than others found sharp differences in the way men and women behave.
Researchers discovered that men remain friends with other males by doing things together like going to a football match or to the pub for a drink.
Women maintain their friendships by talking to each other more on the phone, according to the research carried out by scientists at Oxford University.
They followed a group of 30 children as they made the transition to university and jobs and mapped out what happened to their social networks.
Professor Robin Dunbar, an Oxford University evolutionary biologist, who led the research, said: “What determined whether they survived with girls was whether they made the effort to talk more to each other on the phone.
"Talking had absolutely no effect on boys' relationships at all. What held up their friendships was doing stuff together.
“Going to a football match, going to the pub for a drink. It was a very striking sex difference."
Professor Dunbar was speaking at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston, the Times reported.
He said his previous research found that women typically had far stronger, close relationships, while men were more likely to maintain a loose group of friends.In an unsurprising move, ATM operators and other financial organizations are beginning to look to Linux as a replacement for their outdated Windows XP installations. That these organizations are deciding to move from XP only now is a testament to the staying power of the OS and a certain conservatism in financial circles.
“Windows XP currently powers nearly 95% of ATMs around the world,” wrote ComputerWorld reporter Jaikumar Vijayan. The operating system, which Microsoft will stop supporting on April 8, was a popular choice for embedded systems and ATMs for most of the decade as countless references to the Blue Screen Of Death in odd places would suggest.
New ATM operating systems must be Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) compliant and hardware updates may be necessary to upgrade current ATMs – which have a five- to ten-year lifespan – to next generation OSes like Window 7. Linux, obviously, is a solid choice because it is open and can be hardened even on legacy hardware. However, as the “PIN and chip” style cards begin appearing in the U.S. the need to update nearly every POS terminal and ATM may be far more pressing.
Presumably, financial firms can keep their old machines running for a few more months or even years, but in the end XP is dead, and despite pleas to maintain support for the embedded OS, Microsoft is intent on pulling the plug. Which means, of course, the BSOD may soon be a thing of the past.It's the story that's making headlines across America, gripping the national psyche and keeping us all on the edges of our seats: who is going to be the next head football coach at Purdue University?
In a shocking turn of events last week, the Boilermakers dumped coach Darrell Hazell after a respectable 9-33 start to his tenure in West Lafayette. With this program fixture out, who can step in to fill his shoes?
Our crack analysts have reviewed the possibilities. Join us, won't you?
LES MILES
The number one |
Fuchsia Dunlop (Bloomsbury, £26). Click here to order a copy for £20.80 from the Guardian BookshopClimate Activists Court Hill Republicans With 'Civil Conversations'
Enlarge this image toggle caption Shawn Reeder/Courtesy Citizens Climate Lobby Shawn Reeder/Courtesy Citizens Climate Lobby
Climate activist and citizen lobbyist Jay Butera believes in the power of polite persistence. Nearly every week for the past 10 years, he's taken the train down to Washington D.C. from his home in suburban Philadelphia to convince Congress members to act on climate change.
Butera says he's had hundreds of conversations with Republican aides and congressmen.
"There were times when it felt like this is not going to happen," said Butera. "This is impossible, this is the most polarized issue in Congress."
But despite the recent election that resulted in Republicans controlling both houses of Congress and the White House, Butera is suddenly having some success. Democrats have been more favorable to action on climate change, but Butera is getting Republicans on board too.
"It's not enough to try and advocate for one party or another because nothing substantive can happen unless it has support from both parties," he said.
'Civil conversations with solutions'
Butera is a successful entrepreneur, having created and sold two businesses. But these days instead of courting investors, he now spends all his time volunteering with the Citizen's Climate Lobby.
This week, Butera joined with thousands of climate activists who traveled to Washington, D.C. to visit their members of Congress to encourage them to do something about warming temperatures, rising seas and melting ice caps.
They held an annual lobbying day for the Citizens Climate Lobby, which has 400 chapters across the country, and citizen lobbyists in every congressional district. Butera says instead of confrontation, they take a friendly, calm approach to an issue that has been mired in partisan roadblocks.
"If we could get members together and talk about this in a calm way we could break this log jam," he said.
Four years ago, Butera got the idea for a new bi-partisan caucus that would have the goal of pushing for climate solutions, specifically economic solutions. It wasn't hard to get Democrats on board, but he spent three years looking for a Republican. By design, the caucus is now half Republican, half Democrat.
Having people voice outrage, that's OK, but we also need civil conversations with solutions.
Butera says he's taking the middle ground.
"I understand citizens are outraged and I respect their fierce advocacy," he said. "But it doesn't move the conversation forward. Having people voice outrage, that's OK, but we also need civil conversations with solutions."
Butera began his quest for a Republican caucus member in Florida, a place where rising seas already cause nuisance flooding in urban areas. Starting at the local level, he talked to township commissioners and Chambers of Commerce. He spoke their language.
"It has definitely helped me to have a background in business," he said. "From a business person's point of view, climate impacts and the disruptions they are causing present a big risk to our economy."
He found his first Republican last year. Carlos Curbelo from South Florida represents a district already witnessing the impacts of rising seas. Curbelo and Democrat Ted Deutch, another South Florida Congressman, formed the Climate Solutions Caucus in April, 2016. Since then the caucus has grown to 42 members.
It's a small, but growing group.
"I see this wall coming down now," Butera said. "Since the beginning of this year 14 Republicans have joined the Climate Solutions Caucus. That's a startling fact. That gives me a lot of hope."
Butera also worked with members of the Citizen's Climate Lobby to visit their local representatives in their home offices and lobby their campaigns. Some, like freshman Republican congressman Don Bacon from Nebraska, made it a campaign pledge to join the caucus.
Butera, along with other members of the Citizen's Climate Lobby, recently visited Bacon in his new office on Capitol Hill to thank him for joining. Bacon said he would keep an open mind.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Nati Harnik/AP Nati Harnik/AP
"I know I'm not 100 percent on every one of your issues," Bacon told the group that included Butera and a few of the congressman's constituents. "But I try to look at each one, individually, and weigh it."
So far, Bacon has voted 100 percent with Trump on environmental issues. Like many in the Climate Solutions Caucus, Bacon is from a swing district and just narrowly beat his Democratic opponent. In joining, he highlighted his experience tackling environmental issues on airbases he commanded.
He opposed the U.S. pulling out of the Paris agreement and he wasn't alone — 21 members of the Climate Solutions Caucus wrote a letter to President Trump urging him to remain in the Paris Accords.
"Remaining in the UNFCCC will strengthen American leadership on environmental stewardship and help transform today's low-carbon investments into trillions of dollars of clean energy prosperity," wrote the caucus members. "Withdrawing would mean squandering a unique opportunity to promote American research, ingenuity, and innovation."
Citizen Climate Lobby member and Omaha resident Kay Carne helped convince Bacon to join the caucus. Carne says when she speaks to people like Bacon, she describes how personal this issue is for her. She has two daughters and her youngest is just 7 weeks old.
"My youngest will be Congressman Bacon's age in 2070," said Carne speaking outside Bacon's office after the meeting. "2070 seems so far away but she'll be 53 then and she may even live to see 2100, which is the time a lot of these scientific projections are saying temperatures will increase by 10 degrees Fahrenheit. So just thinking about their lifetime and what they could see makes this issue so much more urgent than some others realize."
Republicans on board
One surprising member of the caucus is Darrell Issa, a California Republican who has denied the scientific consensus on climate change. The League of Conservation Voters once gave him a "Climate Change Denier" award. Issa narrowly won re-election in November against his Democratic opponent.
In suburban Philadelphia, where Hilary Clinton beat President Trump, all three swing districts' Republican congressmen have joined the caucus.
Freshman Republican Brian Fitzpatrick says it's part of his mission to pursue bipartisan environmental protection.
"We really need to get past the antiquated way of thinking of this Hatfields vs. McCoy brand of politics where people are stuck," he said, referring to the bitter family feud of the 1800s. "I don't think that's a good thing. We need to take a fresh look at how to grow the economy and protect the environment at the same time. And groups like the Citizens Climate Lobby are all about that."
Fitzpatrick credits his time as an Eagle Scout for his passion for environmental preservation. A former FBI agent, he has not voted lock step with Trump on the environment.
Pennsylvania Republican Ryan Costello also joined the caucus but is less optimistic about Congress acting on climate. He says he and his climate caucus colleagues will try to push Congress to act on things like carbon capture. But there's little support for climate legislation in the Republican controlled House.
Looking to 2018
While Democrats are eager to take back seats in the 2018 mid-term elections, it's not clear how environmental issues will play out. Terry Madonna, director of the Franklin and Marshall College Poll, says in the past climate and environment were low on the list of priorities for voters.
"But I think this is going to be more important in 2018 and I think the Democrats in particular are going to make a big deal of it," he said.
Ultimately, the Citizen's Climate Lobby wants Congress to put a fee on carbon, which would then be funneled back to households in a monthly check or "dividend." Butera says, like air and water, the atmosphere should not be a dumping ground.
"I believe in the power of capitalism to move mountains," said Butera. "And if we can line that up to move us in the right direction, and have the profit motive drive efficiencies and drive us toward low carbon technologies that is the force that can stop climate change."
House Republicans joining this climate caucus are not committing to the idea of the carbon tax.
And there's still the behemoth counterweight lobbying of the fossil fuel industry, which has more funds at its disposal than the citizen lobbyists.
But Butera is optimistic.
"The fossil fuel lobby looms large on Capital Hill but I continue to believe the voice of voters is louder," he said.
Butera thinks with Republicans now controlling Washington, many realize it's up to them to do something about climate.This morning the Montreal Canadiens announced that forward Max Pacioretty has been selected as the new captain of the Montreal Canadiens following a player vote. He is the 29th captain in franchise history.
Pacioretty, 26, was considered in a dead lock with defenceman P.K. Subban in the fans and organizations eyes for who would be the next captain of the Habs. Pacioretty has led the Habs in scoring for the past four seasons and has the fourth most goals of any NHL player in the past five years. The New Caanan, Connecticut native is the first American born player to score 30 goals with the Montreal Canadiens. He received the Bill Masterton trophy in 2012 after returning from a serious neck injury in 2011. Pacioretty was drafted 22nd overall by the Montreal Canadiens in the 2007 NHL Entry Draft.
Also announced is were alternate captains for the team:
Habs have picked Max Pacioretty as the 29th captain. Markov, Plekanec, Subban and Gallagher will serve as assistant captains. #sports — Montreal Gazette (@mtlgazette) September 18, 2015
The last captain of the Montreal Canadiens was Brian Gionta, who left the team following the 2012-2013 NHL regular season. Max Pacioretty is the first left winger since Bob Gainey to be named captain and the first captain to be chosen by the players since 1989, when Guy Carbonneau and Chris Chelios were selected as co-captains. Max Pacioretty is signed by the Canadiens for the next four years at a $4.5 million cap hit, signed back in 2013. He scored 37 goals, 30 assists for 67 points in the 2014-15 regular season, which just so happens to be Max Pacioretty’s number.Weapons are items that are equipped in the "Attack" slot and determine how the player attacks. Weapons vary in what tiles they hit and how many tiles are hit at once.
Only one weapon can be equipped at a time unless the player has the Holster.
There are 3 types of damage: Normal, Piercing and Phasing. Piercing damage goes through physical armor like shields and skeleton's steeds, as well as rolling armadillos and beetles. Phasing damage pierces any armor and damages normally unhittable targets like burrowed moles.
All weapons listed deal Normal Damage, unless stated otherwise.
Some weapons can be Thrown by pressing Up + Down. When thrown, the weapon will damage all enemies in a straight line from the player until it hits a wall. The weapon will appear on the ground beside the wall.
In Amplified, thrown weapons deal Piercing damage.
The player cannot throw weapons if either the Boots of Leaping or Boots of Lunging are equipped, as their "Toggle" action overrides throwing.
Most weapons exist in multiple forms. These forms and their attributes are described below.
Increases attack damage by 999 for one beat after collecting any amount of gold.
Breaks if the player takes damage or throws the weapon, leaving a Glass Shard on the ground.
Used in tandem with the Crown of Thorns, the player recovers 0.5 health every 5 kills instead of 10.
Killing passive Green Mushrooms in Zone 2 and Cauldrons in Zone 3 will still count toward healing.
Increases attack damage by 999 if the player is at 0.5 hearts of health.
Weapon Range Damage Notes
Dagger Dagger Normal: 1 Blood: 1 Glass: 4 Golden: 1 Obsidian: 1-3 Titanium: 2 Starting weapon for most characters.
Can be Thrown.
Broadsword Broadsword Normal: 1 Blood: 1 Glass: 4 Golden: 1 Obsidian: 1-3 Titanium: 2 This weapon is capable of hitting multiple monsters at once.
Rapier Rapier Normal: 1 Blood: 1 Glass: 4 Golden: 1 Obsidian: 1-3 Titanium: 2 This weapon is capable of "Lunging" by moving into range of an enemy.
Lunging deals double the weapon's base damage.
Spear Spear Normal: 1 Blood: 1 Glass: 4 Golden: 1 Obsidian: 1-3 Titanium: 2 This weapon can only attack one monster at a time.
Can be Thrown.
Longsword Longsword Normal: 1 Blood: 1 Glass: 4 Golden: 1 Obsidian: 1-3 Titanium: 2 This weapon is capable of hitting multiple monsters at once.
Whip Whip Normal: 1 Blood: 1 Glass: 4 Golden: 1 Obsidian: 1-3 Titanium: 2 This weapon can only attack one monster at a time.
Attacks favor monsters closest to the player. When there are two monsters at the same distance, the attack prioritizes the monster on the left.
Bow Bow Normal: 1 Blood: 1 Glass: 4 Golden: 1 Obsidian: 1-3 Titanium: 2 This weapon can only attack one monster at a time.
Crossbow Crossbow Normal: 1 Blood: 1 Glass: 4 Golden: 1 Obsidian: 1-3 Titanium: 2 This weapon can only attack one monster at a time.
After firing 3 times, this weapon will need to be Reloaded by pressing Up + Down.
While loaded, this weapon attacks monsters at its full range and deals Piercing damage.
While not loaded, this weapon can only attack monsters adjacent to the player.
Cat o' Nine Tails Cat o' Nine Tails Normal: 1 Blood: 1 Glass: 4 Golden: 1 Obsidian: 1-3 Titanium: 2 This weapon can only attack one monster at a time.
The player can still move while attacking with this weapon.
Attacks favor monsters closest to the player. When there are two monsters at the same distance, the attack prioritizes the monster on the left.
Flail Flail Normal: 1 Blood: 1 Glass: 4 Golden: 1 Obsidian: 1-3 Titanium: 2 This weapon is capable of hitting multiple monsters at once.
Enemies get knocked back 1 tile upon getting hit, skipping a beat of movement. Does not stack with the Ring of War.
Blunderbuss Blunderbuss 2 This weapon is capable of hitting multiple monsters at once.
After firing once, this weapon will need to be Reloaded by pressing Up + Down.
While loaded, this weapon attacks monsters at its full range and deals Piercing damage. The player gets knocked back 1 tile upon firing.
While not loaded, this weapon can only attack monsters adjacent to the player.
Rifle Rifle Loaded: 3 Not loaded: 1 This weapon is capable of hitting multiple monsters at once.
This weapon can be Reloaded by pressing Up + Down. Up to 3 attacks can be loaded, after which they all are immediately fired regardless if any monster is actually in range.
Upon firing, this weapon deals 3 Piercing damage to all enemies within its range (up to 20 tiles away). The player gets knocked back 1 tile.
While not loaded, this weapon can only attack monsters adjacent to the player. This attack only deals 1 Normal damage.
Glass Shard Glass Shard 1 Makeshift weapon which appears when a Glass weapon breaks. It can be found on the tile where the player was hit.
Identical to the Dagger.
Can be Thrown.
Jeweled Dagger Jeweled Dagger 5 Can be Thrown.
Dagger of Phasing Dagger of Phasing 2 This weapon deals Phasing damage.
Can attack from inside walls, such as when the player is using the Ring of Phasing.
Can be Thrown. When thrown, it deals Phasing damage and moves through walls.
Flower Flower 0 Only available when playing as Dove.
Deals ZERO damage.
Attacking an enemy will confuse it for 8 beats.
Attacking an enemy for the first time will cause it to drop gold and reduce the player's spell cooldowns as if it was killed.
Attacking enemies will also increase the player's gold multiplier.
Golden Lute Golden Lute 1 Only available when playing as Melody, or as Cadence during the Necrodancer battle.
This weapon is capable of hitting multiple monsters at once.
The player MUST move for this weapon to deal damage. This weapon cannot attack directly.
This weapon is NOT affected by damage-increasing equipment.
Does not deal damage from inside walls with the Ring of Phasing, but will deal damage upon entering or leaving a wall.
Axe Axe Normal: 1 Blood: 1 Glass: 4 Golden: 1 Obsidian: 1-3 Titanium: 2 This weapon is capable of "Lunging" by moving into range of an enemy.
Lunging is capable of hitting multiple monsters at once.
Warhammer Warhammer Normal: 1 Blood: 1 Glass: 4 Golden: 1 Obsidian: 1-3 Titanium: 2 This weapon is capable of hitting multiple monsters at once.
Cutlass Cutlass Normal: 1 Blood: 1 Glass: 4 Golden: 1 Obsidian: 1-3 Titanium: 2 This weapon can only attack one monster at a time.
While attacking, the player can Parry melee attacks from monsters, avoiding damage and getting knocked back 1 tile. The player cannot parry bombs, fireballs or other AoE hazards.
Staff Staff Normal: 1 Blood: 1 Glass: 4 Golden: 1 Obsidian: 1-3 Titanium: 2 Upon attacking an enemy, this weapon will deliver a Splash attack that damages all enemies up to 20 tiles away in a line.
Harp Harp Normal: 1 Blood: 1 Glass: 4 Golden: 1 Obsidian: 1-3 Titanium: 2 Upon attacking an enemy, this weapon will deliver a Splash attack that damages all enemies adjacent to the player.
Electric Dagger Electric Dagger 2 Upon attacking an enemy, it creates an arc of lightning that deals 1 damage to all enemies adjacent to the hit enemy, then to all enemies adjacent to those and so on.
When the player is standing on a conduit, the attack deals 999 damage and the arc deals 2 damage to each connected enemy.
Can be Thrown.
Mystery Weapon Mystery Weapon Varies Obsidian: 1-3 Titanium: 2 Given by the Shrine of Uncertainty. Will duplicate the effect of another weapon. Its appearance does not change. It may be made of Obsidian or Titanium and it shares its properties with one of the following weapons: Broadsword, Rapier, Longsword, Whip, Bow, Cat o' Nine Tails, Flail, Axe, Warhammer, Cutlass, Staff or Harp. It cannot be a Dagger, Spear, Crossbow, Rifle or a Blunderbuss, nor can it be of Normal, Blood, Glass or Gold quality.Newcastle Jets is pleased to announce that the Club has signed influential English midfielder Wayne Brown to a fresh contract through to the completion of the Hyundai A-League 2018/19 Season.
28-year-old Brown inked an initial two-season contract with the Jets in May 2016, however is now set to stay with the Club for a further season on top of his original deal in the Hunter.
In his brief time with the Club thus far Brown has demonstrated, and been praised for, his quality and contribution to the Jets.
The crafty midfielder scored spectacular goals from outside the box in both his Hyundai A-League and Westfield FFA Cup bows, and thanks to his versatility and vigour has not missed a minute of any Newcastle Jets match throughout the current A-League campaign.
The Club’s number 10 said life at the Jets and in Newcastle sits well with himself and the young Brown family.
“I am delighted to have committed to the Club,” Brown said. “I have settled in really well here, I am happy on the pitch and most importantly the family is happy off the pitch as well.”
“The Club and fans have taken me in like one of their own, so I am delighted that it can continue for even longer.”
“We have got a great bunch of lads and I think that is key for us. We have got experience, we have got homegrown players and young talent that is eager to learn,” he said.
Newcastle Jets Head Coach Mark Jones described Brown as a “very capable player” and one who can help set the standard within his squad.
“He (Brown) has very good attacking instincts, is very tidy technically on the ball, but is also an aggressive defender who wins the ball and presses well,” Jones explained.
“He is a winner and the sort of character that we want in our football team. Wayne inspires others through his hard work, discipline and attitude."
Brown is set to travel south to Victoria with the Club’s Hyundai A-League squad for Thursday night’s round six clash against Melbourne City later today.
The former Fulham FC first teamer said the Jets’ focus is to return to the level of performance that they displayed in the opening three rounds of the campaign.
“I think you have seen from all the results that it is going to be a really tight league because anyone is capable of beating anyone on their day,” Brown said.
“We need to get back to the performances that we had at the start of the season and get the results that we did.”
“We are working hard on the training field day in day out, and hopefully we can start putting some points on the board,” he concluded.BRUSSELS - Facebook (FB.O), Twitter (TWTR.N), Google’s (GOOGL.O) YouTube and Microsoft (MSFT.O) on Tuesday agreed to an EU code of conduct to tackle online hate speech within 24 hours in Europe.
Logo of the Twitter and Facebook are seen through magnifier on display in this illustration taken in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, December 16, 2015. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic
EU governments have been trying in recent months to get social platforms to crack down on rising online racism following the refugee crisis and terror attacks, with some even threatening action against the companies.
As part of the pledge agreed with the European Commission, the web giants will review the majority of valid requests for removal of illegal hate speech in less than 24 hours and remove or disable access to the content if necessary.
They will also strengthen their cooperation with civil society organizations who help flag hateful content when it goes online and promote “counter-narratives” to hate speech.
“The recent terror attacks have reminded us of the urgent need to address illegal online hate speech. Social media is unfortunately one of the tools that terrorist groups use to radicalize young people,” EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova said.
Germany got Google, Facebook and Twitter to agree to delete hate speech from their websites within 24 hours last year and even launched an investigation into the European head of Facebook over its alleged failure to remove racist hate speech.
“There’s no place for hate speech on Facebook,” said Monika Bickert, Head of Global Policy Management at Facebook.
“With a global community of 1.6 billion people we work hard to balance giving people the power to express themselves whilst ensuring we provide a respectful environment.”
The code of conduct is largely a continuation of efforts that the companies already take to counter hate speech on their websites, such as developing tools for people to report hateful content and training staff to handle such requests.
Twitter has suspended over 125,000 accounts since the middle of 2015 for threatening or promoting terror acts, primarily related to Islamic State.
The United States has undertaken similar efforts to entice the cooperation of tech companies in combating online radicalization, focusing on promoting “counter-narratives” to extremist content.
EU ministers had called for cooperation with tech companies to be stepped up after the Brussels attacks in March.
Jewish lobbyists, frequently the target of hate speech, welcomed the code of conduct.
“This a historic agreement that could not arrive at a better time,” said Dr. Moshe Kantor, President of the European Jewish Congress.(Boulder, CO) – Upslope Brewing Company, in cooperation with central Boulder’s S’PARK development, is proud to announce plans for an all-new 11,000 square foot brewpub at 34th St. and Valmont in Boulder, Colorado. Scheduled for completion in the fall of 2017, the new facility will be home to all of Upslope’s experimental brewing and barrel-aging, as well as a full-service restaurant with a mezzanine and patio.
“The innovation emerging from our Lee Hill brewery has never been more important than it is today, and has become essential to stay relevant in today’s quickly evolving craft beer industry. In an effort to expand the experimental brewing, piloting, barrel-aging and collaboration beers that are going on there today, we need to move the brewery to a larger location,” said Upslope Founder Matt Cutter. “We have fortunately been able to combine that expansion effort with being part of a one-of-a-kind project taking shape in central Boulder, just north of Boulder Junction. Having worked with Element Properties for many months on the design of this brewpub, we couldn’t be more excited to be a key component of the S’PARK project and Markt building.”
Upslope first opened its doors in November 2008 with just two beer styles at the current Lee Hill location. Over the past six years, the company has experienced unprecedented growth. In 2013, Upslope opened its second location in Flatiron Park, a 27,000 square foot brewery complete with a 2,300 square foot tap room. Today, Upslope offers five year round styles, six Limited Release styles, the Lee Hill Series and the Tap Room Series.
The existing Lee Hill tap room and experimental brewing facility, located in North Boulder, will remain in operation until the completion of the new facility in the fall of 2017.
Upslope’s Flatiron Park location will continue as its main production brewery, producing its year round, canned offerings and its popular tap room will remain open.
About Upslope Brewing Company
Boulder-based Upslope Brewing Company is the creator of premium ales and lagers that are artfully crafted using natural ingredients. Packaged in aluminum cans for exceptional portability, and because it’s best for the environment, Upslope complements the outdoor lifestyle and caters to the on-the-go beer enthusiast. The five flagship beers include: Pale Ale, India Pale Ale, Brown Ale, Craft Lager and Imperial India Pale Ale. Additional installments are offered in a Limited Release Series, the Lee Hill Series and the Tap Room Series. In an ongoing effort to protect Colorado watersheds, and the key ingredient in Upslope ales and lagers, one percent of Upslope Craft Lager can revenues benefit Trout Unlimited.
upslopebrewing.com – @Upslope – facebookThe ALDS starts tomorrow, and when it does, the Red Sox should bring a new lineup to the party.
A few things seem set in stone, and are not a problem:
Dustin Pedroia bats first David Ortiz and Mookie Betts are in some order in the 3-4 spots Hanley Ramirez bats fifth
That’s about it. We’ve seen the other spots shift around a good bit, and for the most part, that’s not terribly surprising. When it comes to the bottom of the order, jostling guys around depending on who might be feeling it a bit more or less is pretty commonplace, and doesn’t exactly promise to make a huge difference in the outcome of any games. In fact, the reality is that most lineup changes don’t have that huge an impact so long as they’re restricted to just the order of the batters, and not the actual names involved.
That being said, one spot has stood out as a bit of a black sheep: the two-hole. Xander Bogaerts laid solid claim to it for most of the last couple months, but as his numerical slide during that period dragged on, he started to stick out like a bit of a sore thumb between Pedroia, Ortiz, and Betts. The shortstop has more-or-less plateaued at a fairly reasonable point after a miserable August, but it takes some serious end-point gymnastics to make him look particularly good in recent stretches. In the final few games of the season, that made him a central figure in John Farrell’s lineup experiments, with Bogaerts moved down to sixth a couple of times.
That’s all well-and-good. As it stands, perhaps Bogaerts should not be batting second, in particular because even during a reasonable September he’d been less of an on-base threat than a power hitter. But the proposed solution was kind of a mess. Sorry, Brock Holt fans. The possibility exists that he’s Boston’s best option at third base right now, but even before an 0-for-14 slump to end the season, Holt’s numbers since returning to a semi-starter role have been entirely pedestrian. He’s fine hitting seventh or eighth, but when he gets a fifth at-bat in a game where David Ortiz and Mookie Betts might not, you’re doing something wrong.
This brings us to the one batter whose place in the lineup is clearly too low right now: Andrew Benintendi. The rookie has shown no problem adapting to Major League pitching, hitting.295/.359/.476 right out of the gates with the Sox. Those numbers aren’t that much lower in 44 plate appearances since returning from injury. A Benintendi at-bat looks like it’s coming from someone who’s been in the league for six or seven years, not six or seven weeks. He’s been a perfect fit in the Red Sox’ extremely disciplined lineup, it’s just a question of where in the lineup that fit has been. Except that one game immediately after the Sox clinched the East where half the starters were given the day off, Benintendi has hit eighth or ninth in every single one of his starts this season.
Well, the answer here seems kind of obvious, doesn’t it? Even if you buy into the big platoon splits (Benintendi has a.429 OPS against lefties in 33 plate appearances, which isn’t even 5% of the number needed to really establish that split), the Indians are throwing three right-handed starters against the Red Sox. Against them, Benintendi’s OBP jumps up to.400 (though, again, the sample size means you probably shouldn’t be paying more attention to that than his overall.359 against all pitchers). It’s fair to say that, late in the game, you might want to avoid the relatively untested left-handed rookie against the likes of Andrew Miller, but the Red Sox are in the perfect situation to handle that thanks to the presence of Chris Young. whose OPS against lefties has only just recently dipped down out of four-digit territory. He’s not even an automatic out against righties, which makes putting him in as a pinch hitter at #2 somewhat less concerning.
I certainly get that asking a rookie to bat second in their first trip to the playoffs is kind of a lot. And if you want to put Xander back in that spot I can’t say I really blame you. But Andrew Benintendi should not be batting ninth. Even the “second leadoff hitter” philosophy (which is itself fairly questionable) would not suggest you should sacrifice the quality of the earlier spots to enable it. Jackie Bradley Jr. would, frankly, be the obvious pick if you had to go in that direction given his middling numbers of late.
Just not Andrew Benintendi. Yes, he’s young and inexperienced. Yes, be it second or sixth, these are big spots to put him in. But based on what he’s shown us so far, there’s not much reason to believe he can’t handle it. No small part of this 2016 turnaround is a result of the Sox turning over the keys to their young home-grown players. Now is not the time to start doubting what a talented young rookie can do for a playoff team.Tripoli, Libya (CNN) -- Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset al-Megrahi is comatose, near death and likely to take secrets of the attack on Pan Am Flight 103 to his grave.
CNN found al-Megrahi under the care of his family in his palatial Tripoli villa Sunday, surviving on oxygen and an intravenous drip. The cancer-stricken former Libyan intelligence officer may be the last man alive who knows precisely who in the Libya government authorized the bombing, which killed 270 people.
"We just give him oxygen. Nobody gives us any advice," his son, Khaled al-Megrahi, told CNN.
CNN's Nic Robertson: 'Not what I was prepared for'
Al-Megrahi was freed from a prison in Scotland in 2009 after serving eight years of a life sentence for blowing up the Pan Am jet, killing all 259 on board and 11 in the town of Lockerbie below. Doctors who had been treating him for prostate cancer gave him just three months to live, and he was released on compassionate grounds.
He received a hero's welcome in Tripoli, enraging many in the United States and Britain. And with the recent overthrow of longtime Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi, politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have called for al-Megrahi to be sent back to prison.
Al-Megrahi has been subject of bitter dispute
But the National Transitional Council, the rebel movement that toppled Gadhafi, announced Sunday that it won't allow the dying al-Megrahi to be extradited.
"We will not give any Libyan citizen to the West," NTC Justice Minister Mohammed al-Alagi said.
Al-Megrahi lived far longer than expected. He made a public appearance with now-fugitive Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi in July, confined to a wheelchair. He always maintained his innocence.
With the fall of Tripoli to the rebels, his care has been left up to his son and his mother.
December 21, 1988: On the scene in Lockerbie
"There is no doctor. There is nobody to ask. We don't have any phone line to call anybody," Khaled al-Megrahi said.Hall of Fame executive Bill Polian would strongly consider the right opportunity to return to the NFL and is expected to garner heavy consideration for a front-office position in Chicago, according to league sources. Polian enjoys his work broadcasting but remains plugged in to league matters and personnel, and several owners are mulling over front-office shake-ups that he is monitoring closely.
A senior executive, advisory position with the right franchise would appeal to Polian, sources said, and there is a possibility the Bears restructure their front office in a scenario where Polian would be a senior adviser who oversees coaching and football operations in 2017 and then makes determinations about how he believes the organization should move forward.
Some NFL execs have suggested Los Angeles as a possibility for Polian as well. However, sources close to Polian maintain a Midwestern team would have appeal to the veteran personnel man, and noted he has had a strong affinity for Bears ownership over the years.
Polian was in talks to join the Bills in a senior management position a few years ago, but ultimately opted not to take that job as he awaited induction to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, which requires a five-year hiatus from the game before candidates can be eligible. Polian, who remains well thought of by many owners, could end up working with his sons again if he returns to a front-office position as well, which would interest him.The film 'Copperhead' deals with the events of the Civil War. A war movie that gets it right?
Conservatives are grabbing popcorn and lining up to catch a new historical drama with modern connections.
“Copperhead,” the new film from director Ron Maxwell, focuses on the Northern opponents of the American Civil War and stars Billy Campbell, Angus MacFadyen and Peter Fonda.
Story Continued Below
At least one conservative — Richard Viguerie, chairman of ConservativeHQ.com — emailed his audience to tell it about the movie “that every conservative needs to see.”
“[W]hile Copperhead is about the Civil War, believe me, it will hit close to home for every conservative fighting to preserve our Constitution and our American way of life,” Viguerie wrote. “Because Copperhead is about standing up for faith, for America, and for what’s right, just like you and I are doing today. In fact, I’ve never seen a movie with more references to the Constitution, or a movie that better sums up our current fight to stand up for American values and get our nation back on track.”
The movie, which is based on the novel by Harold Frederic, follows Abner Beech, a New York farmer who doesn’t consider himself a Yankee, and is against slavery and war in general.
Asked about whether he sees his film as conservative, Maxwell told POLITICO, “I think if ‘Copperhead’ has any relevance at all, in addition to illuminating a time and place from our common heritage, it’s as a cinematic meditation on the price of dissent. I’ve never thought of dissent as a political act belonging to the right or left. It’s an act of liberty, an expression of the rights of a free person — free not just in law but free from the confines and pressures of the tyranny of the majority.”
Maxwell said while the concept of dissent is as “old as time,” in the U.S., “it’s protected in the Constitution.”
“Perhaps because Abner Beech, the main character in the film, relies on the protection of the Constitution and is not reticent in saying so, noted conservatives, including some good friends of mine, see the film as that rare motion picture, which calls attention to our great founding document.”
Maxwell, whose previous films include “Gettysburg” and “Gods and Generals,” says his film has plenty for liberals, too.
“I also have good friends politically self-identified as on the left who, just as members of the [American Civil Liberties Union] do routinely, are also vociferous in their defense of the Constitution. I’ve now read thoughtful pieces online about my movie ‘Copperhead’ from writers across the political spectrum.”
Maxwell does add, however, that “there’s no doubt that most of the interest as well as most of the praise for the film has come from self-identified conservatives.”
”The leading character, the dissenter, disparagingly called a copperhead by his neighbors, is against the war, against the federal government’s encroachments on civil liberties, against the draft and against the prevailing public opinion of his community. He is for the preservation of the Union and for the abolition of slavery. His dispute is not with the goals but with the methods |
watch (ensuring aircraft reach their destinations) Ownership of the flight from an operational control perspective Weather package and briefing with captain Passenger manifest (ensuring that the skyline manifest matches the passengers boarding the aircraft) Freight manifest (ensuring that the skyline manifest matches the freight loaded on the aircraft) Ordering of fuel Assistance with flight planning (reviewing the flight plan with the pilot and signing off) Assistance with weight and balance (ensuring maximum icing-season weight limitations are not exceeded, etc.) Loading of passengers (escorting passengers to the aircraft).
Air Tindi has amended company training in surface contamination and Caravan captain training syllabi to mitigate negative transference of training.
Air Tindi's emergency response plan was found to be out of date. A new emergency response plan that encompasses each department has been developed. Training and drills are being conducted to ensure that employees are comfortable with the manual.
The Cessna 208B Quick Reference Handbook (QRH) / Emergency Checklist has been amended to add activation of SKYTRAC emergency mode.
This report concludes the Transportation Safety Board's investigation into this occurrence. The Board authorized the release of this report on 9 March 2016. It was officially released on 24 March 2016.
Appendices
Appendix A – SKYTRAC data: DA223 flight path
Source: Google Earth, with TSB annotations
Appendix B – C-FKAY weight-and-balance calculations
* 37 minutes at 362 pounds/hour = 223 pounds (used 300 due to sustained high power settings)
** YZF to YFS: 1.5 hours at 362 pounds/hour Data source: DA223 operational flight plan
Appendix C – Graphical area forecast: Clouds and weather
Appendix D – Graphical area forecast: Icing and turbulence
Symbol for patchy moderate mixed ice forecast between 2000 and 14 000 feet asl Symbol for moderate rime ice forecast between 2500 and 4000 feet asl Route of flight
Appendix E – Aviation routine weather reports (METAR) and aerodrome forecasts (TAF) for Yellowknife (CYZF)
METAR CYZF 201100Z 12012KT 15SM -SN OVC011 M11/M12 A2971 RMK SC8 SLP080=
METAR CYZF 201200Z 11009KT 15SM -SN OVC013 M11/M12 A2969 RMK SC8 SLP074=
METAR CYZF 201300Z 10011KT 15SM -SN OVC012 M10/M12 A2967 RMK SC8 SLP068=
METAR CYZF 201400Z 10012KT 12SM -SN OVC012 M10/M12 A2965 RMK SC8 SLP060=
SPECI CYZF 201424Z 09011KT 6SM -FZDZ -SN FEW008 OVC012 M10/M12 A2964 RMK SF1ST8 SF TR SLP058=
SPECI CYZF 201453Z 10011KT 2SM -FZDZ -SN BR FEW008 OVC013 M11/M12 A2963 RMK SF1ST7 SLP055=
METAR CYZF 201500Z 10011KT 1 3/4SM -FZDZ -SN BR FEW008 OVC014 M11/M12 A2963 RMK SF1ST7 SLP055=
TAF CYZF 200541Z 2006/2106 12012G22KT P6SM SCT006 OVC012 TEMPO
2006/2015 3SM -SN BR BKN006 OVC012
FM201500 12012G22KT 3SM -SN OVC008 PROB30 2015/2024 1SM -SN
OVC004
FM210000 08010G20KT 6SM -SN SCT008 BKN020
RMK NXT FCST BY 201200Z=
TAF CYZF 201142Z 2012/2112 12015KT P6SM -SN OVC010 TEMPO 2012/2015
3SM -SN BKN008
FM201500 12012G22KT 3SM -SN OVC008 PROB30 2015/2024 1SM -SN
OVC004
FM210000 08012KT 6SM -SN SCT008 BKN020
FM210600 06010KT P6SM BKN025
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Note: All times are Coordinated Universal Time (Z) (Mountain Standard Time plus 7 hours).
Appendix F – SKYTRAC data: Decision timing (vertical rate versus track)
Data source: SKYTRAC data from Air Tindi DA223
Appendix G – SKYTRAC data: Altitude versus airspeed
Appendix H – Occurrence siteThe vagina is the place where every man originates, and to which most men desperately try to return.
Females were created to be a host to vaginas and sustain their lives by supplying oxygenated blood, and to transport them. Some experts claim that the original intended use of the vagina was to steal fresh souls from men. Others claim they are meant for sex, but everyone is pleased to have them around.
The vagina is sometimes also called the Cunt, RingDing, Happy Hole, Rug, Box, Cooter, Gaping Axe-Wound, gash that won't heal, Pussy, or Twat. Professors of vaginology are commonly referred to as vaginarians, whereas those who avoid this meat are called vegetarians.
Contents show]
Alternate definitions Edit
The most influential force in the universe (other than tacos), the vagina is stronger than the five fundamental physical forces (gravity, strong and weak nuclear, electro-magnetic, and bitter irony) combined. Some suspect the vagina is lined with razor sharp teeth, others assume it is also very formidably expected to fire its lazer. Katie Rayner claims it is the portal to God. Approximately one-half of the human population is afflicted by the mysterious force, while the other half spends most of their young adult lives trying to access it momentarily.
without comedic tastes, the Vagina. For thosecomedic tastes, the so-called experts at Wikipedia have an article about
The term vagina also refers to cities, states or countries with the characteristics of a vagina. For example Florida, in the summer can be considered a vagina because it is hot, humid, smells like rotting garbage, and gives birth to colicky beings with no sense of propriety. Similar conditions in places like Taiwan, and California in the summer.
Although it generally controls all of their functions, females are occasionally able to overcome the force of the vagina and use it as a suctioning device, removing all property and monetary assets from any man that may be attached. This action is generally referred to as a pussy whipping, referring to Admiral H. T. Pussy, whose female's pussy actually grew bullwhips to remove the money from his wallet by force. Males who believe they may be in danger of a pussy whipping are advised to dangle a diamond, credit card or pair of shoes in front of the vagina, in order to increase its strength over the female's mind and keep her placated.
Censorship Edit
Nature has gone to great pains to censor vaginas. The usual method is to induce girls to suddenly start growing hair over them. This hair is known as bush. Voters in the United States were given the opportunity to vote on this four times, and three times voted in favor of bush, though many afterward wondered what they were thinking. Clothing is another common form of censorship of the vagina, but the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of expression.
Care and feeding Edit
Thoroughly cleanse the respective vagina before handling.
Vaginas require significant maintenance with specialized tools. Maintenance is typically conducted on a monthly basis. Should you note a string hanging from a vagina your best bet is to leave it alone. Better yet, leave the woman attached to it alone as well.
Vaginas are one of the most common storage places on the human body. Bottles, luggage, lettuce, hand grenades, beer, and semen are a few of the things that women have been known to keep in their vaginas. Spare change may also be kept in them when the piggy bank is full.
Men can sometimes have vaginas. Such a man is known as a Justin Bieber.
If you happen to get the juice of the vagina in your eye, get to a chemical eye wash station immediately. Vagina juice is very acidic. However, doing without it reportedly causes blindness.
Vaginas in the future Edit
If global trends continue, then by 2037 the vagina will reign supreme over all of civilization, in the rise of the second Woman Empire, Aristasia. Men will be used only for reproductive services, or if the vagina's owner gets really horny.
Men will be addressed simply by numbers, and will have to send a request to the almighty vagina for his needs, such as new clothing or food of his own choice. The food he will receive by default will be beer and steak and he will have daily activities such as watching porn or sports shows from the 1990s. This will dull men's minds so they do not question the world around them.
Women will also have a vast amount of freedom to do as they please and have the privilege of not asking the supreme vagina. This freedom will be spent shopping for shoes around the clock. The shoe industry will experience an unparalleled economic boom. Science and technology will fade away as women will be too busy trying on shoes.
If any man or woman defies the rule of the supreme vagina, they will be tortured and automatically thrown into the death chamber, deep within the supreme vagina herself. There, the victims will be squeezed to death, loving every moment of it.Story highlights "I'm glad that this is coming out now, because it is good, because real people have to see this," Trump Jr. said
Trump Jr. spoke with House investigators earlier this month
(CNN) President Donald Trump's eldest son suggested Tuesday that the investigation around his father's campaign has been fueled by government higher-ups who have conspired to block the President's agenda.
"There is, and there are, people at the highest levels of government that don't want to let America be America," Donald Trump Jr. told a gathering of young conservative activists in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Trump Jr.'s freewheeling comments before the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit came after he spoke earlier this month before congressional investigators and as some on the right, including him, increasingly attack the Department of Justice's special counsel probe, alleging it is politically compromised.
JUST WATCHED Hayden: Trump Jr. conspiracy theory'scary' Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Hayden: Trump Jr. conspiracy theory'scary' 00:48
In his remarks Tuesday, Trump Jr. railed against special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation and attacked the media's coverage of the Russia story, saying the ongoing probe was emblematic of the kind of "rigged system" the President had railed against during the campaign.
"My father talked about a rigged system throughout the campaign, and people were like, 'Oh, what are you talking about?' " Trump Jr. said. "But it is. And you're seeing it."
Read MoreAs usual, my reading has focused on language and history, and I’ve got some recommendations in each field. In language, unfortunately, two of the most exciting books of the year (both from Oxford) are very expensive, but you might want to see if your library has them.
The Oxford History of English Lexicography is the best reference history I’ve read in a long time, and I feel confident in saying that if you love dictionaries, you will want to set some time aside for reading it. Volume I covers standard dictionaries, going into the early development of glosses and bilingual dictionaries and monolingual dictionaries of English, with chapters on Johnson, American dictionaries, and the OED, as well as dictionaries of national and regional varieties and of Old and Middle English; the long discussion of Webster’s Third in particular is a triumph, doing full justice to the greatness of the dictionary while fully acknowledging the justice of some of the criticisms. Volume II covers specialized dictionaries of science, dialects, synonyms, etymology, pronunciation, slang and cant, quotations, phraseology, and personal and place names.
The two volumes of the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary are heavy (they come with a slipcase) and somewhat intimidating, but once you get used to them you wonder how you managed without them. Let’s say you look up squirrel in the OED and discover it entered English in the 14th century, and it occurs to you to wonder what they called the creature before they borrowed the French word. Until now, you would have had to ask a medievalist; now you look up squirrel and are directed to 01.02.06.20.05.08 (n.), where you discover that what they used to say was aquerne. And what if you want to know in general what words were available in a given period? Any historical novelist who cares about linguistic accuracy must have struggled with this; if your novel is set in the 1820s, how can you be sure you’re using vocabulary appropriate to the time and not introducing anachronisms? Now you can find out.
Some less expensive and more immediately appealing books I was happy to encounter during the year: Ambrose Bierce’s Write It Right: The Celebrated Cynic’s Language Peeves Deciphered, Appraised, and Annotated for 21st-Century Readers by Jan Freeman is a fine updating of the great cynic’s very idiosyncratic little usage book. Besides the well-written, sensible introduction, each of Bierce’s entries is followed by Freeman’s well-written, sensible update, saying pretty much what I would have wanted to say about each of his rants and shibboleths.
The third edition of Jesse Sheidlower’s The F-Word is a must for anyone interested in the most notorious of English obscenities. This is not one of those pro forma “revisions” that correct a few errors, toss in a few added items, and add a new preface; the text of the dictionary is twice as large as the second edition, over a hundred new words and senses have been added, and it now aims to cover the entire English-speaking world. This book makes me proud to be a part of a civilization that could produce such a thing.
H. W. Fowler’s A Dictionary of Modern English Usage: The Classic First Edition is another indispensable update. Keeping Fowler’s original text unchanged, it adds a superb introduction and a concluding section of notes updating some 300 entries, both by David Crystal. In the introduction, Crystal has written the best discussion of Fowler that I have seen or, really, can imagine, and the end notes are very useful, providing pointers to how things have changed since Fowler’s day and, in some cases, when he went astray. If you want to explore the ideas of one of the most interesting thinkers about English style in the early twentieth century, guided by a reliable modern linguist, this is the book for you.
Finally, In the Land of Invented Languages was the most unexpected pleasure of my reading year. I’ve never had much interest in artificial languages, but this completely won me over. Arika Okrent writes well and tells a great story, but she also has a PhD in linguistics, which makes all the difference; any good journalist could spin a lively tale out of some of this material (people who spend their lives creating and trying to publicize languages tend to be pretty colorful), but it takes a linguist to see what’s going on with the languages and be able to point out where they succeed and where they fail. Okrent has written a gripping account of some amazing people and some fascinating changes in the European cultural environment.
Two books have fundamentally affected the way I think about large chunks of history.
Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present by Christopher I. Beckwith is a reevaluation of the entire history of Eurasia, focusing on that often neglected portion called Central Asia. You can read the Introduction online, and it will give you an idea of the approach, but it’s the details that make the book. As a minor but telling example, each chapter starts off with an epigraph: perfectly normal, but he also includes the originals, in the original script. This isn’t just a nod to multiculturalism, it’s a refusal to privilege the easy-to-read translation over the normally effaced original, an insistence on the fact that people see and express the world through their own languages and we have to bear that constantly in mind. The author’s rethinking of not only Central Asian history but just about everything we think of as “world history” is convincing and important. The epilogue, “The Barbarians,” would make a superb little booklet on its own, and sums up the essence of what he’s trying to convey throughout the book, demonstrating that the Central Eurasians were no more violent than the “civilized” states with whom they sometimes fought, that what they desired above all else was trade (which requires peace), and that it was generally the peripheral states that attacked the Central Eurasians in an effort to expand their own territory and impose their own power, which they believed should be universal. (Unfortunately, the last two chapters are devoted almost entirely to a denunciation of “Modernism,” by which he means pretty much everything bad that’s happened since the nineteenth century, but they can be ignored.)
Gary B. Nash’s The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America is a complete overturning of the conventional picture of the Revolution, according to which a few white male geniuses who loved liberty aroused a nation of citizen-soldiers to overthrow the British yoke. Nash, who for years has been producing studies of the people forgotten in this account – the poor, the working-class, the women, the black, the Native American – has consolidated his work into a powerful history that will make you rethink everything you thought you knew. For instance, one of the main motivators of the Revolution was the Proclamation Line of 1763, which banned white settlement west of the Alleghenies; an attempt by the British Crown to secure its native subjects in their lands, it infuriated the land-hungry colonists, both the poor who wanted farms they could own and live on and the rich who wanted millions of acres they could rent out profitably. Among the latter were most of the revered Founding Fathers; in a single devastating paragraph, Nash names them and describes their financial interests: George Mason, author of Virginia’s Declaration of Rights, “had watched the Proclamation of 1763 destroy first his beloved Ohio Company and then his hopes of obtaining fifty thousand acres of Kentucky land”; Richard Henry Lee, who introduced the Declaration of Independence to the Continental Congress in July 1776, had hoped by his Mississippi Land Company to lay his hands on 2.5 million acres; George Washington “had thousands of acres of bounty lands that he purchased cheaply from veterans’ claims slip from his hands”; Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry likewise saw their land ventures “disappear like smoke. All these disappointments could be undone through… a double war: against England, and against the ancient inhabitants of the fertile region watered by the Ohio and its tributaries.”
One of the strands of the book is the increasingly desperate attempts by the Native Americans – Iroquois, Shawnee, Cherokee, and others – to find a way to survive and hold on to at least some of their land in the face of the increasingly brutal attacks of white invaders supported by greedy governments, and Nash does not try to hide his indignation at the language of the Declaration of Independence, which claims the king “has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” Jefferson, who wrote these lines, knew they were a lie, knew that it was the white settlers who had practiced “an undistinguished destruction” upon those they were trying to displace; this lie was left untouched by the drafting committee (Franklin, Adams, et al.) and by the Congress as a whole, and according to Nash it has been ignored ever since: “The silence of historians on this disingenuous charge is deafening in the most notable studies of the Declaration of Independence spanning more than eighty years. In Carl Becker…, in Garry Wills…, and in Pauline Maier… not a word appears on this vicious caricature of the American Indians, who had been trading partners, military allies, and marital consorts as often as enemies for two centuries.”
I could go on citing examples for pages, but I’ll cut to the chase: Nash’s well-chosen and vividly presented snapshots of people and events are tied together convincingly into a powerful picture of the have-nots rising up and demanding their rights against both the far-off British oppressors and against the local elite who kept them hungry and poor for their own profit, and his book makes me realize that the Revolution did not end with the War of Independence in 1783 but is still ongoing.
Finally, I finished War and Peace! I’ve read it twice in English (in college and in the mid-’90s) and now in Russian, and each time the characters come to life in the same mysterious way. From the protagonists to the minor walk-ons, they have the unruly undeniability of actual people. How does Tolstoy do it?
More from A Year in ReadingGet the biggest Newcastle United FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Moussa Sissoko has welcomed Steve McClaren to Newcastle – and insisted that playing regularly is the most important thing to him next season as he heads in Euro 2016.
Sissoko admits that he doesn’t know much about McClaren, a former Derby County, England and Middlesbrough manager, but he says he is “happy” for the soon-to-be Newcastle head coach.
Surely keeping hold of Sissoko is going to be a key priority for McClaren, and the noises coming from the midfielder seem a lot more positive than they did.
He admits he had a “tough” second half of the season, but says that the guarantee of regular first team football is likely to sway his thoughts. Paris Saint Germain, Arsenal and Liverpool have previously been linked with Sissoko.
On McClaren, he said: “I do not know this manager. I’m happy for him, but I’ll see after.
“As for my future, it’s something I think about. The coach Didier Deschamps said the 2015-2016 season will be very important and playing regularly is going to be important.
“Now I have this chance in Newcastle. First of all I want to try to finish this season well with France then I’ll talk with my uncle, who is also my agent, and make the right decision after a holiday which I really need.”
(Image: Reuters / Andrew Yates)
Read more:
A break is required because United, and Sissoko too, really tailed off in the second half of the campaign.
“I had a very tough second half of season with my club both physically and mentally where there was a lot of pressure as we tried to stay in the Premier League.
“I am relieved and happy that this has ended well. Now I have the chance to be with France and it’s very different. There are two games that come (Sunday against Belgium and Saturday, June 13 in Albania) and it’s always a pleasure to be involved with the France team.
“I still have that same mentality to want to work thoroughly even if I play one minute, one hour or more.”
The 25-year-old also dodged questions about whether he was aiming to play Champions League football next season.
“For sure I would like next season to go better,” he said.No Small Feat: The NBA's Shortest Player Never Gave Up
As part of a series called "My Big Break," All Things Considered is collecting stories of triumph, big and small. These are the moments when everything seems to click, and people leap forward into their careers.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Bill Kostroun/AP Bill Kostroun/AP
At 5 feet, 3 inches, Tyrone Bogues, better known as Muggsy Bogues, holds the record as the shortest player in NBA history.
He was drafted by the Washington Bullets in 1987, but he's best-known for playing with the Charlotte Hornets alongside Alonzo Mourning and Larry Johnson.
Bogues says he comes from a family of "5-footers," so when he stopped growing, it was no surprise.
"I always tell people, I think my mom had me when I was 5 feet, 3 inches" — I don't remember ever growing," Bogues says.
'Little Ty'
Raised in Baltimore's Lafayette projects, Bogues loved to play basketball — but he always had to prove himself. The other kids didn't take him seriously on the court, saying he was too short to play.
toggle caption Courtesy of Tyrone Bogues
"I was 'Little Ty,' 'Little Tyrone.' I always got this negative feedback from the game of basketball," he says. People told him he was wasting his time; he'd never play basketball. He remembers thinking, "Why were these people saying this? I know I could play."
When the team captains picked their players, Bogues was always left out.
"The game is being played and we got to sit over there and watch," he says. "You get tired of just watching."
So he and his friends found empty milk crates and cut the bottoms out to make baskets.
"We tied the milk crates on each end of the fence and we had our own milk crate basketball pickup game and it was a good time cause we could jump off the fence and dunk the basketball," he says. "You had to be creative in order to play and I wanted to play."
Even back then, Bogues was an aggressive defender.
"I had to play that way because I was small," he says. "A little kid that just was out there trying to create havoc, just trying to disrupt a lot of things."
That's when the older kids started to notice him.
"All of a sudden, little Muggsy started getting a little reputation in the neighborhood," he says.
Rolling With The Punches
Throughout his teenage years, Bogues continued to build that reputation on the court. He even became a star player on the Dunbar High School basketball team.
"We were the No. 1 team in the nation," he says.
Yet he still overheard his skeptics in the crowd questioning his ability to play.
"People still didn't believe: 'Well, he played in high school, he had success in high school, but it's a whole other world when you get to college.' "
Luckily, not everyone saw it that way.
Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., a school that has produced several NBA players, offered Bogues a four-year basketball scholarship.
"Wake Forest came knocking on the door and I accepted that offer," he says. "It changed my life completely."
Still, his critics were relentless.
Even the commentators at games openly criticized Wake Forest for taking a chance on Bogues.
"[They would say] 'Why did they waste a four-year scholarship on a little kid that's only 5 foot 3, who can barely see over a table?' " Bogues says. "All this negativity started coming from so many directions."
It was almost too much to handle, but Bogues' talent was undeniable.
"We had the chance to play a national televised game against [North Carolina State University]," he says.
Finally, this was his chance to shine at Wake Forest. And it was one of his best games.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Ruth Fremson/AP Ruth Fremson/AP
"I had 20 points, 10 assists," Bogues says. "From that moment on, I continued to keep building that reputation."
The stage was set for Bogues' professional career. By the time he graduated, he had a real shot at the NBA.
The Draft
On the night of the 1987 NBA draft, Bogues was one of the many prospective players sitting in the crowd in New York. He had no idea what his future in basketball would look like.
NBA Commissioner David Stern said from his podium, "The Washington Bullets select" — pause — "Tyrone Bogues of Wake Forest."
"It felt like the whole world was lifted off your shoulders," Bogues says. "You felt like, 'I have arrived.' "
The 22-year-old, 140-pound, 5-foot-3 Tyrone "Muggsy" Bogues became the shortest player in league history — a record he still holds.
"All the naysayers, the people saying that you'll never [play]. Why are you even thinking about it? A guy my size wanting to pursue a game that was supposed to be meant for the big guys," Bogues says. "That was a special, special moment."Shaw suffered a double fracture of his right leg after Hector Moreno's tackle
Luke Shaw is still in contention for Euro 2016 despite not having played for six months, according to England manager Roy Hodgson.
The Manchester United left-back was a regular starter for England before he broke his leg in a Champions League tie against PSV Eindhoven on 15 September.
Hodgson wants United to allow Shaw to prove his fitness before 12 May.
"Yeah, absolutely [the door is open]. All that remains is for him to get fit enough to be selected," said Hodgson.
"Luke Shaw's a player we believe in, we think is an excellent talent. We think he will be a major competitor with the other left-backs for a place in the squad."
Hodgson will announce his squad for the summer's European Championships on 12 May.
Tottenham's Danny Rose and Southampton's Ryan Bertrand have been selected at left-back for England's upcoming friendlies against France and the Netherlands.
United boss Louis van Gaal originally said Shaw would be out for at least six months and named the defender in their Europa League squad to give him a target for his recovery.
Hodgson added that he would be "disappointed" if United do not play Shaw before the end of the season, but admits that decision is "in the hands of the club".
"If they [United] decide they don't want to risk him in the final games, they do want to hold him back, they want to give him a pre-season to get 100% fit, there's not much I can do," he said.
"I would be a little bit disappointed in that I think the player deserves the opportunity, if he is fully fit, to be given a chance of being selected."Southern highlands landholders unite to battle proposal that would threaten the bore water they rely on
The sun has not long disappeared below the rolling hills of the highlands when the locals begin to muster.
There are angry mutterings and shaking of heads among the 50-odd filling the old village hall in Exeter, two hours south of Sydney.
They are here to voice their anger about the underground coalmine a subsidiary of the Korean steel-making giant Posco wants to build on their doorstep.
The mood is tense. The creaking of a door as it’s opened and closed by a government official is enough to make one local snap.
“Can you just shut it?” he barks.
Hume Coal mine would threaten water and net just $6m in royalties a year for NSW Read more
He is straining to hear what New South Wales planning authorities have to say about Hume Coal’s proposal to extract 3.5m tonnes of coal a year, which will lower the area’s overall groundwater level.
The plan, if approved, would threaten the bore water relied on by farmers and property owners.
Ninety-three groundwater bores used by 71 landholders will be affected for an average of 36 years. The government officials explain that is a significant impact compared with other coalmines, and is largely due to the shallowness of the coal deposit.
Officials say the drawdown in water levels could be anywhere from two to 80 metres.
“Two to what?” one local exclaims from the back.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kym and Matthew Burrows, who own an olive grove in Sutton Forest. The proposed mine has wiped 30% off their property’s value. Photograph: Christopher Knauss for the Guardian
The room hushes slightly as Matthew and Kym Burrows get to their feet. The couple own a commercial olive grove on the project site. The thousands of trees lining the property produce award-winning Sutton Forest olive oil, and Matthew tells the room they depend on the pristine water lying below.
The mere proposal to extract the coal has already hit them hard. Banks are refusing to finance expansion of the business, saying the land has lost 30% of its value owing to the as-yet-unapproved mine.
They have had to lay off two workers, and Matthew has suffered depression and drinking problems as he despairs for his farm’s future. His voice catches with emotion as he puts this to the government.
“Do you take that into consideration? If our business is destroyed, which it probably will be, will your department recommend we be compensated for 20 years’ worth of hard work and loss of future income?”
Hume Coal began explorative drilling in 2011 and now plans to extract 35% of the coal in the deposit over 19 years, giving a further two years for rehabilitation.
The company would leave pillars of coal in place to prevent the surface from collapsing. An unusual “pine feather” method would be used to pull out the coal, a type of underground recovery akin to longwall mining.
It would be stored at a large stockpile nearby, transported out using a new extension to the region’s main southern railway, and mostly sent to Port Kembla for export.
The company says it has carefully considered the impact on groundwater and would pay for mitigation measures that would prevent any disruption to bore water.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The thousands of trees lining the Burrows’ property produce award-winning Sutton Forest olive oil. Photograph: Supplied
A Hume Coal spokesman, Ben Fitzsimmons, says locals’ fears about groundwater are based on misunderstandings. He says the company is compelled by the NSW government’s aquifer interference policy to ensure landholders do not lose bore water at any stage. The company plans to drill deeper bores and upgrade pumps for affected properties.
“The onus is on Hume Coal to make good any impacts on groundwater,” he says. “And through our mine design we’ve been able to achieve impacts on groundwater that can be mitigated, and no landholder will go without groundwater.”
But the executive director of the NSW Department of Planning and Environment, David Kitto, says the mitigation measures lack detail. He wants to see more from the company.
The locals here are not typical laypeople. Among those opposed to the project is Bruce Robertson, a Berrima berry farmer who is a retired supervising geologist with four decades’ experience in coalmining.
Another is Colin Grant, a former chief executive of Biosecurity Australia and the national industrial chemicals notification and assessment scheme.
They give the opponents an ability to sift through the spin.
Grant has been in the area on and off for 10 years, commuting to and from Canberra, but has lived here semi-permanently for the past eight months.
He fears the company, if it gains its approval, will start pushing the boundaries and ask to extract more and more coal.
“There are risks in all of this, in terms of creep, approval creep,” Grant tells Guardian Australia.
“They’ve said they want 35%, but then it will be a little more, and a bit more, and they’ll keep coming back, because I don’t believe the economics stack up.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Hume Coal visualisation of its proposed mine site
Grant’s concern about the viability of the proposal is shared by many. The extraction method is relatively expensive and will recover relatively little, while the overall global demand for coal is flatlining.
The department has confirmed that taxpayers would receive only about $120m in today’s dollars over the two-decade life of the mine.
The amount gained in royalties, Grant says, would probably be less than the cost of compensating landholders and forgone tax revenue from impacts on local businesses.
“It’s negligible,” he says. “And yet the loss here, in terms of prospective business benefits, I suspect over that period of time will exceed that.”
But the company says a mine would bring other benefits to the region, and commissioned a cost-benefit analysis that suggests the net economic impact would be positive.
It says 400 jobs would be created during construction and a further 300 during operation. Fitzsimmons says the job estimates are conservative.
Three hundred jobs during operations for a period of up to 20 years, that’s a pretty good employment Ben Fitzsimmons, Hume Coal
“Three hundred jobs during operations for a period of up to 20 years, that’s a pretty good employment for an area that’s experiencing severe unemployment or underemployment,” he says.
The company has set up a charitable foundation and an apprenticeship program. But the gestures do not appear to be winning over the community.
Groups have sprung up in opposition to the project, including Battle for Berrima, which conducted door-to-door surveys of surrounding regions, showing overwhelming opposition. In Exeter 94% of those surveyed were against the project. The result was largely the same in Berrima.
Battle for Berrima’s vice-president, Michael Verberkt, fears the mine will threaten Berrima’s ability to pull in tourists. The town trades on its status as one of best-preserved examples of a Georgian village in Australia.
The project would require eight trains a day to take coal from the mine. The company’s environmental impact statement suggests there are now 120 movements along the main railway each week. That would increase by 50 if the mine was approved.
The noise would be compounded by trucks, operations and maintenance work, locals say.
Verberkt is also worried that winds will carry particles from the coal stockpile to nearby villages. Mining more coal in an era of climate change and slowing demand makes no sense |
needs to find it’s way. That’s right, Scion, this is your life. This is the bit where I troll though Wikipedia and toss out lots of interesting facts about the brand, its history in the US, and where we’re at with the current lineup. To know where you’re going, you should know where you’ve been. Or in this instance, to know where you’ve screwed up so you don’t keep making the same mistakes.
Current Lineup
Scion has always been about image and style, the kind of stuff young people supposedly care about. They are the more youthful Toyota with (mostly) 2-letter alpha-numeric names, interesting designs, and more enthusiast focused offerings. Visit their current site and you are greeted with splashy graphics featuring fit football players and taglines like “equipped to exceed expectations”. Which to me means that, if you buy a Scion, you’ll do well on your annual performance appraisal! So that’s nice. Unfortunately below the full page image of #89 doing his best Michael Jordan impersonation is a…well quite bland looking sedan. It’s a Mazda2, but also a Toyota Yaris, if that makes any sense. Made in Mexico, the 2016 Scion iA has a different front bumper and grille design and sports 106hp. But that’s the entry level Scion, I’m sure things improve….right?
Ah the xB, one of the first Scion’s to ever get my attention. The first generation looked like the box another Scion came in, but was actually legitimately (kinda) cool and funky. Over a decade later, and only on generation two, it’s become more rounded and boring. If the first generation was a hip toaster you found in a little off-the-beaten-path store, this is the mass produced toaster you got at Macys. Not nearly as interesting, but at least it’s economical. Well, just. At 22/28 MPG city/highway, it’s a decent option for someone who needs to move around some stuff, but doesn’t want a more mainstream compact crossover. At sub $19,000, it’s not too terribly expensive, but it’s been in production for quite awhile and needs a fresh start to say the least.
Next comes a new member of the Scion family, the iM, and like it’s iA garage-mate, it’s based on something from the Japanese market, the Auris. Hey, maybe Toyota does the same exercise I do and brought us a fast little hatchback. Oh, no, it’s only got 137hp from a 1.8L engine. At least it has an aggressive looking body kit and decent looking wheels. And you can get a 6-speed manual. What else is there?
Ah the tC, named after a helicopter pilot on Oahu, the little 2-door…wait that’s not correct. The tC has been around since the brand started in the US, and aside from some minor facelifts, looks almost exactly the same in it’s already-5-year-old second generation. It’s got an ever larger engine, a 2.5L 4-cylinder, but still only puts out 179hp. But you can get a manual, which is nice, but at over $20,000 it sits squarely between Ford’s ST options which are both faster and more practical.
Finally the FR-S. If you read RFD, you should know it well, as we have one! Two actually, if you count the BRZ. Naturally, I’ve driven it, and it’s a pretty cool car. The debate about whether or not it’s underpowered rages on, but it’s a pretty solid car and the best representation of “youthful exuberance” in the lineup. Starting at just over $26,000 though, I’m still going to have a hard time not peeking across at Ford’s lineup between the EcoBoost Fiesta and Focus, not to mention the turbocharged Mustang that our man (and BRZ owner) Justin enjoyed rallying.
What To Do?
OK, it’s really easy to sit behind a keyboard and criticize, what do I propose they do about it? Unfortunately, my first recommendation would be to…do away with Scion. Saving, or revitalizing Scion, in my opinion, isn’t worth it. While they typically only take up a corner of an already established Toyota dealership, the separate branding and marketing expense just doesn’t seem to deliver what was initially intended. Scion was supposed to be a youth-focused brand, but most xB and xA buyers, at least in the early days, were older. They likely came into the Toyota dealership to buy (another) Corolla and decided on something sportier (looking). So I would re-brand the current lineup as Toyotas, and that’s just the start. Give them real names, Toyota used to be known as a sporty and fun brand that also sold incredibly reliable family cars. Circa Celica, Supra, MR2, etc.
The “Toyota GT-86” sounds pretty good, better than “FR-S” which has zero history to the name. Sure the average buyer knows nothing about the ’86 heritage in Japan, but some of us do, and think it’s pretty cool. Sell the iM as the Corolla wagon that it is, and re-brand the iA as the Yaris Sedan. I’m not convinced that funky marketing and alpha-numeric brand names are selling cars. A quick look at sales figures and most Scions sell in the 15,000 units a year range. Not great, but not outstanding. VW sells more GTI’s than pretty much any Scion, and that’s just one level of the large Golf lineup. But this is just about branding, what if killing the brand isn’t on the table?
Give Scion the chance to be special, and a lineup of re-branded JDM cars isn’t the answer. Well, it’s actually part of the answer, but not the answer. The original formula with the early xA and xB worked because of price point and design. The xB didn’t look like anything else on the road and you could get one for $15,000 or so, add some wheels and minor mods and you had a cool looking ride. Looking across the original Scion lineup, the xA is (thankfully) gone, the xB isn’t special anymore, and I’m not sure the tC was ever all that special. In fact, sadly, nothing in the current lineup is really all that special. Offering manual transmissions on everything is a start, it (at least used to) keep costs down and gives you some enthusiast cred. The design of the iM is pretty solid, but its engine output is not even remotely competitive. I envision more of a 4-door Civic Si Competitor. Why not turbo the 1.8? For a good “weird car” The Toyota Pixis Space (below) or Hummer-like Mega would be awesome. how about a wago-van like the Toyota Noah?
My point is, the Japanese market has a ton of interesting and original models that, like the original xB would immediately give Scion that funky-weird cool that they so desperately want to regain. A re-branded Mazda2 is neither of those things. Oh and I know, enthusiast cars don’t sell all that well, so the “turbo’s for all!” policy may not bear fruit. Regardless, the current lineup needs help, it feels disjointed and nowhere near “cool”. Scion is sort of like Mitsubishi, I want them to succeed, and there is still potential (well, at least in Scion) but as I said above, it may make more sense to cut off the failing appendage and just focus on making Toyota home to interesting, quick, small cars again.
Oh, and where’s my Supra?Image by the author.
“You hear people say stuff like, 'Oh, nobody's really from DC.' It's like, OK — I'm still here.”
That’s what Tarica June, a lawyer who writes, produces, and performs her own music on the side, said in an interview with NPR last year. In her viral music video “But Anyway,” June raps about her experience growing up in Petworth, a DC neighborhood that looks much different today.
“One thing I remember is that even if you didn’t know all your neighbors, you would know, ‘That person is my neighbor.’ At least if you saw them, you would say hello.”
Today, DC might look a lot different from the the city that June knew as a child, but the fact remains: she grew up here.
In fact, there are many people like June who grew up in the District of Columbia. But some people who are relatively new to DC seem to think that’s not the case. They forget that there is a whole population of people who are from the District, and even more who were born and raised in the region.
Image by the author.
What so many DC transplants get wrong
It’s obviously a little more nuanced than this, but it can often seem like DC has two distinct groups of people: One is full of transplants, people who moved to the nation’s capital for a job in government or politics. The other is made up of people who were born and raised in the District.
At approximately a third of the city’s population, those born and bred in DC make up a much smaller group than those who moved here. And their number only continues to decrease with time. According to the US Census Bureau, 43% of DC’s population were born in the district at the turn of the twentieth century. In 2012, that percentage fell to 37% (it was at the same number in 2015, too).
In fact, some DC residents seem to forget these people are even here at all. All the time, people ask me questions like, “Where are you from originally? Because we all know no one’s actually from here.” It happens to be such a common sentiment that another popular DC blog called We Love DC wrote an entire article analyzing and debunking the myth.
When people assume I’m not from here, they are right. I moved to DC from New England for a job. But they are also very wrong, because plenty of people who live in DC are from the District. Glazing over their presence discounts their perspectives and experiences, which are just as significant as anyone else’s.
So why is it that DC transplants so often discount the people who were born and raised in the district? Perhaps one reason is simply that it’s easier for DC transplants to socialize with, well, other DC transplants.
Image by the author.
When you’re new to a place, you’re drawn to those in the same boat
Moving to a city is not always as glamorous as it sounds. In fact, it can actually be rather lonely. Olivia Laing says it best at the beginning of her book Lonely City: “You can be lonely anywhere, but there is a particular flavor to the loneliness that comes from living in a city, surrounded by millions of people. One might think this state was antithetical to urban living, to the massed presence of other human beings, and yet mere physical proximity is not enough to dispel a sense of internal isolation.”
When people go through a new or difficult transition, they tend to gravitate towards those who are most similar to them. It’s safe. It’s easy. And it’s human nature. So when someone moves to the District from somewhere else, it’s logical for them to wind up befriending other transplants.
Many move into group houses with people they meet on Craigslist or know through mutual friends. They grow close to people at their jobs who also moved to the District for work. They build friendships and camaraderie based on shared experience, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
But it’s best if all Washingtonians band together
However, this socialization becomes a problem when it creates a divide between the two groups of Washingtonians. These groups often seem like two separate cities, existing simultaneously but rarely interacting. And when people come to DC as transplants but lack the awareness that there are other kinds of citizens in the city, they leave out essential chapters in DC’s complex story.
In fact, us DC transplants can probably learn a thing or two from the people who have lived here the longest. After all, they have the most insight into the city’s history and culture because they have lived it. They know not just what DC is, but what it was, and what it can be.
Whether you were born and raised in DC or you have only lived in the nation’s capital for a few years, everyone is entitled to a seat at the table. By definition, a city like DC is always changing. That means that people come and go, places and neighborhoods transform, but no one deserves to be here more than anyone else.
Unfortunately, many of these transformations have caused DC to become less and less recognizable, and in some cases less liveable, for Washingtonians who have lived in this city their entire lives. So what can we do to ensure that DC is a place that all of us can survive, and thrive, together?
There’s no easy solution. But we can start by informing ourselves about the demographics in DC and being open to learning about other people’s experiences.
Dear DC transplants, stop saying that nobody’s actually from here. Introduce yourself to that neighbor you’ve never met. Visit a part of DC that is familiar to people who’ve lived here their whole lives, even if it isn’t familiar to you. Venture outside your comfort zone. You might just discover some extraordinary things.Unaccompanied teenagers from Afghanistan, Yemen and Eritrea who had reached the Calais refugee camp will be barred from entering the UK according to Home Office guidelines.
In a decision that was condemned by refugee charities and campaigners, the move will limit the intake of teenagers who do not have family in the UK to those from Syria and Sudan except in exceptional circumstances.
The Home Office’s guidance said it would take children 12 or under of all nationalities, those deemed at high risk of sexual exploitation, and those who “are aged 15 or under and are of Sudanese or Syrian nationality” because people from those countries are already granted asylum in the UK in 75% of cases.
Lady Sheehan, the Liberal Democrat peer, said the new rules, details of which emerged on Tuesday night, were “unacceptable”. Sheehan said they would come as a “horrible shock” to refugees from other countries who had been led to believe they might be able to come to Britain. “It is quite arbitrary. We had no idea they were going to apply this sort of criteria,” she said.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Migrants wait to board buses to leave the Calais camp. Photograph: Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images
Sheehan said she feared that teenagers awaiting asylum decisions in reception centres across France would now escape and return to Calais to risk their lives jumping on lorries. “People will be just devastated,” she said in relation to some of the refugees she has campaigned for in Calais.
Rabbi Janet Darley, the leader of Citizens UK, accused the government of back-tracking on its promises. “The UK is unforgivably backtracking on its commitment to vulnerable refugee children in Europe. Citizens UK’s safe passage team estimates that around 40% of the children who were in Calais at the time of the demolition are Eritrean or Afghan,” said Darley.
“By ruling out children from these countries, the home secretary is arbitrarily preventing many vulnerable children from being helped by the Dubs amendment, and will make it impossible for her to keep her promise that the UK would take half of the unaccompanied children in Calais.”
The new guidelines were issued to Home Office staff on 8 November and have been seen by the Guardian after they were shared on Tuesday with charities which have worked in the Calais migrant camp. They follow claims by some tabloid newspapers that some of the youngsters coming to the UK were over 18.
The Calais camp was demolished two weeks ago, with an estimated 2,000 children and young adults of 16, 17 and 18 years old now scattered across France in reception centres while their cases are examined by French and Home Office officials. The UK has so far taken about 330 children from the Calais camp.
Unaccompanied children who have a family member in the UK are currently allowed in as part of a “fast transfer” family reunification programme, mandated by EU lawe.
The remainder have no family in the UK, but qualify for entry under an amendment to immigration laws pushed through parliament by Lord Dubs earlier this year.
Citizens UK also said that the Home Office process of transferring children to the UK has virtually ground to a halt. A group of girls aged between 15 and 17 arrived in Scotland under the Dubs amendment at the weekend, but the charity has not been made aware of any others in the past week.
Of the unaccompanied minors who have been brought to the UK from France so far this year, about 250 are part of the “fast transfer” family reunification programme.
The chaotic clearance of the Calais migrant camp caused bitter tensions between the French and British governments, with France’s president telling the UK it had to do its “moral duty” and take 1,000 children from the camp.
The Home Office said that “all children who have close family in the UK will be considered for transfer” and those that do not have family ties would be assessed according to the new guidance.At least one in every six dollars of U.S. spending for contracts and grants in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade, or more than $30 billion, has been wasted. And at least that much could again turn into waste if the host governments are unable or unwilling to sustain U.S.-funded projects after our involvement ends.
Those sobering but conservative numbers are a key finding of the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, which will submit its report to Congress on Wednesday. All eight commissioners agree that major changes in law and policy are needed to avoid confusion and waste in the next contingency, whether it involves armed struggle overseas or response to disasters at home.
Tens of billions of taxpayer dollars have been wasted through poor planning, vague and shifting requirements, inadequate competition, substandard contract management and oversight, lax accountability, weak interagency coordination, and subpar performance or outright misconduct by some contractors and federal employees. Both government and contractors need to do better.
Our final report shows that the costs of contracting waste and fraud extend beyond the disservice to taxpayers. The costs include diminishing for U.S. military, diplomatic and development efforts; fostering corruption in host countries; and undermining U.S. standing and influence overseas.
The contractor workforce in Iraq and Afghanistan has at times exceeded 260,000 people and has sometimes outnumbered U.S. military forces in theater. The roughly 1-to-1 ratio sustained over the years reflects a basic operating truth that Defense Department officials expressed in testimony to the commission: The United States cannot conduct large or prolonged military operations without contractor support.
Defense doctrine has for more than 20 years held that contractors are part of the “total force” to be deployed in contingency operations. Nonetheless, the United States embarked on operations in Afghanistan in 2001 and in Iraq in 2003 without adequate planning or contract-management personnel to handle the enormous scale and numbers of contracts. In that sense and in others, America is over-relying on contractors.
Poor planning, federal understaffing and over-reliance led to billions of dollars of contracts awarded without effective competition, legions of foreign subcontractors not subject to U.S. laws, private security guards performing tasks that can easily escalate into combat, unprosecuted instances of apparent fraud, and projects that are unlikely to be sustained by the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Projects that are or may be unsustainable are a serious problem. For instance, U.S. taxpayers spent $40 million on a prison that Iraq did not want and that was never finished. U.S. taxpayers poured $300 million into a Kabul power plant that requires funding and technical expertise beyond the Afghan government’s capabilities. Meanwhile, a federal official testified to the commission that an $11.4 billion program of facilities for the Afghan National Security Forces is “at risk” of unsustainability.
Many examples of poor planning, bad management, weak accountability, misconduct and the waste that results from them are detailed in our final report. But Congress asked us to do more than describe problems; it instructed us to recommend improvements.
Our final report includes 15 strategic recommendations to improve contingency contracting. They include:
●Designating a “dual-hatted” official to serve in the Office of Management and Budget and to participate in National Security Council meetings to ensure that the many agencies involved in contingency contracts or grants are properly resourced and coordinated;
●Making more rigorous use of risk analysis when deciding to use contractors, rather than assuming that any task not on a list of “inherently governmental function” is appropriate for contracting;
●Requiring that officials examine current and proposed projects for risk of unsustainability, and cancel or modify those that have no credible prospect of operating successfully; and
●Creating a permanent inspector general for contingency operations so that investigative personnel are ready to deploy at the outset of a contingency, and to monitor preparedness and training between contingencies.
These and 11 other recommendations are detailed in our final report, which will be available Wednesday at www.wartimecontracting.gov.
Our report is not an attack on contractors. In general, contractors have provided essential and effective support to U.S. personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the costs have been excessive, largely because of a shrunken federal acquisition workforce and a lack of effective planning to use contractors and the discipline of competition.
If Congress and the Obama administration adopt our recommendations, they will find large opportunities to save money in contingency operations and to produce more economical and effective outcomes in future hostilities and national emergencies.
Christopher Shays, a former Republican congressman from Connecticut, and Michael Thibault, a former deputy director of the Defense Contract Audit Agency, co-chaired the bipartisan federal Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan.Largely ignoring the more substantive aspects of the recent Unicode characters update (to 7.0) to smartphones and computers, such as the enhancements to support for Indic languages, and the expansion of Asian, African and Cantonese support, media outlets mostly chose to froth with child-like glee (or occasionally despair) at the added emoticons, in this case those known as emoji. Some have pointed out interesting issues, such as the "whiteness" of the humanoid representations, but mostly it's been "look at that" reports focusing on Vulcan salutes and middle-finger symbols.
Now, that is no doubt all very exciting for texting tweenagers, and I don't want to come across here as a linguistically conservative, humourless and miserable curmudgeon.
Nonetheless, there seem to be two aspects of the response that are noteworthy, and neither in a good way. Firstly, emoticons seem the least interesting, funny and inventive of linguistic joys that the internet has brought us. Really. Internet memes, with their set-up of repetition, brevity and a shared contextual frame seems to place them somewhere between haiku and standup punchline. Others begin as humour, as a mild diversion, like lolcat speech patterns, descending into a kind of obsessive, and astounding madness, like the lolcat Bible translation project (I can see why you'd bother with Ecclesiastes 1, but all the Bible? even, say, Numbers 27?).
Emoticons seem pedestrian and unimaginative next to this level of innovation.
It's not an objection to brevity or humour, and no sensible person really sees a new range of possible emoji as a sign of the eschaton. It's that they aren't much use.
The brutal empty-frame of SMS can lead to misreading where irony is concerned, true, but a little symbol at the end seems like rather thin soup in a world where we have so much language at our disposal. If I can't indicate that my praise of a colleague's new shirt is sarcastic, not literal, without a gurning yellow winker, its presence stands more as indicative of my linguistic incompetence than his sartorial faux pas.
Secondly, the context and use of emoticons seems to typify a cultural trend that is at the very least rather annoying: a refusal of adults to act like grown-ups, and a mindless desire to endlessly, and uncritically, adopt all that is youth-related, and to never out-grow the preoccupation we have stolen from teenagers – that with being "cool".
I am not cool. I am middle-aged. I can wear whatever is fashionable, pepper my texts with emoji, listen to the latest music – but none of these prevents me from being part of the generation that now bears responsibility for the world, its state and important decisions. I have adult choices to make, that matter: because I am the grown-up, and it's my fault. We might argue that the over-adoption of childish net-neologisms, a desperation to conspire in our own infantilisation, is like an act of Sartrean bad-faith, a refusal to view ourselves as the people who bear responsibility for shaping the world and its future. But it is still true. No amount of winking smileys can make up for, say, a refusal to fight injustice, or face up to climate change. "Screwed the planet. Soz, lol ☹"President Obama said Sunday that his administration underestimated the power of Islamic militants like ISIS -- which he once called a "JV team" -- and overstimated the ability of the Iraqi armey, on which the US has spent billions to train.
Obama was asked about Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's statement that the US failed to see the danger of the burgeoning terrorist group.
"That's true. That's absolutely true," he said. "Jim Clapper has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria."
Obama, who has repeatedly said that al Qaeda was all but destroyed, spoke to CBS' "60 Minutes" in an interview that will air Sunday. In the interview, the president was asked how ISIS terrorists gained control of so much territory Syria and Iraq.
"During the chaos of the Syrian civil war, where essentially you have huge swaths of the country that are completely ungoverned, they were able to reconstitute themselves and take advantage of that chaos," Obama said.
The comments were "among the president's most candid to date about the rapid rise of the terrorist group that has ransacked much of Syria and Iraq in recent months," CBS reported.
From the CBS website:Old Job: Media relations, $55,000
New Job: Part-timer at Lucky Jeans, $10.25/hour
Hardest thing to give up: Not thinking about the details, like if it is worth the gas to drive somewhere.
"I was laid off in March of 2008. I was making $55,000 a year as a media-relations manager at Pace Global Energy Services. The company reorganized, and now I work part time at Lucky Brand Jeans in the mall making $10.25 an hour.I applied online to more than 400 positions. I applied to everything and anything, and I'm still looking. I started working part time at Lucky right after Thanksgiving.I've had to budget everything from food to when I go to the dry cleaners - if I even go to the dry cleaners. It's all those little things that you take for granted that you notice now.Even the definition of'splurge' has taken on new meaning for me. Before, splurging could mean a shopping trip at Saks or a weekend trip, but now it could be a cup of coffee or a full meal out.In 2009 all I am looking for is stability in my career and my life. Just a solid income, health benefits and to not think so much about the unknown."Getty Images
The results are good, but 49ers running back Frank Gore was slow to warm to his team’s pistol formation and reliance on read-option runs with Colin Kaepernick at quarterback.
He said the first time he saw the offense was on television “probably Oregon” and that he “didn’t like it at first.”
“I just felt like that’s not real football,” Gore said, via Lindsay Jones of USA Today. “But if it helps us get to where we want to go, I’m good.”
Gore’s actually getting more rush attempts per game with Kaepernick under center (or not under center, as the case may be), but he’s having to get used to not being the focal point of the run game, even as he piled up 1,214 yards in the regular season, the second-most of his career.
But last week, his 119 yards were overshadowed by his quarterback’s 181.
“Hopefully they keep looking out for [Kaepernick], and 21 keeps getting the ball,” Gore said.
Having a back the caliber of Gore is part of the reason Kaepernick is so effective, as it makes opponents honor those run fakes, and play honest in-the-box defense, which creates opportunities outside.After their discovery in 1974, these limestone caverns were kept secret for more than a decade as their discoverers sought a way to preserve their untrammeled beauty.
Seeking undiscovered caves in the mid-70s, Gary Tenen and Randy Tufts discovered evidence of a secret cave: the two felt warm air emanating from a crack at the bottom of a sinkhole they found in the Whetstone Mountains of southern Arizona. The men slipped through the crack and discovered a network of pristine caverns with spectacular rock formations, including massive stalagmites and stalactites. The cavers would return on several occasions over four years, discovering 2.5 miles of passageways and chambers, all the while keeping their find secret, even from the owners of the property encompassing the cave, for fear of vandals.
In 1988, more than a decade after the discovery, the state of Arizona purchased the land from the Karcthner family and began developing the site into a state park, a process that took several years and millions of dollars.
Today parts of the cave are open to the public, including two large chambers. Throne Room holds the largest known soda-straw stalactite in the world, and Big Room features a large formation of Brushite moonmilk, a soft, creamy substance that’s composed of mineral deposits but does not harden into rock.
Even though the cave has been partially developed to allow groups to visit, including paved paths and lights, there are still areas in the developed part of the cave that have been left relatively untouched. Tour guides will point out muddy footprints on the edge of a pool, which Tenens and Tufts left when they were exploring the cave.
Big Room is also home to a colony of bats from spring through mid-autumn. The room is sealed off from humans to allow the bats to raise their young in the caves, as they have since time immemorial.Syria conflict: 75 US-trained rebels crossed into Syria from Turkey, monitoring group says
Updated
Seventy-five Syrian rebels trained to fight jihadists under a beleaguered US program have crossed from Turkey into northern Syria, a US-backed rebel faction and a monitoring group said.
"Seventy-five new fighters trained in a camp near the Turkish capital entered Aleppo province between Friday night and Saturday morning," Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said.
Hassan Mustafa, spokesman for the US-backed Division 30 unit to which some of the rebels were deployed, confirmed the group had entered Syria.
"Their training in Turkey lasted two months and they went directly to the front lines with Daesh. They are now in the town of Tal Rifaat," Mr Mustafa said, using the Arabic name for the Islamic State group.
He said he could not comment on what sort of weapons or supplies the rebels had brought with them.
According to Mr Abdel Rahman, the group had entered in a convoy of a dozen cars with light weapons and ammunition, under air cover from the US-led coalition that has been carrying out strikes against IS in Iraq and Syria.
He said the rebels crossed through the Bab al-Salama border point, the main gateway for fighters and supplies heading into Aleppo province.
The supply route has been increasingly targeted by IS jihadists seeking to cut off support to rival rebels.
Mr Abdel Rahman said most of the newly-trained fighters deployed to Division 30 — the main unit for US-trained fighters — while others went to support a group called Suqur al-Jabal (Falcons of the Mountain).
Training program under fire
Before the fresh batch of fighters, the US-led train-and-equip program had only managed to vet and train some 60 rebels to fight IS jihadists on the ground.
The US$500 million program run out of Turkey has been fraught with problems.
Shortly after the 54 fighters embedded with Division 30 in July, they suffered a devastating assault by Al-Qaeda's Syria affiliate, Al-Nusra Front.
More than a dozen of Division 30's fighters were either killed or kidnapped by Al-Nusra, which accused them of being "agents of American interests".
The United States has since used its air power to help Division 30 push back other Nusra attacks and said Syrian troops could be targeted if they attacked the US-backed forces.
US officials have also expressed fears Russia may strike Western-backed rebels fighting Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and ultimately risk a confrontation with forces fighting IS.
Moscow has been pushing for a broader coalition of forces to take on the jihadists.
On Wednesday, US General Lloyd Austin told the Senate Armed Services Committee that only "four or five" US-trained rebels were on the ground fighting in Syria.
The program, which had originally aimed to train around 5,400 vetted fighters a year for three years, has come under fire from US lawmakers.
Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte said the low number of fighters being trained was a "joke".
AFP
Topics: unrest-conflict-and-war, foreign-affairs, world-politics, syrian-arab-republic
First postedChannelSuperFun/YouTube screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET
Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.
The ultimate goal of wearable tech is to make you the gadget.
You know this, don't you? You will be less human and more, well, a connected being. Part person, part robot.
Why, Google's Ray Kurzweil says we'll be hybrids by 2030.
Microsoft is clearly aware of this. Perhaps moved by neighbor Amazon's allegedly draconian stance on the treatment of people -- which Amazon denies -- Microsoft has filed a patent application for a wearable that gives you a little electric jolt when you get a notification.
Published on Thursday, the patent application is titled: "Wearable computer having a skin-stimulating interface."
Thin is the line between stimulation and, say, the stun-gun.
Still, the patent describes this magical computer like so: "Techniques are described herein that are capable of providing electrical stimuli to skin of a user to convey information to the user."
A ping, it seems, just isn't enough. You need to have skin in the game.
Therefore: "The electrical stimuli may inform the user of an event, a condition, etc. Examples of an event include but are not limited to receipt of a message (e.g. an email, an instant message (IM), a short message service (SMS) message, or a transcribed voicemail), receipt of an alarm (e.g. an alarm clock alarm or a warning), receipt of a phone call, occurrence of a time of day, etc."
Some emails and texts already make me leap. To be made to leap before I've even read them is a very particular attempt at progressing the human race.
Microsoft wasn't immediately available for comment about the potential of this stunning patent. However, the boffins who have stimulated this conception believe that the future will be very touchy-feely.
The application declares: "The electrical stimuli may inform the user of a condition of clothing that is worn by the user. The electrical stimuli may inform the user that a physical positioning of the user is to be changed."
Bzzz. Turn right. Bzzz. Turn Left. Bzzz. Exterminate.
The patent actually offers examples of a shoe or a T-shirt that will give you a buzz when there's something important. Or even something not important at all. Or when they need cleaning. Or when perhaps you do.
Twitterer @H0X0d first spotted this glorious application which was first filed in 2014. One of his or her interlocutors mused that the porn industry wishes it had thought of this.
Oh, but it has. Of course it has.Pakistan will enter the new year in sharp contrast to the mood surrounding the country a year ago. Unlike a year ago when the country’s ruling elite sought to claim success over an increasing consolidation of democracy following the first ever transition from one elected government to another following the elections of 2013, the coming year arrives on a sombre note.
Trends across Pakistan in 2014 on the whole have cast doubts over future prospects, amid concerns over security conditions, the future of politics and the economy.
The year 2014 will be remembered for continuing challenges faced by Pakistan, notably the issue of militancy which was highlighted in the very extreme following the December 16 Taliban massacre of up to 150 people, mainly children at a school in the northern city of Peshawar.
The fallout from this event has prompted Pakistan’s leaders to consider extreme steps ranging from raising an army-backed force to fight terrorists, to the establishment of military courts which deliver speedy justice. Clearly, Pakistan is at war. However, the future of that war which is knocking on the country’s door steps will decide not just Pakistan’s survival but more importantly the future of its way of life. In the past year, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has faced questions related to his political legitimacy after former cricket captain turned politician Imran Khan and moderate Islamic scholar Tahirul Qadri, launched protests in Islamabad against what they claimed was evidence of widespread rigging in the 2013 elections. For the moment, those protests may have been pushed into the background as politicians joined ranks following the Peshawar attack in a show of national unity. However, questions over the ways in which politics is run in Pakistan are central to the way the country progresses or not in the future.
Though ruling and opposition politicians claim that Pakistan’s best hope lies in continuing on the democratic path, they have failed to articulate exactly how that journey will benefit those at the grassroots-level. Money continues to drive Pakistan’s politics, making it impossible for those on the fringe of the economic framework to ever attain positions of political representation and responsibility.
The past year also highlighted the degree to which Pakistan’s ruling structure in choosing its economic priorities has become simply detached from the mainstream. In a country where a state provided but largely dilapidated educational and health care system are in urgent need of repair, Sharif has controversially appeared eager to push large infrastructure projects related to transport.
A large six-lane motorway from the central city of Lahore to the southern port city of Karachi |
matter?
From an economic perspective, the “time value of money” principle tells us it is foolish to invest a serious amount of money today to fix something that may or may not be a problem over 100 years from now. The best investments will be those that benefit us now and that means adaptation. We may need that money to adapt, whether climate change is natural or man-made.
The important take-aways from this series, in my opinion, are:
The data comes first, before models and predictions, especially predictions from unvalidated models. If you don’t see the problem in the data, it’s not a problem. Global warming will not destroy the planet or humans, even in the worst projections (part 1). The oceans, the Sun and the Earth’s orbit are the major controls on the climate. Human’s may have some effect, but it must be small (part 1 and here). The time value of money is critical. Spending a lot of money today to fix a possible problem in 100 years is foolish. From the standpoint of technology development, 100 years might as well be forever (post 3). Human prosperity leads to a better environment, a healthier population, more adaptability, and lower population growth (part 1). Poverty leads to a poorer environment, poorer health, and higher population growth (part 1). Cheap, widely available, and reliable energy leads to prosperity (part 3, here and here). Cold is worse than hot. Cold weather leads to more deaths and disease, warm weather leads to fewer deaths and less disease (part 5). Humans are adaptable, today we live in hot areas, cold areas, dry and wet areas, high in the mountains and in rainforests, we have already adapted, somewhere, to anything foreseen by the climate alarmists (part 5). Our food supply is growing rapidly, with no sign of slowing down, prices are stable. Population growth, on the other hand is slowing down (part 2). The rate of extinctions today is very low, we are not in a “great extinction” nor are we even close (part 4). The extreme weather trend is flat or declining (part 6). The Gulf Stream is not shutting down (part 4). Our measurements of the rate of sea level rise are so inaccurate we cannot be sure that sea level is rising at all, although it probably is at a very slow rate (Kip Hansen here). Sea level rise is not alarming, except locally, and should be dealt with as a local problem (part 7, this post).
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RedditProvincial police have arrested and charged eight people from Pikangikum First Nation in northwestern Ontario, after a protest last month destroyed three police vehicles and left officers barricaded inside their detachment.
Four adults and four young offenders were arrested and charged on July 7 or July 8 with a variety of offences.
A 30-year-old woman is facing charges for assaulting a peace officer with a weapon. Other charges include break and enter, mischief and breach of probation.
Ontario Provincial Police say three of their vehicles were destroyed in Pikangikum First Nation during an anti-police demonstration on June 27. (Paddy Peters/Facebook) Two adults and one of the teens remain in custody pending the outcome of a hearing in Kenora on Friday. The others were released from custody and scheduled to attend court in Pikangikum on September 2, police said.
"Myself, council members, elders and community members are pleased that the incident has been resolved in a peaceful and decisive manner and those responsible have been held accountable," Pikangikum Chief Paddy Peters said in a news release issued by police.
"It is important to note that the actions of a few do not reflect the community at large," Peters said.
The protest began on June 27 after a Pikangikum police officer used a stun gun in the course of arresting a community member, according to OPP Sgt. Peter Leon.
Protesters threw rocks and caused "extensive damage" to the two-storey Ontario Provincial Police detachment and "left officers in a situation where they had to take up fortification," Leon said.In Spain, The Church Offers More Than Salvation
toggle caption Jorge Guerrero/AFP/Getty Images
Spain has Europe's highest unemployment rate, with nearly 1 in 4 people out of work. The country has dipped back into recession, and layoffs are on the rise.
Catholic Church: 'We Want You' YouTube
But there's one organization there that's still hiring: the Catholic Church. A group of bishops has launched a savvy campaign on YouTube to recruit new priests from the swelling ranks of Spain's unemployed.
The 2 1/2 minute video starts with words emerging from a smoky background.
"How many promises have they made to you, which haven't been fulfilled?" a voice asks. Then a young priest pops up.
"I don't promise you a big salary," he says. "I promise you a permanent job."
Young priests speak into the camera one after another, mixed with footage of them marrying people, praying over a hospital bed and to a man behind bars.
"I do not promise luxuries," another priest says. "I promise your wealth will be eternal."
The video, released last month, is part of the Catholic Church's attempt to boost its otherwise dwindling numbers when so many are out of work. And it appears it's had some initial success: Enrollment in seminaries here rose 4 percent last year, compared with falling 25 percent over the past decade.
Bishop Josep Ángel Saiz Meneses commissioned an ad agency to help create this video, and says he's thrilled with the result.
"For two days, this was the most-watched video in Spain, with hundreds of thousands of downloads," he says. "It went viral, and we've had journalists calling us from five continents. Venezuela has even asked for the copyright."
But church attendance is still falling in Spain. And it's tough to find young Spaniards willing to take a vow of celibacy for life, no matter what the economy is like.
"I personally don't believe in God. So I wouldn't do that," says 18-year-old Guillermo Cique, laughing.
He and his friends are skateboarding off curbs in front of Madrid's soaring cathedral on a recent day. An iPod blasts Spanish hip-hop, and his friend improvises a rap about corruption and banks.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Rafa Rivas/AFP/Getty Images Rafa Rivas/AFP/Getty Images
The jobless rate in Spain is more than 50 percent for those under 25. Still, Cique says there's no chance he'd consider the seminary.
"Why would you want to be a priest? In jail, you get free food also," he says.
Even Meneses, the bishop, acknowledges it's a hard sell for today's youth.
"I don't think any youngster is really going to enter the seminary just for job security. That idea came from the marketing people," Meneses says. They put it in as a bit of a provocation — to grab your attention, to shock you and get you to watch the video."
And it worked for that. But the bishop says Europe's debt crisis could help his recruitment drive in another way. He's targeting people bewildered by bailouts and unemployment — people searching for what's really important.
It's something even economists note about people in a recession.
Gayle Allard is a professor at Madrid's IE Business School.
"They pass from a materialist to a post-materialist phase, where they start thinking more about quality of life and meaning of life," Allard says.
"The good thing about crisis is that maybe it awakens this other side of us, and helps us to step off the treadmill a bit, and think about why we're here — besides just paying a mortgage," she says.
As for whether the church will benefit from that, Meneses shrugs: "We'll have to see next year's numbers."The science of optical illusions
In the left image, the black and white spaces in the central pin-wheel seem to blend more than in the right image - though the two are the same
Optical illusions are more than just a bit of fun. Scientist Beau Lotto is finding out what tricking the brain reveals about how our minds work. Here he explains his findings.
Sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell. We believe what our senses tell us but most of all we trust our eyes.
But our brains are extraordinarily powerful organs.
Without us realising it, they are instantly processing the information they receive to make sense of the world around us.
And that has been crucial to our evolution.
Jungle scene
Take colour. Why do we need to see in colour? The next two images will show you why.
Here you see a black-and-white version of a jungle scene. Try to find the predator that's about to jump out at you. If it takes you more than a second, you are dead. Why is it so difficult to find? Because you are only seeing the surfaces according to the amount of light they reflect. Now click to the next image...
BACK {current} of {total} NEXT
... this time in colour. Now you'll probably see the panther immediately (in the lower right corner).
Why is it so easy this time? The reason is because the image shows the surfaces according to the quality of light they reflect (not just their intensity).
In other words, your brain has a lot more information to go on in making its decisions.
Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.
So colour enables us to see a greater number of similarities and differences between objects, which is necessary for survival.
What is amazing about what you have just done (finding the panther in the coloured image) is that it is so easy for you.
But while it seems so easy, our best computers are hopeless at doing what you have just done.
Understanding how we see is one of the main aims of brain science (called neuroscience). And illusions hold the key to answering this question.
Brightness illusion
Below we have two physically identical squares. Not surprisingly, they also look the same. Explaining vision would be easy if all we had to do is see the image that falls onto the back of the eye (called the retinal image). But we don't.
In fact we never see what our eyes see. That's because the eyes have very little to do with what we see. This is good news: an image of the world is very different from the world itself.
For instance, the retinal image has only two dimensions, whereas the world of course has three. The retinal image is upside-down, but we see the world right-side-up. So what happens if I change the context surrounding the squares, but not the two squares themselves?
BACK {current} of {total} NEXT
Toggle the image and the two identical squares now look different.
And yet all we've done is put them on different backgrounds. As a result, the small square on the dark background looks lighter than the one on the light background.
This is called the "brightness contrast illusion", which proves that context is everything when it comes to what we see, even when seeing the simplest qualities of the world, namely lightness.
But why is context everything?
Table and shadow illusion
Here we have two, smaller versions of an identical brightness contrast illusion - one on the right and the other on the left.
In both cases the tiles on the dark backgrounds look lighter than the tiles on the light backgrounds. So far so good. Now let's see if we can change the strength of these two illusions by changing the overall scene.
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Notice that the illusion on the left is now much stronger. In other words, the tile in shadow under the table looks much brighter because the brain thinks it is in shade. The tile to the right looks as if it is under bright light so the brain assumes it is darker and tells us so.
On the other hand the illusion on the right is now much weaker. In other words, the two tiles, one on a black stripe the other on a light stripe, look nearly identical because the brain is interpreting them as two similarly reflective tiles under a shared light source.
This shows that we see illusions because the brain doesn't actually want to see the image on your eye, but to see the meaning of that image and here it finds that in the context of the table and the light from the window. And that meaning - and this is really important - is created from experience.
Cube illusion
Here we have two tiles that are identical in their colour. But what happens if we change their context in a specific way? Now if we're right that what we see is the meaning of an image, then we should be able to create a really strong illusion by making the meaning of the two tiles very different indeed.
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In their new context, the two physically identical tiles do indeed now look very different.
Why? The information in the image strongly suggests that the dark brown tile on the top now means a poorly reflective surface under bright light, whereas the bright orange one at the side means a highly reflective surface in shadow.
So you see them differently because your brain thinks they have a different meaning - given the rest of the information in the scene.
Table illusion
What's true for seeing colour is also true for seeing form and shape. In fact it's true about everything we see. When you look at this image, you are aware of two very differently sized tables.
The one of the left seems a lot longer and thinner than the one on the right. What if I tell you that the red table is simply the green table on its side, in other words that the dimensions of the two table tops is identical.
It is actually true. The only real difference between the tables is the angles at their corners (other than their colour, which is irrelevant in this case).
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The two red and green lines are the same length. The length of the red table is the same as the width of the green table and vice versa.
So why do they look so different? Because your brain takes the image on the retina and creates what it sees according to what the information would have meant in the brain's past experience of interacting with the world.
In this case the angles suggest depth and perspective and the brain believes the green table is longer than it is while the red table appears squarer.
The beautiful thing about illusions is they make us realise things are never what they seem, and that our experiences of the world shape our understanding of it.
R Beau Lotto is a lecturer in neuroscience at University College London. All images supplied by R Beau Lotto. See more at the Lotto Lab website
His illusions feature in Horizon: Is seeing believing? on BBC Two at 9pm on Monday 18 October or afterwards via BBC iPlayer.
You can see more illusions from the programme at the BBC Science website.
Response to the above comment from Beau Lotto: There are a number of 'cues' being used in this image of the tables. The idea that it's a 'bad' drawing is not accurate (unless you're just referring to aesthetics, in which case you might of course be right). Actually, the image - or more accurately the combination of information presented in the image - is designed to make the projections of the two tables statistically consistent with your past experience of two tables of different spatial dimensions. If this weren't the case (ie, the drawing was 'bad' in the sense of conflicting information), then - as the argument for why we see what we do goes - the illusion would decrease, not increase - see for instance the lightness illusion above with depicted shadows). You are right, however, that decreasing spatial frequency of the floor tiles is an important bit of information about depth (though of course there is no depth in this image, just one's perception of it). A much stronger cue, however, is the angle at each corner of the table tops. You can appreciate this by simply removing the background all together (see image below). When you do this, the illusion persists (though is weaker - again consistent with the argument being made).Obama supporter: McCain's Chicago ad full of 'distortions and distractions' Nick Juliano
Published: Monday September 22, 2008
Print This Email This Barack Obama's presidential campaign is accusing Republican John McCain of relying on a campaign of guilt-by-association smears and distracting personal attacks to hide the fact that his "fuzzy" financial proposals would worsen an already devastating economic crisis.
In a new ad, Obama accuses McCain of wanting to apply the same principles that led to the recent Wall Street meltdown to the healthcare industry. The ad cites a recent article appearing under McCain's by-line that argues for deregulating the health insurance industry.
"There's no question that what has happened in the Bush administration -- supported wholeheartedly by Sen. McCain -- has led us to this crisis" in US financial markets, said Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, during a conference call sponsored by the Obama campaign Monday.
Sebelius said applying the same principles to healthcare would leave people's lives at risk and argued that the country couldn't afford to risk McCain, who has been putting forward "very fuzzy" proposals on the economy.
For its part, the McCain campaign's offering to the airwaves Monday dealt with none of the problems facing the country right now. Instead it painted Obama as a figure "born of the corrupt Chicago machine" and highlighted some corrupt figures his hometown who at one time had tangential connections to the Illinois senator.
Sebelius accused McCain of "continuing the distortions and distractions of trying to defame Sen. Obama with information he knows is untrue."
Obama spokesman Bill Burton said McCain's campaign was trying to distract from a new report that his campaign manager earned nearly $2 million for overseeing a lobbying campaign on behalf of embattled mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
It's no coincidence... the McCain campaign would launch this false, gratuitous attack," Burton said. "Barack Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate as an independent Democrat. He took on the Chicago Democratic organization in a primary to win a seat in the US Senate. And in both Illinois and Washington, he has challenged the Old Guard for landmark ethics reforms."
The story of Rick Davis's inolvement on Fannie and Freddie's behalf appeared in the New York Times three days after McCain tried to tie Obama to the same companies. It drew a sharp rebuke from campaign strategist Steve Schmidt, who likely learned his bash-the-press tactics from mentor Karl Rove.
"We are first amendment absolutists on this campaign," he said during a conference call. "Of course, it is constitutionally protected with regard to writing whatever they want to write. Let's be clear and be honest with each other. Whatever the New York Times once was, it is today not by any standard a journalistic organization."UN Special Representative of the Secretary General on Violence against Children (SRSG), Marta Santos Pais, presented her new report during the 22nd Session of the Human Rights Council (HRC) on 7 March 2013, in Geneva.
In the annual full day meeting on the rights of the child, the Human Rights Council focused on the right of the child, like Ariana-Leilani, to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health. The meeting included discussions on the challenges in achieving the full realization of the universal right to health and focused on strengthening the implementation of the right of the child to health and on accountability mechanisms that need to be in place to ensure that Member States comply with their human rights obligations.
The Special Representative on Violence against Children participated in a panel with experts from the Government of Uruguay, UN agencies, the Inter-American Court on Human Rights, the European Commission, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Special Rapporteur on sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, academia, civil society and child representatives from Bolivia and Haiti.
In her statement, SRSG Marta Santos Pais emphasized the human rights imperative to end violence against children and stated that violence is a major public health concern that affects children of all ages of development.
“Violence is a leading cause of death. In 90% of the cases, incidents take place in non-war affected situations, including as a result of interpersonal, self-inflicted or community violence. Violence provokes anxiety, emotional distress, depression, and low self esteem; it is associated with poor health, sleeping and eating disorders, obesity, toxic and post-traumatic stress and it may lead to aggressive and risk behaviour, propensity to alcohol and drug abuse, conduct disorder and delinquency, as well as self-harm, disability and death,” said the SRSG.
Ms Santos Pais recognized the crucial role of health professionals as they are often the first point of contact for those at risk and frequently perceived as less stigmatizing than law enforcement agencies.
Health personnel help to detect the harm and damage provoked by incidents of violence – in the form of physical aggression, psychological ill-treatment, neglect, injury or sexual abuse. They support and provide treatment, counselling, trauma therapy or emergency health care. They provide recovery and long lasting reintegration services and are critical to enable investigation of incidents and prosecution of those found responsible.
“Action is of essence to enhance our shared accountability for the realization of children’s right to health. I feel pressed by a strong sense of urgency. It is critical to put in place in each country a comprehensive, well-coordinated and well-resourced agenda, with a special emphasis on legislation that recognizes children’s right to health including universal, affordable and inclusive health services and an explicit legal ban on all forms of violence against children. All laws that provide any justifications or allow consent to harmful practices should be removed in the legislation,” highlighted the SRSG.
Ms Santos Pais also explained the important role of partnering with children to expose health risks and concerns. Their insights remain instrumental to inform policy and legal solutions, and to evaluate how well we are doing in promoting children’s highest attainable standard of health.
“Joining hands together, these goals are clearly within reach!” concluded Ms. Santos Pais.
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AdvertisementsShould the adage be “a bit of bacon every day, keeps the doctor away”?
Donald Erickson / Getty Images Prepared bacon strips
What’s the secret to an extra-long life? For one centenarian, it just might be bacon.
A 105-year-old Texas woman, who became a widow at age 38 and worked as everything from a cotton picker to a hay baler while raising 7 kids on her own, says bacon is the secret to her longevity, the Huffington Post reports.
“I love bacon. I eat it everyday,” Pearl Cantrell told NBC affiliate KRBC when asked her secret to living so long. “I don’t feel as old as I am. That’s all I can say,” Cantrell added.
The great-great-grandmother, who lives in central Texas and still dances – some of her favorites include country dancing, waltzing and two-stepping – celebrated her 105th birthday recently with a three-day event that included more than 200 guests. Although Cantrell retired decades ago, she kept mowing her own lawn until the age of 100, according to the West Texas Tribune – a heart-healthy habit that probably helped keep her going as well.
(MORE: Why Won’t Bacon Go Away?)
When Oscar Mayer found out about Cantrell’s love of cured pork, they sent one of its Wienermobiles to her home with a special bacon delivery. The bacon-lover rode “shot-bun” in the Wienermobile through her hometown of Richland Springs, Texas, ABC 7 News reported.
Despite its popularity, or perhaps because of it, bacon’s gotten a bad rap lately. A University of Zurich study published by the journal BMC Medicine in March found that processed meat was linked to a premature death. The study, which analyzed the diets of more than 440,000 people between the ages of 35 and 69, found that eating processed meats in moderation–less than 20g per day–could prevent an estimated 3% of premature deaths each year. As The Atlantic pointed out, however, that’s equivalent to a matchbook-sized portion. An earlier study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine last March found that even a single serving of processed red meat (yes, that includes bacon) increased the risk of participants dying by 20%. That study tracked over 121,000 doctors and nurses over the course of 22 years.
Cantrell was not among either study’s participants.An Indian man asks for money in Hyderabad, India, on Nov. 13. Authorities in the city are rounding up homelss ahead of a visit by Ivanka Trump. (Mahesh Kumar A./AP)
When Ivanka Trump leads a U.S. delegation to southern India this week, the president's daughter will use her official role as a White House adviser to promote female entrepreneurship and economic power.
But looming over her visit will be an uncomfortable question that Trump's company has refused to answer: What are the work conditions for laborers in India who have pieced together clothes for her fashion line?
Trump has called for more support for working women around the world, but she has remained silent about the largely female garment workforce in India and other Asian countries that makes her clothing.
Her brand — which Trump no longer runs day to day but continues to own — has declined to identify the factories that produce her goods or detail how the workers are treated or paid.
The India trip will further elevate Trump as one of the administration's biggest stars. Her advocacy for women on an international stage has become a key element of her political profile and personal image.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the president's eldest daughter "has been a champion of women's economic empowerment not just in words but in action," adding that she helped launch a World Bank initiative to help female entrepreneurs gain better access to capital, "which will empower women across the developing world to start their own businesses."
In a telephone call with reporters Tuesday to preview her trip, Trump talked about "the administration's commitment to the principle that when women are economically empowered, their communities and countries thrive." She will give the keynote address to an entrepreneur summit that is themed "Women First, Prosperity for All."
Trump will be greeted in the Indian tech capital of Hyderabad with trappings befitting a royal dignitary, including a gala dinner with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a restored palace.
It will be a world away from India's garment industry, in which laborers earn about $100 a month, some amid punishing workloads, verbal abuse and sexual harassment, according to union organizers and industry experts.
"On the positive side, it's a huge employer for women, but the systematic issue is that we don't treat women properly, otherwise they would not be working in this kind of system," said Anita Cheria, director of the social justice group Open Space, which works with garment workers in the southern city of Bangalore. "These industries can do much better for women."
Trump's trip throws a spotlight on her company and persistent questions about whether its practices match her rhetoric about improving opportunities for women in the developing world.
A Washington Post examination in July found Trump's brand relies solely on foreign workers to produce its goods and lags behind many in the clothing industry when it comes to overseeing the treatment of workers in its supply chain.
[Ivanka Inc.: Ivanka Trump clothing line practices are out of step with industry trends]
At the time, executives told The Post that the brand had started looking into hiring a nonprofit workers' rights group to increase oversight and help improve factory conditions. Brand president Abigail Klem said she was planning her first trip to tour facilities that make Ivanka Trump products.
"We recognize that our brand name carries a special responsibility," she said.
But four months later, it is unclear if the company pursued any of those steps. Asked about the status of Klem's trip or the hiring of a workers' rights group, the company declined to comment.
Executives referred to a statement earlier this year from Klem, who said the company "is committed to only working with licensees who maintain internationally recognized labor standards across their supply chains."
Using clothing labels and shipping records earlier this year, The Post traced Trump's products to Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia and Vietnam.
But it remains a mystery which Indian factories produce Trump's goods, including an array of Indian-made cotton blouses sold at department stores such as Lord & Taylor this spring.
The Post sought to identify the facilities by interviewing Indian garment industry officials, union organizers and workers in New Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai and the state of Punjab but was unable to locate the facilities.
G-III, a large clothing distributor that makes Trump products, recently expanded into Bangalore, a major hub for the Indian garment industry, according to people who work in the industry and a G-III employee in Bangalore, who declined to discuss its operations.
A spokesman for G-III declined to identify the factories it uses in India, noting the company works with independent manufacturers in countries throughout Asia and Central and South America.
More than 20 labor and human rights groups co-signed a letter to Trump this month urging her brand to disclose the names of its supplier factories and allow independent groups to monitor its conditions, among other steps. She has not yet responded.
International human-rights and labor advocates say Trump is failing to use her platform to illuminate the conditions facing female garment workers around the world.
"If Ivanka truly wants her legacy to include protecting working women," said Judy Gearhart, executive director of the International Labor Rights Forum, "she needs to start with the women in her supply chain."
Earlier this year, an attorney for Trump told The Post that because of her White House role, she "has been advised that she cannot ask the government to act in an issue involving the brand in any way, constraining her ability to intervene personally."
India's textile industry is one of its largest employers, accounting for 15 percent of total exports and bringing in $17 billion for ready-made garments between 2016 and 2017, government data show.
Garment factories are spread across India, with a concentration around the capital city of New Delhi and the states of Punjab, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
Women make up 60 percent of India's garment sector, according to government data cited by the industry-backed Clean Clothes Campaign, though that does not count the large informal sector of women who sew from home.
The Garment Labor Union in Bangalore says women make up 85 percent of its total workforce, with unskilled and semiskilled laborers earning about $4.60 to $4.70 a day. Workers are often crammed into noisy factories without air conditioning — unbearable in India's summer heat, when temperatures soar to 120 degrees. They churn out hundreds of shirts and jeans per day, with little time for water breaks, advocates said.
Despite the difficult working conditions, the industry overall has a good record in compliance checks for child labor, fire safety and overtime, experts said.
For her part, Ivanka Trump is increasingly playing a prominent diplomatic role in her father's administration, frequently representing the United States among foreign dignitaries and heads of state.
[Buying Ivanka Trump: Fans embrace her brand as a political statement]
In September, during a session of the United Nations General Assembly, Trump met with India's foreign minister, Sushma Swaraj, whom she said in a tweet she has "long respected."
She has faced mixed reception abroad. In Japan this month, she spoke to a half-empty auditorium, and she was booed by some in a Berlin audience this spring when she described her father as a "tremendous champion of supporting families."
During her visit to India, Trump will lead the U.S. delegation to the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Hyderabad, a city of more than 6 million people and home to office campuses for Google, Facebook and Amazon.
The summit was launched in 2010 by the Obama administration as a way to link entrepreneurs with Muslim communities around the world. This year's summit, co-hosted by India and the United States, is expected to host 1,500 business leaders and other attendees from 170 countries. More than 50 percent of the entrepreneurs in attendance will be women, organizers said.
Ivanka Trump will speak Tuesday at the summit's plenary session, "Be the Change: Women's Entrepreneurial Leadership," and will appear the following day for a session titled, "We Can Do It! Innovations in Workforce Development and Skills Training." In her speech, Trump is expected to touch on themes such as women's economic empowerment.
On the first day of the summit, Modi will host Trump at a gala dinner in the restored Falaknuma Palace, a luxury hotel previously owned by one of the monarchs, or nizams, who ruled Hyderabad before India's independence.
Guests are traditionally ferried to the sprawling Italian-marble palace in a horse-drawn carriage and sprinkled with rose petals. The president's daughter will dine with Modi and other dignitaries at a 101-seat teak table once known as the world's longest dining table.
The city of Hyderabad has spent weeks preparing for the visit, doing an estimated $1.85 million in road repairs alone, according to municipal commissioner Harichandana Dasari.
Giant potholes have been repaired, and a bridge that Trump is scheduled to pass was painted in the colors of a rainbow. A local paper also reported that the ranks of stray dogs, ubiquitous in Indian cities, have mysteriously thinned.
Hundreds of panhandlers have been rounded up and swept out of sight, tucked in a shelter house run by a local ashram, according to local officials.
"We were told Ivanka is coming from America, and they want to round up the beggars," said Gattu Giri, the joint secretary of the Amma Nanna Anada Ashramam, which has picked up the homeless in a $20,000 bus paid for by the State Bank of India.
Harwell reported from Washington. Gowen reported from New Delhi. Gupta reported from Bangalore.ACT party leader Jamie Whyte says businesses are reluctantly opting for immigrant labour because New Zealanders are not up to getting out of bed and going to work.
Photo: RNZ / Demelza Leslie
Mr Whyte made the comments at an immigration debate attended by all the main political parties in Auckland yesterday.
He said he has been travelling the country talking to business people who say it is difficult to get local staff who are up to the job.
Mr Whyte said businesses employ workers from overseas because they cannot get the staff from New Zealand.
"[They say] We want them to work in our fishing boats, or we'd like them to drive our trucks, but they're not up to it, and when I say not up to it, I don't mean they're not up to the simple task, I mean they're not up to getting out of bed, regularly in the morning and getting to work every Monday, every day."
Also speaking at the conference, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters said it is a disgrace to suggest New Zealanders are lazy.
Mr Peters said New Zealand is a low-wage economy which is being driven down further by the likes of ACT.
"Which population works the second longest hours of the 34 OECD countries? Ours does. Which is the highest earning population in Australia that's non-Australian? New Zealanders are. And this idea I heard you people clapping, saying our people are lazy, is a disgrace frankly."
Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse said the issue of immigration gets dragged out every three years during election time.
Comments provocative
The Employers and Manufacturers Association said Mr Whyte's claims are provocative.
Head of the Auckland branch of the Employers and Manufacturers Association, Kim Campbell, said the situation is far more complicated than Mr Whyte is making out.
He said New Zealand does allow quite large numbers of immigrants into the country, while unemployment is over five percent, but there are reasons for that.
"It is true that we have elements within our community who do lack civic skills, these are folks that might have been disabled in some way, or live in places where it's difficult for them to get to work or they have a lifetime of unemployment history and other things.
"But to say that New Zealand workers are just basically lazy is I think unnecessarily provocative."
Mr Campbell said there are progammes to try to help these people back into the workforce.These recent weeks have not been the best of times for the fate of the F-35 fighter jet, as the auditor general's devastating report on Tuesday bears out.
The Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program that produces the fighter jet has already been weathering strong criticism in the U.S., about the plane's capabilities and its price tag. That has led to threats and actual delays or cancellations of aircraft orders.\
As the cost of the program spirals upward, some militaries around the world have delayed or cut their orders, driving the costs per plane still higher.
The list includes the U.S. Defence Department, which is now postponing its F-35 orders but sticking to its total purchase number of 2,443 production F-35 Lightning IIs.
Eight other countries including Canada are partners in the JSF program and plan to purchase 697 F-35s. Aircraft manufacturer Lockheed Martin expects to sell at least that many F-35s to other countries in the years to come.
Last month, the estimate of the lifetime cost of the U.S. F-35 program, the most expensive U.S. arms program ever, crossed the $1.5 trillion mark.
Orders cancelled, delayed
In February, Italy, a JSF partner, cut its order by 41 planes. In 2002, it had agreed to purchase 131 F-35s. State-owned Finmeccanica is to assemble the jets that Italy, the Netherlands and Norway purchase.
For the first time an F-35 is on a night refuelling mission, at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., on March 22. (Lockheed Martin)
A few weeks later, Japan, the JSF's first customer in Asia, warned in a letter to the U.S. Defence Department that the growing cost and program delays may lead to cancellation of its order for 42 F-35s. The deal with Japan had only been reached in December 2011.
Julian Fantino, Canada's associate minister of National Defence, surprised a Commons committee on March 13 when he announced that Canada's purchase of 65 F-35s was not guaranteed.
Then on March 22, Australia announced it was delaying its orders for the F-35. Defence Minister Stephen Smith said the delivery date for 12 of the first 14 planes ordered was "under consideration" and the second batch of 58 jets was not a priority.
There was some good news for the JSF program amidst all these cancellations and delays. On March 23, Norway upped its order by four, and will now buy 52 F-35s.
American defence cuts
While the global forecast for the F-35 is cloudy, Lockheed Martin has to be concerned also about the storm warnings at home in the U.S.
The government is trying to reduce military spending and officials have warned orders will be cut if costs continue rising.
"We have told the contractor and the program office that there is no more money," Michael Donley, the U.S. secretary of the air force, said on March 20.
But the amount of money that is in the pot is still substantial. The 19 F-35As that the |
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We can’t thank you fans enough for all your support. It’s awesome to be able to bring these limited editions out and it’s even more fun when there is such a passionate fanbase.Fox News Channel host Greg Gutfeld said that David Axelrod’s belief that the Obama administration had “a major scandal” was one cultivated by media “fanboys” and “suck-ups” on Wednesday’s broadcast of “The Five.”
Gutfeld began by stating that Axelrod was only correct “if you adhere to some absurd high standard, it’s true. It turns out Joe Biden is not a crayon-eating space ghost, and Obama hasn’t been devouring expensive show dogs as midnight snacks. And no, John Kerry is not really a highly evolved tree. Some were wondering.”
He continued, “Axelrod’s logic only works if you ignore slight matters like the IRS targeting civilians over their beliefs and covering it up, blaming terror on a video that no one saw, millions losing healthcare after being told they would keep it, the Bowe Bergdahl freak show, the tragic, forgotten VA deaths, the EPA’s collusion with the green lobby, the Solyndra sinkhole. So, yeah no major scandals at all, the EPA, DOJ, NSA, HHS, VA, IRS, ATF. If these aren’t scandals, they’re one hell of an eye chart. The real scandal is this two-headed beast. One of ideology and one of accomplice. A mix of toxic ideologies immunized by fanboys in the media. If a progressive breaks the law in a forest full of media suck-ups, did it really happen? The scandal isn’t Obama’s actions, but those whose job was to report them. Instead they knitted their own blindfolds, to them each scandal was progress. So, sorry Dave, saying no major scandal is like saying no major pregnancies, especially when the media is your own personal Planned Parenthood.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchettGeorgia’s craft beer makers won a major victory Tuesday in a compromise that ends a contentious battle at the Legislature, but not all breweries are celebrating.
Brewers and liquor distillers reached an agreement with the wholesalers and state leaders that allows manufacturers to once again sell tours with variable prices, and for the first time, they can also sell food on-site. The changes will take effect once the Department of Revenue issues new regulations, although the timing of that is unclear.
“An agreement with the governor’s office and legislative leadership for regulatory fixes to the brewing industry has been reached,” said Nancy Palmer, the executive director of the Georgia Craft Brewers Guild. “We look forward to quick implementation.”
If that’s less than effusive, it’s because brewers were hoping for more.
Taylor Lamm, the managing partner and master brewer at Lake Country Brewing Co. in Greensboro, said they hoped lawmakers would help the craft beer industry.
“However, the compromise puts us back exactly where we were in 2015,” Lamm said.
Yes, he said, being allowed to again sell tours with different prices is good, “but Georgia is still significantly behind the rest of the United States.”
“We are losing another year because of this deal,” Lamm said, “and that hurts us a lot.”
Revenue Department spokesman William Gaston could not immediately say how soon the regulation changes will be made.
The department, he said, “is currently reviewing proposed changes to the brewery and distillery tour regulations.”
“Any changes to existing regulations will be published for public comment in accordance with Georgia law,” Gaston said.
Lawmakers last year passed legislation that allowed Georgians to buy a tour of a brewery and receive free beer afterward. Once the law took effect, breweries began offering different tours at different prices based on the kind of beer offered.
Two months later, however, in September, the Revenue Department issued new rules that said the tour price cannot vary based on the beer given away. The brewers were furious and said the agency had succumbed to the wishes of the wholesalers.
Soon afterward, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported, Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, and Senate President Pro Tem David Shafer, R-Duluth, urged the department to reverse course.
The brewers and distillers then banded together to draft legislation this year that would have sought major changes to the state’s alcohol laws. Tuesday’s deal means that legislation will not be filed.
Martin Smith, a spokesman for the beer wholesalers, said the deal is a victory for all sides.
“We’re thrilled about the compromise and thank our brewer partners and the (Georgia Craft Brewers) Guild for working to make this happen,” Smith said.
Smith said Ralston, Shafer, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and Gov. Nathan Deal’s staff were all involved in reaching an agreement.
“We’re in the business of promoting our brewer partners in order to generate success,” Smith said. “The more success the brewers have, the more success everybody has.”
Many brewers, however, are still not convinced.
Many of them were on a conference call with the brewers guild Tuesday afternoon. The organization has discouraged members from commenting publicly on the deal.
On the call, the guild told its members, “This is where we are. We need to fall back,” said Nathan Cowan, the CEO of the Eventide Brewery in Atlanta. “It’s David versus Goliath.”
The wholesalers and the craft brewers have been at odds for years, as the distributors seek to protect the long-standing prohibition that bars alcohol manufacturers from selling directly to consumers.
Georgia is one of the few states in the nation where it is still illegal for drinkers to buy beer at the brewery, either for on-site consumption or to take home.
The prohibitions here are protected by the state’s three-tier system of alcohol sales. Manufacturers can only sell to wholesalers or distributors, and they in turn can only sell to retailers.
Helping preserve that system is the close relationship beer and liquor wholesalers have with lawmakers. The wine and liquor lobby spent $5,500 in June hosting lawmakers at its annual convention on St. Simons Island. Wholesalers have contributed at least $587,000 to state campaigns in the past five years, and individual distributors have given hundreds of thousands of dollars more.
Beer deal The deal among craft beer brewers, liquor distillers and the state’s wholesalers means the Department of Revenue will issue new rules that will: Allow brewers again to sell brewery tours at variable prices based on the kind of beer offered.
Allow special events at breweries and distilleries.
Let brewers, distilleries and wholesalers use social media to alert the public about where to buy their products or advertise special events.
Allow third parties to sell tour tickets.
Let breweries and distilleries sell food on site.By Eileen Connelly, OSU
The Catholic Telegraph
For many years, decades in fact, the storefront at 3546 Montgomery Road in Evanston sat vacant. That all changed on May 19 when Community Blend, the newest employee owned, cooperative business created by Interfaith Business Builders, Inc. (IBB), opened it doors to serve up coffee and change in the surrounding neighborhood.
The project was four and half years in the making, said Ray West, executive director of IBB, as the organization, comprised of people and congregations from the Cincinnati religious community, searched for available properties in local low income neighborhoods. Their vision, said West, was to create ownership/employment opportunities, contribute to revitalization in Evanston and provide a community gathering place.
The coffee shop is funded in part by grants from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), the anti-poverty, social justice program of the U.S. bishops, administered locally by the archdiocesan Catholic Social Action Office. Many other organizations, including Evanston Community Council, businesses, churches, institutions and individuals also invested time and funding in the cooperative venture. Xavier University’s Williams College of Business and Community Building Institute were also important partners on the project.
“We’re excited to be involved in something that creates a spark of economic development in Evanston,” said Tony Stieritz, director of the Social Action Office. “In his encyclical Caritas in Veritate (“Charity in Truth”), Pope Benedict asserted that the old ways of doing economic development aren’t always serving the common good. If we’re ultimately interested in building an economy of compassion, we need economic models that have the human person at their core. The cooperative model is one that puts the human person at the center of economic activity.”
Under the co-op model, each employee goes through a six-month training period before they are approved as an owner of the coffee shop. All owners receive one vote and one share of stock in Community Blend. They experience both the responsibilities and pride that accompany owning a business, noted West. “To me, what’s important is that piece of ownership,” he said. “We’re creating an opportunity for people to have a voice in the workplace. More and more communities are recognizing the need to become creative and create businesses that will get people back in the workforce.
Bilal Muhammad, worker/owner at Community Blend, who grew up in Evanston, said, “This is a chance to revitalize the neighborhood. Hopefully, it will be an anchor in the business district and build bridges among the people. One of the issues here is that people don’t have a stake in the neighborhood. This gives us something to maintain, build on and helps us look to the future.”
Feedback from neighborhood residents has been positive, said Tina Michel, also a worker/owner. “Older people, who remember the building as a pharmacy, come in and look around and think this is great. We’re becoming really visible in the community. Our best marketing is word of mouth,” she said.
The tantalizing aroma of freshly brewed coffee and cheerful smiles of staff members greet visitors to Community Blend. The shop serves fair-trade coffee, tea and chocolate, ice-cold smoothies, delicious locally made baked goods and made from scratch sandwiches, featuring a variety of meats, cheeses and veggie options. Bags of coffee, both ground and whole bean, are also available to take home. The selections include Mind, Body and Soul, the house blend, as well as Love Buzz, Ethiopian, Columbian, Congo, French Roast and Decaf.
On a recent weekday morning, as a diverse group gathered for their morning coffee and goodies at Community Blend, the sight brought tears of joy to worker/owner Ivy Bell’s eyes. “It was beautiful, the best feeling ever,” she said. “Down the road from here is the ‘hood,’ then in the other direction, you have better living. We’re right in the middle and we’re bringing change to the neighborhood. This is a place where you don’t see peoples’ differences. It’s a place where we’re bringing together people together to just enjoy a good cup of coffee and conversation.”
For more information about Community Blend, visit their Facebook page HERE.
Body & Soul is a feature that hopes to highlight faith-filled folks who nourish others through their ministries, other food related topics and perhaps even heavenly inspired recipes. Please send any story ideas to Eileen Connelly, OSU.
—-
This Body & Soul feature originally appeared in the September 2014 print edition of The Catholic Telegraph.WAITING to see what colours Mark Webber’s new Porsche 919 Hybrid sportscar will carry when he switches to the World Endurance Championship?
Well, wait no more.
Images purporting to be of the car have been leaked from multiple sources on social media ahead of the car’s official launch at the Geneva Motor Show on Tuesday night AEDT.
Watch every round of the 2014 World Endurance Championship LIVE in HD on SPEED (Foxtel channel 512).
media_camera Side view.
The Australia ex-Formula 1 star will share the No. 20 Porsche 919 Hybrid with New Zealader Brendon Hartley and German sportscar ace Timo Bernhard. The other car, No. 14, will be shared by Romain Dumas, Neel Jani and Marc Lieb.
media_camera Rear three-quarter view.
The car carries the logos of Porsche Intelligent Performance, the branding carried by the Stuttgart marque’s hybrid performance car program.
media_camera Top view, showing off the text that spans the car’s bodywork.
Porsche are live streaming the official reveal from 6:20pm AEDT Tuesday at porsche.com/mission2014.
Webber will make his race debut for Porsche at the opening round of the WEC at Silverstone on April 20.
media_camera Front view.
media_camera Rear view.
Originally published as Webber’s new Porsche revealedHOMEWOOD, Alabama – Damn racket! Probably made by a crazy man.
Almost without fail those have been my two thoughts every time I've found myself within earshot of John Brown's voice. And being within earshot is not hard given that he uses a half-dozen speakers that boom his rich Jamaican accent up and down Lakeshore Parkway near I-65.
It's to that spot that Brown, 74, comes most Saturday's. There for the last dozen years Brown has set up his speakers and put out somewhere between 50 to 100 large signs containing mostly Bible verses and homespun philosophy. One of the signs reads "pull over if you want to know Jesus."
I pulled over. The noise from the speakers was defending. I don't see Jesus anywhere but Brown saw me and suddenly stopped preaching and looked at me from under the black and gold sombrero he was wearing. I hardly got out hello when Brown shouted at me: "Welcome man! Do you walk with Jesus?
"No," I said. "I usually walk with my wife."
Brown paused, looked me over and then let out a deep laugh as he extended his right hand. "You are funny man," Brown said. "I like funny men. I think Jesus like funny people too because laughter is good for the soul. God knows we have too many people on this Earth who only make people cry."
Hmmm. Maybe not so crazy after all.
Brown agreed to put down his microphone for a few moments and talk about why he does what he does. I repaid his generosity with a rude but direct question: Are you crazy?
Brown smiled and laughed. "No, I don't think I'm crazy," Brown said. "I know it might look that way with me out here shouting and singing and jumping. But I do it because 'He' is in me. I feel Jesus in me and it compels me to shout his good news: he has risen and we are saved only if we will accept him into our hearts."
Brown came to New York City from Jamaica in the mid 1960's where he married a woman of Haitian descent from Birmingham. He moved to Alabama in the early 1970's, he said.
"I like Birmingham and Alabama. I think the people here are closer to God than most of the people I knew in New York," Brown said.
If that is true, I asked Brown why he didn't stay in New York were his work might have been more needed. "Too cold," Brown said laughing again. "It's better to shout God's name when your tongue is not frozen."
Brown, a Type 2 diabetic, said he has refused medical treatment and if the doctors are right, he may not have much time left to preach.
"I tell them Jesus will heal me and if he does not, then he is ready for me to come with him. Either way is fine by me," said Brown.
Brown is not much of a fan of the modern day church.
"Too many have become too big and for them Jesus has become a business, the Jesus business," said Brown. "Christ commanded us to live simply and to treat each other as we would want to be treated, to remember we are our brother's keepers. But too many of these churches today have forgotten what Jesus taught and what they teach is that it is alright to keep all your riches and live behind your walls and drive your fancy cars past the poor person begging on the side of the street for food or a job. That is not living in Christ."
Hmmm, again.
As Brown returned to his preaching, I asked him one last question: wouldn't you like a small church to preach in now as you grow older?
"I had a church. It burned down," Brown said. "This is my church now. The grass is my carpet. The wind is my air conditioner. My flock numbers in the thousands. Jesus has blessed me. May he bless you too, funny man."
And with that Brown returned to making a racket. But crazy? I'm not so sure anymore.
NOTE: I have not seen Mr. Brown at his usual spot on Lakeshore for a while, maybe a month or longer. If any of you have seen him there or somewhere else please shoot me an email at cdean@al.com or call me at 205-325-2475 or send me a direct tweet at @charlesjdean.
Never thought I'd miss the racket.
Connecting Alabama
Chuck Dean is connecting Alabama through the stories told by its people -- sometimes about themselves, sometimes about their neighbors, sometimes about the places they call home. Share your stories, or introduce us to people we should connect with. Reach out on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram using #connectAL, email cdean@al.com or send Chuck a note at 2201 Fourth Ave. N, Birmingham AL 35203.Arun Kumar will become just another statistic in the reports of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways. The one-and-a-half-year old toddler died on Saturday after he was run over by a water tanker in Bengaluru.
The son of a painter from Mehboobnagar in Andhra Pradesh, it is uncertain whether the driver of the vehicle that mowed down Arun Kumar will be punished for his death, or will even receive adequate attention by the state. At present, there is nothing to suggest that the driver was inebriated.
Since 2011, Bengaluru traffic police records show that two people have been killed in road accidents every day. This year until April, 239 people have died bringing the total death toll since 2011 to 3146.
Responsible Drivers Running Over People
Contrary to popular perception, drunk driving is responsible only for a small percentage of road accidents. An analysis of causal factors in the Road Accidents in India 2013 report, prepared by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways showed that drivers are responsible for over three quarters of accidents that occur in the country. It found that in 78% of cases, it was the driver who at fault.
The report further states that 55% of drivers who fell within this category were well above the speed limit. This finding is of significance considering that the number of hit run cases increased by 10 percent from 2012, and the fatalities too increased by 7.7%, even though the highest number of accidents occurred at traffic junctions.
Karnataka, Fourth Highest on Road Accidents
In 2013, Karnataka had the fourth highest on the number of road accidents, accounting for nine percent of the country’s accidents. Twelve percent of these, occurred in the state capital Bengaluru. The state was fifth highest in terms of the number of fatalities.
How many deaths will it take before the government acts on the findings of its own report and works with people to inculcate a road usage culture that respects the fellow citizen’s life and well-being. The increase in road mishap fatalities has been accompanied by a rise in instances of road rage across India’s metros. All in all, the government – centre and state – needs to act quickly and work with various groups which are responsible for road safety.A sex attacker from Sheffield was left battered and bruised after his victim fought back - attacking him with her keys.
Johnathon Holmes, 35, dragged the woman into a hedge but she hit him in the face with her keys and managed to escape.
Holmes has now been jailed for four-and-a-half years for the horrific attack.
His victim told Sheffield Crown Court: "I believed without a doubt this man was going to rape me.
"My life would have been over - he might as well have killed me right there. I was so terrified but so angry."
Holmes was caught on CCTV in Sheffield city centre hiding behind walls and watching lone women after he had spent the afternoon and evening drinking in town.
Around midnight on November 1 he started following a 21-year-old woman as she made her way home from work, stalking her through the streets for more than a mile.
The woman who realised she was being followed crossed the street three times in an attempt to escape him.
As Holmes continued to pursue his victim she took out her mobile phone to call her partner and put her keys inside her hand to protect herself if needed.
Holmes then ran at her pushing her into bushes close to the Nuffield gym on Napier Street - close to where Sheffield Hallam University student Caroline Everest was last seen with a man in the early hours of November 22.
The woman managed to punch him twice in the stomach with the keys in her hand and started to scream.Arguing about religious liberty can be a little tricky at times. The Washington Post’s Kathleen Parker, for example Arguing about religious liberty can be a little tricky at times. The Washington Post’s Kathleen Parker, for example recently criticized President Obama for his administration’s “willingness to challenge, rather than protect, religious liberty in this country.” As proof, the columnist pointed to an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuit – filed by the Bush/Cheney administration
But the right is nevertheless increasingly invested in the larger argument. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) spoke last week at the Reagan presidential library and raised the specter of “elites” waging a “ silent war ” on religious liberty.
“The American people, whether they know it or not, are mired in a silent war,” Jindal will say at the Simi Valley, Calif., event. “It threatens the fabric of our communities, the health of our public square and the endurance of our constitutional governance.” “This war is waged in our courts and in the halls of political power,” he adds, according to the prepared remarks. “It is pursued with grim and relentless determination by a group of like-minded elites, determined to transform the country from a land sustained by faith into a land where faith is silenced, privatized and circumscribed.”
To support this rather over-the-top claim, Jindal pointed to the Hobby Lobby case – the one in which lawyers are arguing that corporations are people with their own distinct spiritual beliefs, which should empower a corporation’s owners to deny contraception access to their employees.
First, one is perfectly capable of believing that corporations are not capable of independent religious worship while also supporting religious liberty.
Second, if this is the best example Jindal can come up with – Kathleen Parker’s column also raised the case – perhaps this “silent war” isn’t even a real skirmish.
So what is it, exactly, that Jindal is talking about? Paul Waldman had a good piece on this.
Jindal is rather shrewdly attempting to tap into something that’s universal, but particularly strong among contemporary conservatives: the urge to rise above the mundane and join a transformative crusade. It’s one thing to debate the limits of religious prerogatives when it comes to the actions of private corporations, or to try to find ways to celebrate religious holidays that the entire community will find reasonable. That stuff gets into disheartening nuance, and requires considering the experiences and feelings of people who don’t share your beliefs, which is a total drag. But a war? War is exciting, war is dramatic, war is consequential, war is life or death. War is where heroes rise to smite the unrighteous. So who do you want to get behind, the guy who says “We can do better,” or the guy who thunders, “Follow me to battle, to history, to glory!”
Quite right. That said, as Ed Kilgore added, this has been tried before, and most Americas see through the misguided facade.
“These elites have to this point faced little opposition,” eh? What about the “war on religion” meme pursued by the entire Republican Party and its presidential candidate throughout 2012? What about the endless, interminable harping on the idiotic “War on Christmas” every Yuletide on Fox? How about the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the pompadoured hosts of conservative evangelicalism who have been posing as martyrs since the day the Affordable Care Act was enacted? Did I imagine the decades of agitation by the Christian Right – invariably in harness with conservative pols – claiming that resistance to their agenda represented a unconscionable effort to restrict the exercise of faith “in the public square” (the Richard John Neuhaus buzzword Bobby so unoriginally tosses out today as though it’s a fresh way of looking at things)? Is the Kansas House of Representatives a persecuted sect, a “remnant” fighting the brave, doomed fight against the Infernal Hosts?
Jindal’s speech is the latest in an unfortunate victimization series – the governor, no doubt eyeing a national platform, wants religious people to feel persecuted, blame his political foes for the injustice, and look to him as the hero who will end the oppressive nightmare.
The problem, of course, is that there’s no need for Jindal or anyone who found his message to see themselves as victims. No one is coming for their religious liberty. Their ability to worship faces no jeopardy. Social conservatives, perhaps weighing their 2016 options, need no new champion to rescue the freedoms they already enjoy.Brief: We take the elementary OS powered Centurion Nano laptop for a test ride. And it seems to be a decent, value for money device.
We were recently contacted by Alpha Store to test their new Centurion laptop products.
What? Yet another confidential laptop brand? I must admit that was my initial reaction. But after a closer look, a few things draw my attention: First, the surprisingly high specifications for the price. Second and most interesting, it comes pre-installed with Linux and according to the seller, you can install coreboot on top of that. In these days of privacy concerns, this is very interesting. Sufficient for me to want to test that product.
Note: It has been brought to my knowledge that Alpha is not processing orders or responding to complaints in last few weeks. Some people purchased it during Christmas sale and never received it. I have tried to contact the owners of Alpha and have got no response so far. It’s a registered business and is run by two people so maybe they are short on the manpower but that doesn’t explain why they cannot reply to emails.
So if you are planning to buy one, please contact them beforehand and see if they respond.
The elementary OS powered Centurion laptops by Alpha
Some of you might have already heard of Alpha. They came into limelight when they launched first elementary OS laptop Litebook earlier this year. Since then, the company seemed to have matured as they launch more products powered by elementary OS Linux distribution.
The new Centurion laptop comes in two models:
the 13.3″ 1080P Centurion Nano (starting at $699 for an Intel i5 7200U Dual Core @3.1GHz, 8GB RAM and hybrid storage 128 GB SSD+1 TB HDD)
the 15.6″ 1080P Centurion Ultra (starting at $749 for the exact same base configuration as above)
What makes the difference between the Nano and Ultra is mostly the size. The Ultra has a larger display and comes equipped with a Nvidia 940mx GPU do drive it. In addition, given the larger case, it can hosts 4 USB3.0 connectors instead of only 2 for the Nano.
As options, both models can be purchased with an Intel i7-7500U Dual Core processor instead, 16GB RAM and a couple of different storage configurations.
I tested the Centurion Nano equipped with the Intel Core i7 7500U and 16GB of RAM. When the computer arrived, I had less than 24h for testing.
Centurion Nano Review
Let’s see what this new device has to offer to a regular Linux user.
Unpacking/package content
The package contains the computer, a 19V/2.1A power supply, and the cable to connect it to the main power line. That later caused me some troubles: the cable was made for a US plug. So I had to find a replacement part before being able to connect the power supply to a French plug. Which gives me plenty of time to examine the build quality of the device.
Build quality
The laptop by itself looks pretty well assembled. It fits in a classy plastic and metal case (aluminum?), far from the cheap plastic I expected. There’s a simple “Alpha Centurion” marking on top of the lid. No other branding can be seen elsewhere. I do not know if it was on purpose, but the shiny silver look of the laptop finally fits pretty well with its name, since it is not without reminding the Centurions in the original Battlestar Galactica series. A little bit less shiny though ;)
Overall, the laptop (closed) is about 22×32.5×2 cm³. For a weight of 1.5 Kg.
I/O connectors
Given its small form factor, you will not see many connectors on the computers. All connectors are located on the sides:
On the left side you will find:
The power plug,
1xUSB type A plug,
1xheadphone jack.
On the right side you will find:
1xcombo USB/eSATA,
1xHDMI,
1xUSB type C plug,
and the SD card reader.
Keyboard
The QWERTY keyboard is backlighted. It would have been better if the keys were a little bit taller since you can see the LEDs behind them. Moreover, that small gap will allow the penetration of dust or other impurities below the keys.
However, besides that cosmetic issue, the keyboard is pretty agreeable to use, and I found the palm rest pretty comfortable and well proportioned for my hands.
The only real issue I had was with the power button unfortunately placed in the upper right corner of the keyboard, where you usually find the delete key. I put the laptop to sleep a couple of times by pressing it by mistake while I just wanted to delete some text.
Trackpad
Below the keyboard, you will find a trackpad. This one has no visible button. Since it is a multi-touch trackpad, you can emulate right-click by tapping with two fingers. And tapping with three fingers will produce a middle-click.
I realized later you can press onto the tracking area to trigger some the button(s?) hidden below. About 80-90% of the area surface will trigger a left-click. Only when pressing on the lower right part of the trackpad will trigger a right click. I was not able to produce a middle-click that way. I do not know if this is impossible or if I just lacked the dexterity to press at the right position for that.
Worth mentioning while reviewing the computer, we received a message from Andrew Bernstein of Alpha Universal LLC to say they have improved the trackpad in new models. Since I was already satisfied with the one I had, I cannot tell for sure what exactly was improved.
First boot
When you boot, you see the familiar (for a Linux user) Grub bootloader menu. By pressing enter (or just waiting 30 seconds), the boot process continues by loading Alpha OS, the Alpha-branded Elementary OS Linux distribution that comes pre-installed.
Elementary OS is a nice choice for that Linux laptop since given its gentle learning curve, it will not frighten people accustomed to Windows or MacOS. However, being based on Ubuntu (which itself is based on Debian), it will still give you access to the full power of Linux if you need it.
During the first boot, the computer performs some initialization setups, asking few simple questions like your keyboard layout, desired login name and password, time zone and Wi-Fi settings. Only after I skipped that later part, I realized there was no Ethernet plug on the computer. So the Wi-Fi is your only choice to connect to the network.
Display
The 13.3″ Full HD display is very readable with nice saturated colors. And it is much more pleasing to use than my usual 17″ Dell laptop screen. Of course, displaying 1920×1080 on a screen of only 13.3″ might challenge those of you with a less than perfect sight. If that is your case, maybe you should consider switching to the 15″ Centurion Ultra instead.
Sound
Audio capabilities are certainly not the greatest strength of the Centurion Nano. It is sufficient for occasional use or videophone applications. However, when playing pop music, it is quite obvious the medium to medium-high frequency(treble) are over-represented. Whereas at the same time, there are very few low-frequency sounds (bass). Also, high frequencies suffer from audible distortions and saturation when we are close to 0dBFS. Clearly, all those defects are limitations of the internal speaker and analog circuitry.
I did not open the case, but it feels like if there was only one speaker, below the left palm rest. Or, at least, this is where you actually can feel the vibrations of the speaker— something that is not very pleasant. So you probably won’t enjoy listening to music from the internal speaker while typing text.
I will not say too much about the internal microphone which is comparable to the one you can find on most laptops. Certainly not your best solution for quality audio captures.
The Centurion Nano lacks microphone jacks. So, for “serious” audio recording, you will probably have invest in a USB microphone. Or better, you could plug into the laptop an external USB audio card/interface that would be a perfect complement if you intend to use it for audio-intensive applications or if you want Hi-Fi restitution.
Webcam
If audio capabilities were somewhat disappointing, I was quite surprised by the good quality of the internal webcam. It shows pretty low noise levels, even at relatively low light levels like in my house interior on the cloudy autumn day we had today. Perfect for video phone application or even for occasional video recording.
According to lsusb, the camera is advertised as “QUANTA HD WebCam” and has a maximum resolution of 1280×720 (HD 720p), natively supporting both RAW output and MJPEG compression.
Hardware listing
Instead of bothering you with descriptions, here are the configuration reported using some traditional Linux tools:
[email protected]:~# uname -a Linux sylvain-Kabylake-Platform 4.10.0-32-generic #36~16.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Wed Aug 9 09:19:02 UTC 2017 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[email protected]:~# lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Device 5904 (rev 02) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 5916 (rev 02) 00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP USB 3.0 xHCI Controller (rev 21) 00:14.2 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Thermal subsystem (rev 21) 00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP CSME HECI (rev 21) 00:17.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 21) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 9d10 (rev f1) 00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PCI Express Root Port (rev f1) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Device 9d58 (rev 21) 00:1f.2 Memory controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PMC (rev 21) 00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Device 9d71 (rev 21) 00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP SMBus (rev 21) 02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 3165 (rev 81)
[email protected]:~# lsusb Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 002: ID 058f:d102 Alcor Micro Corp. Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
[email protected]:~# aplay -l **** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices **** card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC269VC Analog [ALC269VC Analog] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 [email protected]:~# arecord -l **** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices **** card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC269VC Analog [ALC269VC Analog] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
[email protected]:~# phoronix-test-suite detailed-system-info Phoronix Test Suite v5.2.1 System Information Hardware: Processor: Intel Core i7-7500U @ 3.50GHz (4 Cores), Motherboard: Intel KU31, Chipset: Intel Device 5904, Memory: 1 x 16384 MB DDR4-2400MHz, Disk: 1000GB HGST HTS541010B7 + 256GB TOSHIBA THNSNK25, Graphics: Intel Device 5916, Audio: Realtek ALC269VC, Monitor: LM133LF1L01, Network: Intel Wireless 3165 Software: OS: Alpha OS 1.0.0, Kernel: 4.10.0-32-generic (x86_64), Display Server: X Server 1.19.3, Display Driver: modesetting 1.19.3, OpenGL: 4.5 Mesa 17.0. |
1954.
“Through the daily pledge exercise, our public schools are defining patriotism by promoting god-belief while stigmatizing atheist and humanist children,” said David Niose, legal director of the American Humanist Association’s Appignani Humanist Legal Center. “This violates the principles of equal rights and nondiscrimination, which is why we are currently challenging ‘under God’ in the pledge with a lawsuit in New Jersey.”
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.it was a bright monday morning when sonic enjoyed the waking up and begin the word "i enjoy the mondays." it was the day of the large science school fare, where the scientists wuld cum into the gymnasium and make a big mess with their experiments. scoinc had been working on his edsperiment for the past 3 years. sonic intellectual frend "the "T 1L") then entered the domain from sonic.
"OOOIc!" sayed theails. "It is time to get the heck out of there!"
Sonic got up and gave head to the was time to arrive into the internals of shower. Sonic used his special speedy shampoo to maintain good speedness thru out the day. He also used his special créamé. After his bath, he bégan to enjoy his héarty bréakfast méal. Sonic's mom had cremated prankcase for breaking fast. "THank's sonic's mom's said" SOnic. Tails also engaged in the breakfast meal.I do not know why tails engage in the mealing, because tail does not live with the snoic. but he was there. so he engagne the [pancakes and egg. BUT AT THAT MOéMNTO, Kunkkles bursted through th e doort!
"We are late for learning domain!" he screamed louder than a wolf could. "Uh oh!" said gay Sonic Mom, "You better be quick!". Sonic's mother was homosexual becuase of a disease. Whomever, sonic was indeed verry quick, and evaded the time limit. but when he was going down the street! He ran into the buley:: Large the Feline. "You stupid loser. You are sick with the gay!" Large was only saying this ebcause he was sick with the gay, but did not want people to know. "Umm…. NO!" said Knukkes. "But I am correct about the one known as tail!" siad snoic. Large then punched tails in the weener. Tails cried because he is a little bithc. Sonic and his posse then proceeded to evade large.
sonic arrive at the school, just inside of the tim ethat does not make u a bad person. "WEW LAD" sayed the sonic! if i was a bad person once more, they would eliminiate me from the learning domain! its a good thing i am faster than the flash. then the flash from the NO COPYRIGHT INTENDED comic book came and sayed "no" before returning back to the homeworld,kkrypton.
"wow that sure was computers" say the tail.
"yes" seayed sonics mom.
"y r u here?" say the Chronic, confused. he new that his mom was supposed to be at home, preparing the new dinner meal. scnoics mother then dissappear. "O well!" sayd mr fast sonic. "Weed have better arrive at the clas, or we will become the bad student." "yse" say the tail, and sonic mother.
Sonic first had to go to his lockre, where he input the code 7-1-25 to make the locker not longer locked. The unlocked locker legitimately looked like Sonic took out the book of mathematics, which he would required for his next class. he then head to the classe de mathématiques. "quoi?" dit sonic. "Que se passe-t-il? pourquoi je parle en francais?" sonic then realize that the author was a dumb french fag who liked stupid french things, like wine and baguettes. "I dislike the jewist race, saod The Lt. Kunckle." said the tail. "Woops, there it is."
le classe commence et tout le monde et pret. si vous parlez en anglais, tu ne pas de billet, et ca c'est vrai. sonic look at the board and see the new math problem. "ALLRIGHT CLASS, TURN TO PAGE"
"done" say the tail.
"QUE?" explaim clas
"I have finised the problem. this is becuase i am the smart!" traail says.
"ok" says mrs. snatch, the teacher. "u get 100% on this ~!" BUT U SSONIC U MUST DO THE PROBLEM!1 NOW! COME 2 THE FRONT OF THE CLASS OR U WILL BE KILLED.
'sonic had a problem. his weiner became extinct! this was problematic. "ok"
he go to whiteboard and see
(4-5x)/(24x^2+2x-12) - (5-4x)/(12x^2-15x-18)
"ez say ssonic""u just have to do this!". sonic did the specual mathematical manueaver to finish the problem. he did it faster than tails becuase sonic is extremely agile on his feet.
=(9x^2-4x-4)/(6(4x+3)(3x-2)(x-2))
"WRONG say teacher." u have forgot the equals sign.
"no "say sonic
"yes".
"sonic becma ehungry so he decided to lunch. he leaves the class to head to the lunch arena."
he say to the teach "FUCK YOUJ". tje teacher was so angry he sent him to his next class, art.
sonic went to the art class. he went in to see AMY modleing NUDE for the class. sonics bonir became un-extinct and reappeared inside of the pantalons. ""WHy is this channge occuring to my body?" thought the sonic. Amy reply " because i am the sex e." "yse said mr bond, the art teacher and local pedophile." "very sex e indeederino. u have let me had pleasure by letting me look at u while u do not have clothe one." "no problem" say amy "and sonic… you are cool!" sonics draw hit the floor just like his balls dropped in puberty (which occured rigbht then!). sonic was hungry so he ditch the class from the lunch.
It was now the time of eating lunchers. Snoic's mother had insterted a SCHNIEDER'S BRAND LUNCHABLE (no copyright intended) into his lunchsquare. He enjoyed this with gusto. Taisl was also eating a Lunchable, but it did not belong to the schneider's brand. Knuckles did not eat lunkh, as he was gaining weight and the fat doctors told him not to. Large the cat was then released from the school prison. He was so fat, and did not see the fat doctors, so that when he made the sitting motion, the table broke. He had done this so many times that he was disallowed to sit anymore. Large collected his feinds, Sliver, shadow, and Metal SNoic together and broguth them towards Sonic's gang. "You are gay/" Saif shadow. "No. said snod". "They then laugheed at snod's entire family, friends, and immeadiate company.". But at that moment, the cool bell rang. Sonic liked this bell, because it reminded him of his father, who died after becoming sick with the gay. I'd bett'er get to the learnin areas!" said tail. He then escaped into the learning area. Snoic then ran so fast, he brok the fabric of reality itslef. "Oh non! Qu'est-que ce pas?! sonico exclamed" Sonic was standing in a black room, filled wiht black jews. "Darn/" Siad one balck man. "Sonic then scremed so loud, a black man's head expladed." This caused the room to become lit. Sonic made alooking motion with his earballs. He saw that there was a door, however it was guarded by a jews. He then sent the jew black to hell, because that is wehre they belog; After sonic exited this room, he found the area of learning. He then became smart. During this entire ordeel, kunckleus was being beat up and being kicked in the weenr and being anally fisted deepa by Large. Knuckles then exclaimed "I DO NOT ENJOY THISs"" after he said this, the bullies respected his personal espace and stopped the homosex. Kunckles secreley wondrered if he had cought the gay. it turned out. he had. Kunckles spent 16 years trying to fight the gay. but evangelion he died.
the nextr class was the science. the principal of the learning arena. "all s\tudents of the science faire, come to the gymnasium to set up ur experiments. i will com down there shortly to thouroghly inspect thje experiments and make sure that they are sufficient for my ulterior motives."
sonic and the gang of gang bangers that are the friends of the sonic went to the gymnasium. "ohes noes!" say le sonic. I forgot the experiment at home! And i spent an entire 3 yeras workiung on it! WHat whill i do? Then sonics mom came to the rescue. she appear at the school and "say" no worry mr sonic, i brought u ur lunch! U forgot it at home. "Thanks, ma" said sonic, making sure to be very thankful so that his mother would not deduct any good boy points from him. "make sure to massage me feet whe n u get home deer." "yes ma" "good boy. u have recieve a good boy points."
"only 1 more point until " RANCHO SAUSE! with the tender chicken.
sonic realized he was still in a pickle. he had no science faire project. his hopes were just in the drain. so he called on jesus the nazarene: "jesus: u are excommunicated" "sonic say not yet, that is later in the story" so jesus said fine and gave sonic a new project. "purrfect" sayed sonic, growling like a cat. jesus the nazarene was not a furry, so he evacuated very quickly. he did not want to be seen near sonic for fear of his popularity.
the science fair was really boring so i didnt write abouit it.
Sonic was satruday. This was because it was happy.
sonic was boring so he decided to go to the bathroom to initiate a fun time into himself. when he open the bathroom door, he saw him mom TAKING A large poopooing! This is not ok, thought sonic to himself. But a a sonic has to do what a sonic has to do. sonic pull out his pantalons and became increasingly goy. he was later excommunicated by jesus himself.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOO" exclaim sonic. "i am sorry" sayed jesus the nazarene. "actually i am not u dearty HEATHEN. u do not DESERVe to LIVE unles u ARE OF GODS CHOSEN PEOPLE." "sonic pass"ed out on the floor, becoming athiest. his mom continue the defecation.
Sonic awake on the monday morning. it was a bright monday morning when sonic enjoyed the waking up and begin the word "i enjoy the mondays." it was the day of the large science school fare, no it was not. I Tricked u. ha.
itr was actually sunday, the day of the LORD. BUT,\; sonic was the athiestest. he hated jesus, and decided to play violent video games for the entire day/. "heh, that'll teach him, stinkin' jesus". sonic began to wear black clothes and wear dark eyeliner. he put on black lipstick. while on the way to the church that his STINKING mom had forced sonic to go to, people thought sonic was the gay becuase of the make up that sonic was wearing. "Sonics makeup is for gay males" said the paster during the surmon. "this is unacceptable" we must terminate sonic. Everyone got up from their pew(diepie lol) and started the gang bang of the sonic. "I can not believe you have done this" explained sonic. Sonic attempst to run out the door fast. unfortunately, the shampoo that sonic had used 5 days ago on the science fair day had run out. he was no longer fast. sonic was actually so slow that a snail could have sped by him and sonic would not be able to catch the extremely slow snail because sonic, in relation to the snale, would be even slower. This meant that sonic could not really move anywhere, beucase anywhere would be too far to go and sonic was going nowhere becuase he was moving at a snails pace. He was then ganger bangeed. This displeased sonic greatly. However, just at that ONE MOMENT, tails died of colon cancer. Sonic was still displeased at the ganja bangerino he was received. After 16 hours, the paster finally said "Enough of the RAPE, enough of the GANG, enough of the BONG." Everybody stoppoed. "it was not rape, because sonic was the male sex." everyone left for hometime. Sonic then drew a pentahedron in his own black lipstick and arrival. He said the secret chant: OOga CHuga 666 times, and on the 667th times, SNOrK simoned a daemon. His name was Doctor Rabbit. "PLease kill the paster!" said Spoinc to Dr. Ribbit, PHD. "ok."
Dr. Rabiit, dds then found where the paster was at. IT turns out, the pastor was actually sick with the homosexual, so he was at th egay bar attempting to coerce young maleoids to engage in sexual congress wiht him. Dr. Rabbit then squirted his hot, stcky toothpaste all over The paster "PLACK ATTAQUE! PLACK ATTAQUE! PLACK ATTAQUE! PLACK ATTAQUE! PLACK ATTAQUE! PLACK ATTAQUE! " screamed Dr. Robot, MD. The amount of tohth pastries that the paster was covered in caused, him to melt into HECK! Sonic then fell into the slep, knowing that he was euphoric, not because of some phony god's blessing, but because of his own tooth decay GINGIVITUS.
Sonic awake on the monday morning. it was a bright monday morning when sonic enjoyed the waking up and begin the word "i enjoy the mondays." ONCE AGAIN, u fell for it didnt u? stupid reader. i am smarter than u, fagot. put now, back to the story.
sonic got up and went to the shower to shower. he showered. he stopped showering. he left the shower. and dried himself off. he had consexual sex with amy in the missionary position whilst using protection. she agree to not say that sonic rape her. "sonic was pleased." becuase he would not have to go to jail for raoing amykins. amy left with no clothes becuase IT WAS JUST A DREAM! Sonic awake on the monday morning. it was a bright monday morning when sonic enjoyed the waking up and begin the word "i hate the mondays." sonic said with alacrity.
Garfunkle was enraged. How could this happen to him? He knew that Overlord™ John™ had planned nothing but perfection. He would not settle for less. Garfunkle got up silently, donned his cape™ and fedora™, and exited the room with haste. He went™ into his kitchen, where he enjoyed his Overlord™ John™ pop-tarts™. Before leaving the house, he put on his guy™ fawkes™ mask™, in order to maintain anonymity among the sheeple™®. He first visited the Apple Store, where he promptly started heroically yelling at all of the sheeple buying F'Apple's products. "NAWTEE" screamed Garfunkle, twisting his head and slapping the F'apple customers with seaweed. Garfunkle spotted the naked Rougue. "Gneiss." (just like michael rosen says it, with the tongue click). After this, he enjoyed some Overlord™ John™ brand Chicken Tenders™™™. He then went to his office job, creating podcasts that broadcast the message of freedom for all the intellectuals of this once great nation. His podcasts did not get good reviews most of the time, however, because most of his listeners did not possess the leading vocabulary that he did. After his office job, he browsed the Overlord™ John™ approved™ Minecraft™ forums, for anybody who made errors in their comments. "dumb fukin kid, wolves were added in beta 1.4. go crawl up ur moms uterus like the baby that u are.
"AHGHGHGHAGHGHA" Sonic was yelled with a cream. This was the worste nightmeat he had had had in weeks! "I must maintain my visit to the nightmare doctor" proclaimed Snoick! He did so with great Gusto. sonic decided he must go to the nightmare doctor immediately. he called the nightmare doctor. the nightmare doctor opened the call upwards and say ""yes". Sonic was overjoyed, he would be able to clear his mind and make his mind clean. he hopped into the automatic mobile and gone doctor, (PHD).
He arrive at the door of doctors. He smell tail from the corner of his eye. "penis" syed the tail. Sonic turn around to see the tail from the middle of his eye. But the tail was not there. "hmm" thought sonic. "hmmmmmmmmmm i think that i might be diseased." sonic enter the door of doctors.
At the nightmere doctor, Snok spoke thus:: "I have been expereienced higher than normal call volumes, please stay on the line." he also "said: " I have the nightmare about being a kittykat who enjoys a good nap." The Doctor Then Thought About The Meaning Of Snoik's Various Nightmare's. "It is obvious that you might have contracted the… homosex" Sonic then had a severe plack attaque at the mention of this knews. XxX420Blazeit_the_Cat420XxX was there to comfort his freind. However, XxX420Blazeit_the_Cat420XxX had injected to many weeds into the ellowboy. This was very bad for a developing kitty Kat, as this cna cause serious chromosome deformities. This then occured to XxX420Blazeit_the_Cat420XxX. First, His chromsoms doubled, then tripled, then finally, squared. It was lucky that XxX420Blazeit_the_Cat420XxX had gotten vaccinations prior to this occurance, so he alreday had the autismp. The Magic the Clown, HOFBrINCl2, then appeared to drag XxX420Blazeit_the_Cat420XxX down to H E double hockeydicks. XxX420Blazeit_the_Cat420XxX Then creamed louder than could passilbe. Then sCREAMED HIS sexual underwear. HOFBrINCl2 was not going to have any of that, whomever, and took the life of blazé. Sonic creied so hard. he flooded the world just like noah did in that FAKE and GAY book, the aylay. After all this, sonic had to do what sonic had to do. He uncuckled his afeef-strap, and begon to angrily masturbate his entire body into submission. of the afeef trap. THe royal afeef guard then apprehended Sonic for uncuckling his afeef, Strap, which, was, very, naughty, of, him, to, do, such,, a,, thing. Sonic wast ehn brot to federal J'ail, along with AME. Large the cat, and his gaggle of bulle boys all died ion the flood that was caused the sonic from his tears of being so sad ;(but first, they have to add some of that, you know….). IT was jail fun-time at the jail, nd they were making a human leather wallet. sonic was happy, he knew he would like the jail, beucase he was homosex. and lots of gay happen inside of the secure walls of the J'ail, where no pasters or momes or dades could infiltrate. The wallert sonic created was filled to the brim of pictures of his favorite furry-artistes. This was disturbing. After, this revelation, sonic REALLY enjoyed shoer time. This was because many of the stronger burlier creatures of all shapes and sizes began to acheive sexual congress with Snouic. After the moment of Sexual Congress, it was time for the torture to begin. The first act of torture bestowed on the Sonic gang was the STAIR TREATMENT. For 15 days at a time, you must walk continously up and down le stairs., until wither you die, or, the 15 days; has. Ame was wankng up and down on the staris, exactly 10 seconds until the 15 days was over, son saw amy's gargantuan baboon ass, and was enraged by how happy his pines was. He TRHUSTED with ALL his MIGHT towards AMz, who doged the attaque on her prosterier. She contunued with her jazzersize. However, she perished shortlyafter, due to a an complication regarding an laced shoe that became less tied. This made sonic so depressed all he did for the second act of torture bestowed upon the groupwas nothing. The second act, which was to do something, was not succesful on the sonic. Sonic maintained the heart of the carsd and refused to ack knawlidge the warden's lamborjina'
;,. This made sonic's Weenr™ stand at half-attention. WHich is secret code talk for having only have an erecter. Soon, this evolved into a full, i repeat full, This simple cake works perfect during the holidays, on a buffet table or in a picnic basket! And you won't believe the aroma that comes from your oven during baking! The alcohol bakes off and leaves just the flavor. It's very moist and has been a favorite birthday request in our house for over 20 years! erecter! this was conveint. The third act of torture that was experienced by the torture-mates was for them to be killed TO DEATH. This enraged sonics heiny, which caused himself to castrate himself and his mother who was in j'ail for child abuse/. "OOWWOWOWOWOOWWOO~! THAT HURT BADDDDD! OUCHIE!" This dissallwoed the gloriopus masturbation made possible by viewers like you, such as the great AYY-LAY. Sonic then decided the best course of action was to convert to islam. This woul guarentee snoc at lEAT 1 sexing in the after-death part of This cake was so moist. I made it for my friend's birthday, and everyone loved it. I used 1 1/2 tsp of nutmeg, and I thought 1tsp would have been enough. I used two 9-inch subwraymarin sandwhicheds. instead of a erectile dysfunction. I baked them for 20 minutes and I think 17-18 minutes would have been enough. Sonic enjoyed this cake well wnough, so he "creamed" into his pillow. THis was noit the last time you would hear this ""Sonic SCREEEEEEECH""... it was a bright tuesdaymorning when sonic enjoyed the waking up and begin the word "i enjoy the tuesday." it was the day of the moderateely sized science school fare, where the scientists wuld cum into the gymnasium and make a big mess with their experiments. ha. tricked again. it was actually monday. and it was a bad dream. Sonic awoke from this state of Cranki Bros. He saw his fredno Veccy the Crocodiley. "I thought you died alone. A long, long time ago." "OH NO, NOT ME. I did not lose conrol." "That is good knews." They then resolved to Variation: You can also "flour" the pan after it's been greased with cocoa powder or a cinnamon sugar mixture for a textured crust. Simply fill a clean salt shaker for easy application. This will eliminate that "white stuff" on the outside of your baked cake which makes for a prettier cake.Companies that hire former inmates say those employees are often model workers who are eager to prove themselves. But many businesses remain wary of giving ex-offenders a chance
Jimmy Erickson went to prison for a violent felony when he was 25. When he was released, at 46, he felt reformed and determined to build a new life. A month and a half later, he got a job with Butterball Farms, a Michigan company with a track record of hiring former prisoners.
Erickson has now been with Butterball for seven years and has received several promotions. He married and bought a home. At first, Erickson says, he battled against a constant anxiety that everyone knew about his criminal history and judged him for it. So he concentrated on proving himself from the moment he was hired.
“At first I was apprehensive about trying to form relationships with people, but I had the mindset that this was my opportunity,” he says. “I’d work my shift and whenever they needed someone to stay over, I volunteered. Anything they asked me to do, I did it.”
Butterball represents a growing number of companies hiring former inmates. Major corporations like Target, Home Depot, Walmart and Koch Industries have joined more than 100 cities and 19 states in passing “ban the box” legislation to prohibit employers from requiring job applicants to check a box indicating whether they have a criminal record. Checking that box often leads to automatic exclusion from consideration without the opportunity to explain the nature of the crime.
Instead, more companies wait until later in the interview process to ask about criminal history, a change aimed at giving those with a record a fair chance to compete for jobs. In November, the Obama administration followed suit, taking executive action to “ban the box” in federal hiring. And, just last week, a bipartisan congressional task force on prison reform released a report calling for stronger employment and other programs to help ex-offenders reenter society.
Exclude criminal records from job applications, companies urged Read more
Most people coming out of the prison system don’t have the smooth transition to employment that Erickson had. A 2009 study found that up to 75% of ex-offenders were unemployed as long as a year after release. Employer surveys show that almost 90% of large companies do employee background checks, and most are not willing to hire someone with a criminal record.
“Six or seven years ago, employers looked at you like maybe you had a screw loose when you talked about hiring ex-offenders,” said Joyce White Vance, US attorney for the Northern District in Alabama who has worked with the Birmingham Business Alliance to encourage hiring of ex-offenders. “Now it’s much more part of the mainstream conversation.”
Law enforcement officials, civil rights organizations and business leaders say giving former inmates a better shot at employment is good for business and society. More than 65 million people in the US have a criminal record, from low-level property crimes to violent felonies. More than 600,000 are released from prison every year. Excluding such a large group of people from the employment pool, they say, is impractical and bad for the economy, costing tens of billions of dollars annually.
Some businesses simply see it as the right thing to do, realizing that those who have criminal records face an uphill battle to find jobs and frequently end up back in the legal system partly because they couldn’t find work to support themselves. In fact, cutting the skyrocketing cost of running prisons, which house nearly 2.4 million inmates nationwide, has been a major incentive for finding employment for former prisoners, Vance says.
Employers are finding that by being more inclusive, they are benefiting from employees like Erickson who are determined to excel.
“We’ve found that just by us giving that opportunity, a lot of people so appreciate it that what we get back as a company in return is much greater than what we ever gave in the beginning,” says Bonnie Mrozcek, chief talent officer for Butterball Farms.
Butterball is a leader in the effort to get more so-called returning citizens into stable employment. But its original motive wasn’t strictly altruistic, says Mroczek – 20 years ago, Butterball was having trouble filling positions and wanted to expand the applicant pool. The company discovered ex-offenders were great workers with lower turnover rates on average than other employees.
The company began to champion for hiring former inmates but found strong resistance from the business community. So in 2012, Butterball, based in Grand Rapids, started the 30-2-2 initiative, which set out to get 30 employers in its hometown to hire a minimum of two former inmates and track their job performance for two years, hoping to show other businesses that ex-offenders could be desirable, competitive applicants.
These days, companies in the initiative are also working with job placement services and staffing agencies to find suitable job candidates. Now the 30-2-2 program is being adopted in New Orleans.
Ex-inmates find honest jobs courtesy of banker and colleague, the bank robber Read more
Matching businesses with potential employees remains a significant challenge overall. Agencies that offer skill training to former prisoners historically lack the staff to build a strong relationship with local businesses and place job seekers. But that’s changing with more funding from the US Department of Labor to fund those liaisons, says Stephanie Akhter, the re-entry and employment project manager at the Council of State Governments Justice Center.
A patchwork of state and federal regulations that are intended to ensure public safety have also created a major barrier for ex-offenders to find work. Those rules typically impose restrictions on voting, access to housing, public benefits and jobs, but they sometimes create unintended consequences. A classic example is that many states prevent formerly incarcerated people from working as barbers and stylists, even though these are common job training programs in prisons. A national study by the American Bar Association identified a staggering 38,000 state and federal statutes that impose such consequences on people convicted of crimes, the majority pertaining to employment.
Many businesses remain wary about hiring people with a criminal past because they worry that ex-offenders pose safety risks, says Madeline Neighly, a senior policy advisor for corrections and reentry at CSG Justice Center. Some businesses also cite concerns about getting sued by other employees for failing to conduct a good background check if the former inmates they hired turned out to be problem workers. But, according to Neighly, there is little evidence that this represents a significant risk, and some states now have regulations to shield employers from negligent hiring claims.
“It’s natural for people to have a stigma, but once you expose hiring managers or executives to real people, it diffuses the stigma,” says David Rattray, executive vice president for education and workforce development at the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, which is part of a pilot program, Back on Track LA, that helps ex-offenders get jobs and education. The chamber hired two former inmates and hosted a summit last fall to line up support for the program. It also takes members on tour of the local jail to dispel stereotypes.
“It’s not a simple ‘just add water’ solution,” Rattray says. “But if we do it at the LA Chamber, I think we will get more and more employers learning from other employers and us, and choosing this option.”VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican said on Tuesday Pope Benedict was willing to meet more sexual abuse victims but not under media pressure and scoffed at calls for the pope to be arrested when he visits Britain in September.
Pope Benedict XVI waves during the Sunday Angelus prayer at his residence of Castelgandolfo, south of Rome April 11, 2010. REUTERS/Osservatore Romano
A lawyer for British author and atheist campaigner Richard Dawkins said in London at the weekend he would try to have Pope Benedict arrested to face questions over accusations the Church covered up cases of sexual abuse of children by priests.
Asked about this at a briefing on the pope’s trip to Malta this weekend, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi scoffed.
“This is a bizarre idea to say the least. It looks like the intent is to make a public opinion splash. I think they should look for something more serious and concrete before we can respond to it,” he said.
“The pope’s visit (to Britain) is a visit of state, and so it would be very strange if during a state visit the person who is invited to make a state visit is arrested,” he said.
Dawkins, a scientist and outspoken critic of religion, has asked human rights lawyers to examine whether charges could be brought against the pope during the September 16-19 trip.
The Vatican has rejected accusations the pope helped to cover up abuse by priests in jobs he held before his election in 2005 and has accused the media of waging a “despicable campaign of defamation” against him.
In Washington, the American Humanist Association, which advocates the rights of non-believers, backed Dawkins’ view that the pope should not have diplomatic immunity as a head of state and called for a “criminal investigation” of the church.
“Religious institutions should not be exempt from such scrutiny just because they are religious, and they should be held accountable for any criminal wrongdoing,” the AHA said in a statement.
The Vatican said last week that Benedict, who travels to Malta on Saturday, would be willing to meet more victims, as he had during his trips to the United States and Australia.
The pope feels that meetings with victims should take place “in a climate that is intentionally one of reflection, discreet, and not under pressure of the glare of the media, so he can have a real possibility to listen and communicate personally,” Lombardi said.
MALTESE MEN SUING PRIESTS
Ten Maltese men who are suing three priests for alleged child abuse have requested a private meeting with the pope.
Lombardi said he could not say if a meeting would take place. “I am not the one who decides what the pope does during his trips,” Lombardi said, adding that such meetings were not announced in advance but confirmed only after they take place.
A spokesman for the Maltese men said they wanted a meeting “to help us heal and to overcome this trauma”.
So far, the pope has not spoken out directly on the new wave of sexual abuse allegations that is besetting the Church in a number of countries, including the United States, Italy and his native Germany. He last spoke about it in a letter to the Irish people on March 20.
In Malta, which is about 95 percent Catholic, billboards publicising the papal visit were daubed last week with images related to sexual abuse.
The crisis over abuse of children by priests shows no sign of abating, with new revelations emerging almost daily and the Vatican scrambling to find a response strategy.
On Monday the Vatican published an online guide to rules for handling sex abuse charges against priests. It made clear high up that bishops must report crimes to the police, saying that “civil law concerning reporting of crimes to the appropriate authorities should always be followed”.
Also on Monday, a new report commissioned by the Church in Germany said children were “sadistically tormented and also sexually abused” at a Catholic monastery in the heavily Catholic Bavaria region.More than friendship? Big Brother’s Christmas Abbott says she has “no idea” what’s going on between her and Paul Abrahamian — but she’s willing to explore it.
“Yeah,” the 33-year-old exclusively tells Us Weekly whether she’s open to having a relationship with Abrahamian outside the house. “You’re spending 92 days with somebody and I think we had a real connection night one.”
Abbott never told the clothing designer, 24, how she felt as they competed on the CBS series, though. “We had a game to play,” she explains. “We developed a really true friendship and I think that it’s special in its own way. The Big Brother house is different from the real world so we haven’t talked, we haven’t seen each other, it’s been a whirlwind. I have no idea. There are things that were happening in life before and things that are happening in life after and who is to say. I’m coming out of the house without expectations so I have no idea.”
The Virginia native placed third on season 19, a triumph after breaking her foot early on when fellow houseguest Jason Dent landed on it during a piggyback ride. Abbott doesn’t regret returning to the show after getting surgery, even though she had to sit out during a couple of competitions.
Viral Stars of 2016
“Not at all, not one minute. There is no way and no how in my life I would ever regret that decision. If they had deemed it impossible for me to come back that would have been the most devastating thing that has happened to me,” she tells Us. “CBS and Big Brother believed in me enough to allow me to stay and there was no way that I was going to let them down or myself or my fanbase. To show that you can still persevere when you get a really sh-tty situation. You can still do well and make positive of life. And that’s not with just a broke foot — that’s with anything. Life is going to be sh-tty sometimes and it’s going to get even sh-ttier. It’s how you decide how to deal with it. I wanted to play Big Brother and I wanted to go as far as I possibly could. And unfortunately it wasn’t final two because I do believe that I would have won.”
In the end, Abbott’s BFF in the house, Josh Martinez, took Abrahamian to final two. She didn’t win any money, but she was the last woman standing.
“No pun intended!” Abbott says, laughing. “I didn’t even think about that honestly. I’m really proud of myself. I don’t think it |
ing our party requires a little more goodwill, a little less suspicion. So I’ll finish with a funny story.
Three years ago, Michael Meacher attacked Progress for being a ‘private company’ set up by a parliamentary researcher, which ‘publishes no details of any membership’. He asked the NEC to investigate us. It was an unfair criticism and the attack was hurtful, but it is quite amusing now Momentum is being formed as the successor to ‘Jeremy Corbyn Campaign 2015 (Supporters) Limited’, a private company with one member, Jon Lansman, who also happens to be Michael Meacher’s own parliamentary researcher.
Don’t worry, Jon. We won’t be asking the NEC to investigate you. This is the new, kinder politics in action.
Richard Angell is Director of ProgressCLOSE It's not clear if the murders of eight Ohio family members were drug-related, but authorities found marijuana grow operations at the crime scenes. VPC
Police tape is deployed across from the Union Hill Road exit off Route 32 at a crime scene perimeter, Friday, April 22, 2016, in Pike County, Ohio. (Photo11: John Minchillo, AP)
The killing of eight people in Ohio last week was "a pre-planned execution," the state's attorney general said Sunday, adding that police found marijuana growing operations at three of the crime scenes.
"They thought this thing through, whoever did it," said Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine.
He also made it clear that the execution-style murders weren't random or spontaneous.
“This is not the case where somebody got mad at someone else and shot them and there’s a witness, two witnesses,” he said.
Asked about the number of attackers, DeWine replied, “I don’t know if it’s a bad guy or bad guys. It could be one, two, three, four. I don’t think we know.”
DeWine's office earlier said it had completed collecting evidence at the four homes where the bodies were found near Piketon, 70 miles east of Cincinnati. Gov. John Kasich expressed confidence that authorities would nab the killer or killers, telling CBS News that "justice will be delivered."
The victims were identified as Hannah Gilley, 20, Christopher Rhoden Sr., 40, Christopher Rhoden Jr., 16, Clarence "Frankie" Rhoden, 20, Dana Rhoden, 37, Gary Rhoden, 38, Hanna Rhoden, 19, and Kenneth Rhoden, 44. All were shot in the head, some while in their bed. Three children, including a 4-day-old, survived the ordeal.
Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader on Sunday said law enforcement personnel were familiar with the family, but noted: “We have a small county. We are familiar with most people.”
Reader added, “I have never been involved with that family in a criminal nature, and I have been in law enforcement locally for 20 years.”
Scioto Valley Local School District Superintendent Todd Burkitt said every school district in Pike County committed to send counselors to Piketon High on Monday. They’ll stay as long as students need.
“We don’t have all the answers for this,” Burkitt said. “It’s by far the worst part of the job, when something happens to a kid. None of it makes sense.”
Restaurateur Jeff Ruby, owner of steakhouses in Cincinnati, Columbus and Louisville, Ky., offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to arrests. DeWine said dozens of interviews have been conducted, but no arrests had been made. DeWine said the killer or killers apparently targeted the family, lessening the immediate danger to the public.
"There's blood all over the house," a woman identified as "Bobby" told police in the initial, frantic 911 call after finding two of the bodies Friday morning.
"I think they are both dead," she said, sobbing. "It looks like some(one) beat the crap out of them, and I came in and they were laying on the floor."
Friends and family were struggling with the shock of the loss. Brittany Pettit, 15, was a freshman classmate of Christopher Rhoden Jr., the youngest victim, since first grade. She said they were in the same American government class at Piketon High, and they shared lunch and a study hall.
She said she'll miss his humor.
“He knew what to say to me, and he was always there for me," she said. "Chris is just an awesome person."
Twenty miles south of Piketon, Big Bear Lake Family Resort owner Robin Waddell has known the Rhoden family for decades, ever since Christopher Sr. started working at the resort — building decks or roofs, excavating, whatever needed done.
Waddell would hire the elder Chris Rhoden whenever he needed construction. He was good, Waddell said. He was reliable. He was a friend.
“It’s devastating that something like this could happen,” Waddell said. “And we don’t know what happened.”
Contributing: Greg Toppo, USA TODAY
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1SsnxlSOver the past weeks and months, Glenn Beck has been making dire predictions about what will happen to America if the Supreme Court legalizes same-sex marriage nationwide, even while claiming to personally support LGBT rights. Now that his nightmare has become reality Beck was at it again Friday morning.
“This is going to change everything. They have now changed the definition of marriage,” Beck said on his radio show. “That’s not really what I’m concerned about. I am concerned about now, what this means to you, if you believe in traditional marriage.”
For today, Beck was willing to celebrate the country’s ability to be “tolerant” of same-sex couples. “But by tomorrow, and the coming days, you will see that that is not what this is going to mean,” he said, predicting that LGBT Americans won’t “stop” at marriage, but will instead move on to infringing on the rights of everyone else.
“You said this is about love, you said this is about who you love,” he continued. “Is it? Because now it must stop. Now you’re on equal footing. Now are you going to say, ‘I want to crush you and your rights?’ And that is what’s coming. Our churches had better wake up, because game is on now.”
Watch video below, via TheBlaze:
[Photo via screengrab]
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Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comVideo: Watch the first footage of the ovulation of a human egg
Following the publication last week of the best ever photos of the ovulation of a human egg, we now go, Fantastic Voyage-like, to the first video footage of the moment itself.
To record the sequence, Stephan Gordts and Ivo Brosens of the Leuven Institute for Fertility & Embryology in Belgium performed transvaginal laparoscopy, which involves making a small cut in the vaginal wall and observing the ovary with an endoscope.
“This allows us direct access to and observation of the tubo-ovarian structures without manipulation using forceps,” says Gordts.
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For the photos of ovulation, which only accidentally captured the critical moment, Jacques Donnez at the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL) in Brussels, Belgium, used gas to distend the organs for photography. However, Gordts and Brosens planned the procedure to coincide with ovulation and used saline solution to “float” the structures.
Perfect timing
Observation was timed for the day of the peak of the patient’s luteal hormone cycle. Ovulation was predicted to occur on the evening of the day of the LH peak, and the endoscope introduced at 6 pm.
A small amount of saline was used to float the opening of the fallopian tube, its fimbriae (the “fingers” that sweep the egg into the tube) and the ovary itself. This gives a more natural appearance than gas, says Gordts.
In the video, the fimbriae can be seen sweeping in time with the patient’s heartbeat. A mucus plug can be seen protruding from the ovary – this contains the egg.
“The ovum is not captured ‘naked’,” says Gordts. “There is no eruption like a volcano.”
Gordts says that in clinical practice it is not easy to organise the observation of ovulation. “We were probably lucky to be successful at our first attempt,” he says.There should be video review for one thing and one thing only in the NHL -- and that is whether or not the puck fully crossed the goal line. Offside reviews are hurting the game.
NASHVILLE – Some final thoughts from a Stanley Cup final that was one of the weirdest in recent memory:
♦In Game 1 of the Stanley Cup final, the Nashville Predators had a potential 1-0 lead wiped out because Filip Forsberg’s DNA was offside 16 seconds before the goal, a goal that came off a turnover by the Pittsburgh Penguins.
In Game 6 of the Stanley Cup final, the Nashville Predators had a potential 1-0 goal wiped out because referee Kevin Pollock prematurely blew the whistle on a puck that Pittsburgh Penguins goalie Matt Murray never had before Colton Sissons poked in the rebound.
We’ll never know how the final would have been impacted if both those situations were reversed, but we do know those two examples are a clear indication of the failings of video replay in the NHL. The Sissons called-back goal was not even reviewed because it couldn’t be reviewed. The same league that insists that a toenail being offside is still offside and those are the rules is the same one that prevents an egregious error by a referee to not be corrected. There’s likely nobody in the world who feels worse about all this than Pollock, a good referee and a good person who made an honest mistake. If the league had allowed for a play like this to be reviewed, Pollock would not have been left hung out to dry.
This is a league that almost never thinks of the unintended consequences when it governs the game. Matt Duchene is 10 feet offside and scores a goal? Well, then we have to implement video replay for all offsides, regardless of how long before the goal they occurred and how close they are. The fact is, the Pollock mistake should not be reviewable. But neither should chintzy offside plays.
The more I see of video review in the NHL, the more I believe it’s a boondoggle. There should be video review for one thing and one thing only. And that is whether or not the puck fully crossed the goal line. This is a game played and officiated by human beings who sometimes make mistakes.
♦The more I think about it, the more I believe the best choice for the Conn Smythe Trophy would have been Pittsburgh’s goaltending tandem of Matt Murray and Marc-Andre Fleury. The fact is, Fleury got the Penguins to the final. There’s no way they win Game 7 of the second round against the Washington Capitals without him. And all Murray did was steal the first two wins of the final for the Penguins when his team was badly outplayed, then register shutouts in his team’s last two wins of the final.
Sidney Crosby was a solid choice and Evgeni Malkin would have been just as stellar. But the Penguins, who were routinely outshot and whose possession game in the playoffs was sub-par, won on the strength of their goaltending. It’s interesting to note after I wrote a blog about the possibility of awarding the Conn Smythe to both Murray and Fleury, the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association asked the league for clarification on that issue and was told that any dual entries would be treated as spoiled ballots.
♦P.K. Subban is an otherworldly talent with a dynamic on- and off-ice personality who could be the future face of the NHL. But he will continue to be a polarizing figure – both league-wide and in his own dressing room – unless he figures out that it’s not always about him.
This Listerine debacle is the most current example of how, like ‘Manny being Manny’ with the Boston Red Sox, P.K. being P.K. can sometimes lead down a path that does not end well. The fact that Subban ranged somewhere between gilding the lily and outright shoveling horse manure when it came to Crosby saying he had bad breath is only part of the issue. What a lot of people forget is that those comments came after Game 3, a game in which the Predators dominated, their fans were engaged like never before and goalie Pekka Rinne found his game. Instead of talking about his team, Subban decided to make it about himself.
That led to days of inane chatter, followed by the Predators finally putting an end to the whole thing by not making Subban available for three straight days. Even the league pleaded with the Predators to make Subban available after the morning skate prior to Game 6, but the Predators were having none of this circus and you really can’t blame them.
So, largely because Subban dug a hole out of which he couldn’t extricate himself, he was put under radio silence for three days during one of the NHL’s signature events. That does nothing for the league or for Subban’s brand.
♦One last word on the officiating in the Stanley Cup final. It was brutal, not because the on-ice officials are incompetent, but because they’re guided by a league where the culture is so out of whack that it clouds their judgment.
These are the best referees in the world, which is why they’ve been selected to do the final in the first place. As we saw with Pollock, they sometimes make mistakes. You can live with those. What is so infuriating is seeing James Neal get crosschecked eight times and slewfooted by Ian Cole right in front of the referee without a penalty being called, or watching Crosby drill Subban’s head into the ice a half-dozen times with Brad Meier looking over the two players and calling coincidental minors.
I can’t begin to count the number of people with whom I corresponded on social media who were utterly turned off by the inconsistency in the officiating, particularly during the playoffs.The animal characters Walt Kelly created for his classic newspaper comic strip
were known for their seemingly simplistic, but slyly perceptive comments about the state of the world and politics.
None is more remembered than Pogo the ‘possum’s quote in the poster Kelly designed to help promote environmental awareness and publicize the first annual observance of Earth Day, held on April 22, 1970 :
“WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND HE IS US.”
In the poster, under the quote, Pogo is seen holding a litter pick-up stick and a burlap bag.
He appears to be getting ready to start cleaning up the garbage humans have strewn over Okefenokee Swamp, the part of the planet where he lives.
Kelly used the line again in the Pogo strip published on the second Earth Day in 1971.
The words poignantly highlight a key concept of environmental stewardship: we all share part of the responsibility for the trashing of planet Earth, so we should all do our share to help clean it up.
Pogo’s quip was a pun based on the famous quotation “We have met the enemy and they are ours” — one of two famous quotes made by American Navy Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry on September 10, 1813, after defeating a British naval squadron on Lake Erie during the War of 1812. (Perry’s other famous quote that day was “Don’t give up the ship.” )
used a version of the quote in the foreword to his 1953 book The Pogo Papers, but it was not as pithy or memorable as the line he coined for Earth Day.
Today, the environmental issues we face today are clearly daunting.
However, since the first Earth Day in 1970 many environmental battles have been won and there has been notable progress in addressing problems that seemed quite daunting in the past.
Back then, for example, it was perfectly legal to dump untreated sewage and industrial waste into local waterways or turn irreplaceable natural areas like Okefenokee Swamp into toxic waste dumps.
Indeed, the types and levels of pollutants and environmental damage allowed in 1970 now seem shocking in retrospect.
Current environmental laws are much stronger. And, with some notable exceptions (like worldwide carbon dioxide emissions), most types of water and air pollution have been significantly reduced during the past four decades.
That is due in part to the grassroots environmental movement which was symbolically launched and celebrated by the first Earth Day.
Walt Kelly died in 1973, just three years after his Earth Day poster was published.
The quote used as the poster’s headline is still famous today — and the concept embodied in the poster still holds true.
We can’t just blame the big bad corporations for the environmental problems we face. Most of the time, they are just giving us what we “demand” as consumers at a cost we are willing to pay, and abiding by laws created by politicians we elect.
We all need to our own small part, as consumers and voters. If we do, we can collectively have a significant impact on addressing the environmental problems that threaten our local communities, our country and “Spaceship Earth.”
* * * * * * * * * *
Comments? Corrections? Post them on the Famous Quotations Facebook page.It has been nearly two weeks since the Atlanta Hawks sent rookie point guard and 2013 1st-round pick Dennis Schröder to their D-League affiliate in Bakersfield, but according to one report, he’s on his way back to Atlanta.
Hawks recall rookie Dennis Schroder from D-League (free). http://t.co/uFKSNRnsRz#ATLHawks — Chris Vivlamore (@ajchawks) December 16, 2013
Schröder showed flashes of what made him a high draft pick while in the “exile” of the D-League, putting up 17 points and 6.7 assists per game, but his trip to the West Coast was seemingly more about getting some more playing time. The German point guard played a ton, 34 minutes per night to be exact, and that should give him some valuable experience at this high level.
Coming into the year, it seemed as if Schröder was slated to be the #1 backup to potential all-star Jeff Teague at the point guard spot for the Hawks, but he struggled mightily at times when asked to captain the team’s new offense. He was quickly passed on the depth chart by Shelvin Mack, and when Lou Williams returned from an ACL tear, it was clear that Schröder was the odd man out in terms of playing time.
Despite that, you never want to see a team have to jettison a 1st-round pick that early, and it’s big for the Hawks to see him back in Atlanta.One-year-old child instructed by mother and her boyfriend to say ‘pow’ as he puts 40-caliber handgun in mouth in video found on cellphone
Police in Evansville, Indiana, arrested the the mother of a one-year-old baby and her boyfriend after they discovered a video of the child playing with a 40-caliber handgun, police said in a statement.
Police found the video on a cellphone owned by Michael Barnes, a 19-year-old robbery suspect who was arrested on Thursday night after selling a handgun to an undercover officer. Police said they searched Barnes’ phone after his arrest and found the video, which shows the child playing with the weapon. The boy is seen putting the muzzle in his mouth as Barnes instructs the child to say “pow”.
Police said they determined that Barnes’ girlfriend, Toni Wilson, 22, was present while Barnes filmed the boy playing with the gun. Police said that when they questioned the woman on Friday, she claimed the weapon shown in the video was a pellet gun.
The child and his two half-siblings, one-month-old twins, were placed in emergency care by police. Barnes and Wilson were arrested.
Both face charges of child neglect, criminal recklessness with a deadly weapon and allowing a child to possess a firearm. Barnes is also facing charges of resisting arrest with a weapon, carrying a handgun without a permit and carrying a handgun without a permit within 500ft of a school.Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
March 21, 2016, 6:01 PM GMT / Updated March 21, 2016, 6:01 PM GMT By Andrew Blankstein
She left behind 60 pounds of cocaine — and her Gucci shoes.
Investigators are looking for a flight attendant who bolted from Los Angeles International Airport as her carry-on bags — which were loaded with drugs — were about to be inspected, authorities told NBC News.
The drama unfolded Friday night when the woman showed up for a flight, law-enforcement sources familiar with the incident said.
Authorities are looking for a flight attendant who was subject to a random search that turned up approximately 60 pounds of cocaine in two carry-on roller bags, authorities told NBC News. Los Angeles Airport Police
Flight attendants and other crew members are not normally subjected to searches. But the suspect was pulled aside by Transportation Security Administration officers for a random screening in Terminal 4, the sources said.
The woman, who was not identified, appeared nervous and made a cellphone call in a language not recognized by officers, authorities told NBC News. She was then taken aside to a secondary screening area and asked for her employee identification.
Suddenly, she bolted from the screening location, running with her bags toward an escalator, authorities said. She jettisoned the luggage and her designer shoes and fled the terminal.
The incident was captured on video, which has not been released, and the drugs were booked into evidence. Los Angeles Airport Police, the LAPD and the Drug Enforcement Administration are investigating.When Congress passed a law in 2009 effectively banning mail-order deliveries of cigarettes, it was expected to snuff out entrepreneurs on New York’s Indian reservations who were selling millions of cartons, tax-free, to consumers in high-tax states.
But the law, called the Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking Act, didn’t stop everybody.
As recently as last spring, one group of about 20 website operators on Seneca Nation territory was still delivering 1.7 tons of untaxed cigarettes a week to destinations around the U.S., according to shipping records obtained by lawyers for New York City as part of a civil racketeering lawsuit.
The city’s efforts are part of a wider legal battle involving the ability of states to tax cigarettes sold on Indian reservations, where tribal leaders have long maintained that the state has no authority to tax anything sold on their territory.
Depositions and court documents show that after the new law barred anyone from shipping cigarettes through the Postal Service, and major delivery companies like FedEx and UPS separately agreed to end deliveries, some reservation-based distributors simply turned to new networks of logistics and shipping companies to reach their customers.
Buyers still weren’t required to pay taxes. Some sites never asked buyers to prove their age, or even provide a real name. A few retailers proudly advertised that they would help protect tax scofflaws.
“NO STATE TAXES, NO REPORTS to anyone EVER and NO Surprise Tax Bills,” boasted one site, Nativeblend.net. “The USA Federal PACT Act is in effect, but we beat it legally.”
New York City took the unusual step last month of suing a Virginia-based delivery company, Lasership Inc., that had helped the reservation shops deliver cigarettes into the city without charging consumers the required tax of $5.85 per pack. The suit seeks $80.6 million in penalties.
That suit followed an earlier one against a Buffalo company, Regional Integrated Logistics, that helped a consortium of Seneca businesses set up a new distribution network after the PACT act took effect in July of 2010.
“We want to make it clear to the entire shipping community that anyone who participates in these illegal delivery sales into New York City will be subject to liabilities,” said Aaron Bloom, one of the attorneys handling the case for New York City’s Law Department.
Paul Joyce, a lawyer for Regional Integrated Logistics, said the company “never knowingly violated any law” and had stopped all cigarette deliveries permanently in response to a court injunction last spring. A lawyer for Lasership declined to comment.
Those two lawsuits were the latest in a string that have left the once-booming reservation cigarette businesses reeling, and questioning their future.
Just a few years ago, an estimated 170 cigarette distributors on New York’s reservations were collectively purchasing many millions of cartons of name-brand cigarettes each year from state-licensed wholesalers, then reselling them to buyers eager to avoid sky-high taxes.
But that flow of branded cigarettes such as Newport and Marlboro largely stopped after an earlier round of litigation and a change in state policy forced licensed wholesalers to halt sales of untaxed cigarettes to tribal businesses.
Reservation businesses switched to selling “native” brands manufactured in Indian territory, which curtailed demand. And now even those sales are under attack.
“They are giving us no room, as a people, to move,” said Ross John, who sits on a Seneca Nation economic development council and also owns a rapidly shrinking business in untaxed cigarettes. “They just keep punching us around.”
Pennsylvania’s attorney general sued a Seneca cigarette dealership in Salamanca, N.Y., in June, alleging that it had concocted a scheme that allowed that state’s residents to evade taxes by ordering cartons through a “buyer’s club.”
Late last year, New York’s attorney general sued an upstate business, Native Wholesale Supply, claiming the company and an affiliated manufacturer of Seneca brand cigarettes in Canada were breaking the law by shipping vast amounts of untaxed cigarettes to warehouses on Indian territory in the U.S.
The suit claimed that in one 15-month period ending last February, Native Wholesale Supply illegally received $221 million worth of cigarettes from Grand River Enterprises Six Nations, located in Ohsweken, Ontario. Investigators estimated that at least 1.5 billion cigarettes were involved in the transactions.
A lawyer for Native Wholesale supply, which has also been sued by state officials in Idaho and Oklahoma for supplying banned cigarettes to local tribes, didn’t return phone and email messages.
In addition to those civil cases, federal prosecutors in Kansas City, Mo., brought charges in August against 18 people they said had conspired to deliver 620,000 cartons of untaxed cigarettes to cigarette dealers on reservations in western New York. Businessmen in Florida, Kansas, Missouri, Virginia, Nebraska, Washington and Montreal were charged in the case, which involved $17 million worth of cigarettes purchased from a warehouse run by undercover ATF agents.
Lawyers for many of those defendants declined to comment or didn’t return several messages. But an attorney for Keith Stoldt, who operated the Totem Pole Smoke Shop on the Tonawanda Seneca Indian Reservation in Basom, N.Y., and pleaded guilty this year to illegally acquiring $4.1 million in untaxed cigarettes, said the cases are complicated by centuries-old disputes over taxation and sovereignty.
“These guys were here first. They have continuously owned and occupied their patch of heaven. They’ve never accepted citizenship,” said Brad Waterman, a former tax counsel to both the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe and the Seneca Nation. “What the Iroquois people would tell you is, ‘We traded with each other a long time before any of you guys got here.'”
John, the Seneca entrepreneur, said that cigarettes had created a new class of entrepreneurs among a people who had been impoverished for generations, but that he wouldn’t count on tobacco being part of the tribe’s economic solution for much longer.
“They’ve made it very difficult for anyone to supply to you,” he said. “I’m not in a position where it’s even viable for me right now. They’ve turned it into a criminal activity.”Yes finally I have a HoloLens device (thank you IdentityMine for footing the bill and facilitating the purchase). Even though IdentityMine has a long history of 3D development, and we have been working with HoloLens devices for the past few months in collaboration with Microsoft, so far my inputs have been limited to helping the team brainstorm concepts, test the apps, give feedback, and help with some presales activities. In the contrary of some of my colleagues, I am not a 3D developer yet, and I am eager to learn.
Here are a few notes I took during the learning stages. I am sure that many of you are in the same boat as I am, and these may come handy if you want to progress with HoloLens and Unity3D development.
A few preliminaries
As I mentioned, IdentityMine has been developing for HoloLens for a while now. You can see a session that my esteemed colleague Rene Schulte and I gave at the recent Build 2016 conference about an application that we built.
Even though you can code HoloLens applications with any 3D framework that supports Direct3D, the consensus these days (and the solution that Microsoft recommends) is to use Unity. This is a middleware (meaning that this is a set of APIs that will create code that then runs on a number of platforms, including HoloLens).
Rene Schulte has a very good blog post with recommendations. You should probably read it too!
Charging the device
You would think that charging the device is trivial! Well in fact… it charges with a micro-USB cable similar to what you use for your mobile phone (except if you have the latest generation which uses USB-C). Like for mobile phones, there are two kinds of cables: Charging only, and Charging+Data. Whichever you use, make sure that you test your cables and use the ones which charge the fastest. When testing cables to charge my mobile phones, I found huge discrepancies (some cables charge up too 3-4 times faster than others). A good choice is to use the cable and charger which come with the HoloLens device itself!
With a full charge you will be able to use the device for a few hours. I didn’t time it really, but when learning to code, I leave the device on and use it on and off for a whole evening without needing to charge. You can then charge it overnight, which is very convenient (it takes a while to get a full charge, so plan accordingly!).
Calibrating
Before you start using the device, you need to calibrate it. This is important so that your eyes can focus properly on the holograms. The Calibration app takes a couple of minutes to execute. The very first time you start the device, you will also get a tutorial about gestures. Later on, the Learn Gestures app can be started separately. Probably a good idea to run through this basic information! Note that you can modify and retrieve the Interpupillary distance (IPD) from the Device Portal (see below). This is an important value for a good experience!
Using apps
What better way to get started than to use apps! For a first try, the Holograms app (preinstalled) is cool: It allows you to place holograms anywhere in the room, and observe them from diverse angles. There are even some video holograms. It’s a good idea to use this app to learn to interact with the menus. Note that you will need an internet connection for this app to work!
In addition to the preinstalled apps, you have a choice of apps developed specifically for HoloLens in the store. I like the HoloTour, which gives you a guided tour of Rome and a high plateau in Peru. I hope we will see more content coming soon! Also available are games like Young Conker and Roboraid. Another app named Holo Anatomy will teach you about the human body. While HoloTour, Young Conker and Roboraid are what I would call full blown apps, Holo Anatomy is more of a proof of concept. Still cool to try!
Make sure to try the Fragments game too! It is probably the most compelling holographic experience at the moment, and integrates very nicely with the room you are in! One of the character was seen sitting on my office chair for example!!
There is also a great app developed on suggestions from the users’ community, called Galaxy Explorer. This app is available as source code on Github and you need to build it. See below in the “Learning to code” section.
You can also install 2D universal apps for Windows 10. Any UWP app should run fine though some (like Skype) have been customized for the HoloLens device. I installed OneDrive (which allows me to watch videos stored in the cloud), Groove Music (which lets me stream music from my OneDrive), Cast (a great universal podcast app which synchronizes content between all Windows 10 devices) and a few more.
Unfortunately I cannot find a way to download and save a file on the device, so for now the only media you can consume is online streamed media. This is OK but I hope we’ll be able to get some media on the drive for offline consumption at some point.
Here are a few screenshots. Note that some are a screen grab of the portal videostream so the quality is not great, but they are just illustrating the point. The actual quality is much better!
The game “Fragments” is one of the most impressive HoloLens experiences at the moment.
Groove Music and Skype pinned to my home office wall
On a HoloSkype call with my colleague Rene. We both can draw on the scene (him in green and me in blue).
Finding your device’s IP address
In many occasions you will need your device’s IP address. To do this, wear the device, and then say “Hey Cortana”. After Cortana shows up and you hear the sound meaning that she is listening, ask “What is my IP address”. It will show up. Alternatively, you can open the Settings app, and then navigate to Network & Internet, Wi-Fi, Advanced Options and write down the IPv4 address. Note that you can also find it using your Router’s configuration menu, if you have access to it. It might be a good idea to configure your router to always use the same IP address for the device.
Using the device portal or the app
The device portal is a must-try. To open it is quite easy: First you need to find your device’s IP address (see above). Then you can enter this IP address in a web browser (ignore warnings about invalid security certificate), and it will connect to your device which acts as a web server. Note that on some networks, this will be prevented to work so make sure that the network you use is open to this.
Alternatively, you can try the HoloLens app available here. The cool thing is that it is a universal app, and so you can also let it run on a Windows 10 mobile phone. UWP FTW!!
The web portal lets you do the following operations:
Checking the device status and other information such as device name and Windows version, online status, temperature, battery level etc
Checking the device status and other information such as device name and Windows version, online status, temperature, battery level etc Check your interpupillary distance (IPD) and modify this value
Change sleep settings. I recommend setting a high enough value so the device doesn’t go to sleep while you are coding, which can cause deployment to fail!
See in real time (almost) what the user is seeing. This is called Mixed Reality Capture (MRC). It even lets you make videos and take pictures (which include the holograms!). Note however that there is a lag of a couple of seconds between what the user sees and what is shown on the screen. Also, the screen refresh rate will drop to 30 FPS while the MRC is active (instead of ideally 60FPS). If you have fast animations, this can be a little disconcerting.
See the list of processes running on the device and getting performance information.
Seeing a list of installed apps and providing some management tools. You can even side load an app from this page.
Getting crash information.
Forcing the device to run in kiosk mode (i.e. disabling the start menu, disabling Cortana and hiding pinned applications). Great for demos!
Logging
Simulating rooms: You can take a capture of a given room and save it. Then you can pass this recording to another developer, who can use this page to load it to his device. Great when you need to test an app in some specific room conditions.
Networking settings and information such as device IP, MAC address etc
Virtual input, allowing the developer to simulate keyboard input. Note however that you can simply use a bluetooth keyboard if you want to easily enter text.
The universal app seems to show the live stream with less lag. Definitely worth a try!
Taking screenshots and videos
You can take screenshots and videos of what you see in two different ways. Note however that the resolution of the screenshots and the videos is not going to be as good as the real thing, because they downplay the device resolution when screen capture is on.
Using the device portal
If you are an operator for someone else trying the headset, launch the device portal (see above) and navigate to the Mixed Reality Capture section. You will see buttons allowing you to record, take photo or even see the live stream (with a few seconds delay).
Using Cortana
More spontaneously, if you are in a great experience on HoloLens and want to share with the world, you can take a screenshot by saying “Hey Cortana” and then “Take a picture”. Similarly, for videos, say “Hey Cortana” and then “Take a video”. When you are done filming, say “Hey Cortana” and then “Stop video”. This takes a bit of exercise to get right, so make sure to train before you do it for real. The pictures and videos will then show up in the Photos application on the device, as well as in the Device Portal, where they can be downloaded from.
Letting people try the HoloLens
For a better experience, you should always get a new user’s Interpupillary distance IPD! Use the Calibration app to do that. Alternatively, there are some devices one can purchase, but they require some know how so make sure to learn how to use them. Once a user’s IPD has been determined, you can always modify it or retrieve it from the Device Portal (see above).
One thing I noticed after letting a few “newbies” try it out: The “tap” gesture is not as easy as it sounds. A good friend never got it right. So in addition to the calibration, it is interesting to get some time to do the Learn Gestures applications too. At first it is a bit hard to guide them to start the Calibration application. What I did to help is this:
Connect the UWP app to the device and observe what they are seeing. Sure it drops the frame rate but it is really helpful to know what they are currently seeing, in the beginning.
You can do some gestures for them. Simply |
criticized by his opponents with the Vision Vancouver party. Today, however, the Downtown Eastside’s prescription-heroin program has the support of B.C.'s health minister and Mayor Gregor Robertson (the leader of Vision Vancouver).
Sullivan said that for more than 20 years, he’s believed that many of the harms associated with addictions to hard drugs could be alleviated by legalizing and regulating those substances.
“I do believe that we would solve a lot of problems,” he said. "Legalization with strict regulation."
Sullivan placed the idea in the context of B.C.’s overdose epidemic. Last year, 914 people in B.C. died of an illicit-drug overdose. The synthetic opioid fentanyl was detected in about 60 percent of those deaths.
“It’s just so hard to think about 900 people, British Columbians, who are no longer with us,” Sullivan said.
Asked what difference he thought it could have made if drugs were legal, Sullivan replied: “Most of those people would probably be alive right now.
“When you have a product that is regulated and when people know what is in it, that will be safer for everybody,” he explained.
Sullivan said he’d like to see more debate on the subject of legalization. He’s far from alone in making that call.
On February 8, the Straight reported that Dr. Hedy Fry, the Liberal MP for Vancouver Centre, said the same.
“This is the discourse that we must have now,” Fry said. “Nobody is ramming anything down anybody’s throats. I’m not saying, ‘Let’s legalize.’ But I am saying, ‘It’s time we discussed this, openly and publicly.’ ”
The previous month, the Straight reported that Don Davies, the NDP MP for Vancouver Kingsway and Opposition health critic, similarly said he wants an open debate about legalizing hard drugs in response to the fentanyl crisis.
“I think we are at the point, as a country, where we can start opening a dialogue about finding a better method of distributing drugs, legally, to those who are addicted to them, so that we can avoid the unnecessary death, destruction, and crime that is so clearly associated with the current model [prohibition],” Davies said. “I am in favour of starting that dialogue.”
TRAVIS LUPICK / B.C. CORONERS SERVICE
The Straight first asked Sullivan for his views on legalization at a February 7 press conference where he appeared alongside B.C. health minister Terry Lake. Sullivan declined to answer the question. The minister then jumped in.
"I have my own personal thoughts about legalization, but what I am saying is we need to progress slowly," Lake said. "We have to have a discussion as a Canadian society. And that discussion is going on and it is being led right here in British Columbia. But we need evidence to support changes in policy."
In his subequent telephone interview with the Straight, Sullivan described the arrival of fentanyl as a “game changer”. He added that in this crisis, there is an opportunity to jump-start an overdue debate on drug-law reform.
“Public attention is here,” he said. “Will we use that for good?”Donald Trump and Secret Societies: Did The Republican Nominee Fund the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA)
D.O. Deadswitch Blocked Unblock Follow Following Aug 2, 2016
(Photo credit wonkette.com)
Is Pedophilia a Bridge Too Far For Even the Most Enthusiastic “Trump-eter”?
It has not been an easy run for the Donald these past few days.
His ongoing feud with the Gold Star Family of a marine who died in the Iraq war, his slumping poll numbers in swing states, prominent figures in his own party distancing themselves from his more recent statements show some cracks forming in his unbreakable smile. Piling on top of this are the recurrence of rumors from several years ago questioning the candidate’s ties to The North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA).
NAMBLA members protesting in 1982 (Photo credit NAMBLA.org)
What is NAMBLA?
NAMBLA is a rather nefarious organization with the stated goal of “..work[ing] to abolish age-of-consent laws criminalizing adult sexual involvement with minors and campaigns for the release of men who have been jailed for sexual contacts with minors that did not involve coercion”. The introduction of many Americans to this secret society was the 2000 episode of the comedy central show South Park, they are a very real organization. In the late 90’s before their meetings went online, they were one of the largest pro-pedophile organizations. Since then, their numbers have dwindled as more members have joined online pro-pedophilia groups. In 2005, they were listed as operating out of Trump’s hometown.
Screengrab of interview with KKK leadership endorsing Trump (full interview at http://www.nbc12.com/story/31846257/kkk-leader-disavows-violent-past-declares-trump-best-for-president)
This would not be the first time that Trump has been supported by a society with secret members. Several white nationalist groups including the Klu Klux Klan (KKK) proudly support him, and he has done little to distance himself from hate crimes committed in his name. This has led to a former grand wizard of the KKK David Duke to feel comfortable enough to run for the United States senate in his home state of Louisiana, stating “[Trump has] made it OK to talk about these incredible concerns of European Americans today, because I think European Americans know they are the only group that can’t defend their own essential interests and their point of view”. Trump and Duke have had a very public history going back to 1991, although earlier this year in an interview Trump stated “I know nothing about David Duke”. Which he then attempted to backpedal from in subsequent interviews. Given the “wink and nod” relationship that Trump has enjoyed with these secret societies (their votes for his tacit support of their political views), these latest allegations may cause even the most hardline “Trump-eter” to question supporting such a candidate.
Allegations of Trump’s Pedophilia go as far back as 1994
For many people Trump’s involvement with underage sexual partners was first brought to their attention in June of this year when a lawsuit filed by a Jane Doe accused the Republican Presidential Nominee of raping her in 1994, when she was only 13. However, in 2011 an article was published outlining the gift of $5000 given to Nevada Senator Harry Reid by the candidate, mere days after Trump’s arrest on suspicion of having sex with an unidentified twelve year old boy in the owner’s suite of Trump’s Las Vegas hotel and casino. Since the publication of this article there have been rumors online about Trump’s relationship with NAMBLA.
Trump’s longtime friend and ally Roger Ailes has recently been forced to step down as the head of Fox News on multiple charges of sexual harassment and sexual misconduct. It does not seem to be a coincidence that these rumors have gained footing in the days following Ailes’ departure. Some argue that without the head of a major network to suppress these rumors more of Trump’s victims may come forward, and confirmation of these rumors may be forthcoming.
Trump’s alleged financial support of NAMBLA ranges up to millions over the course of decades.
In July, rumors have been circulating in various political forums, alleging that Trump has donated varying amounts from hundreds to millions of dollars over the course of years up to decades. Given the temper of the candidate and the violence of his supporters, all parties involved are very careful to state that these are still just rumors at the time of this writing. However, the number of questions and allegations has increased so rapidly in the past several days that a public statement being released that “people are questioning Donald Trump’s ties to NAMBLA. A lot of people are saying that he has donated money to NAMBLA, and that the reason he has not released his tax returns is that they will show tax deductible contributions to it”. The leaders also asked that reporters and curious minds stop contacting them until a determination on the validity of the allegations can be made.
In an uncharacteristic move, Trump’s campaign has refused to either confirm or deny his donations supporting NAMBLA at the time of this writing. Given the candidates history of issuing public statements over much less this has only fueled the rumors. On a popular site where “Trump-eters” discuss policy and the campaign, there are vehement defenses of the candidate, but no denial of the allegations, and questioners frequently find their posts deleted or replied to with personal attacks. This has led more conspiracy minded persons to the theory that Trump staffer’s are actively trying to suppress this rumor. As of the time of this writing, no statement has been issued confirming or denying these allegations.
Author’s note:
Due to the overwhelming response in such a short time, follow up articles are currently being drafted. If you, or anyone you know has information on this subject please contact me. Your anonymity will be protected to the best of my ability if you are used as a source. Due to the incredibly aggressive response by certain individuals your story will have to be verifiable. Even though this is not an official news site, I will try to maintain the level of factual reporting moving forward.
America is great.That's the word from the Kaiser analysis, which examined the impact if a Romney-Ryan style voucher plan was implemented today. (Note that Romney's premium support proposal only applies to future Medicare beneficiaries, those now 55 or younger.) As Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post explained:
What Kaiser did was pretty simple. Its researchers modeled what would happen if seniors received a set amount from the government to pay for their Medicare benefits. That check would be equal to second-lowest bid from a private, Medicare Advantage plan. That's the same benchmark used in the Ryan Budget, Romney-Ryan proposal and the Domenici-Rivlin proposal. That was step one. Step two was looking at whether that check would cover the cost of providing Medicare benefits under the traditional or private plans, in a given area. For 59 percent of seniors, it wouldn't: 25 million seniors would pay more for their current benefits if the government enacted this premium support model right now.
But that figure understates how the pain of Romney's Medicare gambit would be felt geographically.
While nationwide 27 percent of seniors would face monthly premium increases of $100 or more, in high-cost states like Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts and New Jersey the figure tops 90 percent (see map above).
If the Kaiser study helped answer how many American seniors would pay more for health insurance under Romney and Ryan, the Congressional Budget Office explained how much.
In the spring of 2011, 235 House Republicans and 40 GOP senators voted for the Paul Ryan budget and its plan to completely replace Medicare with an under-funded voucher for each senior to purchase private insurance. The CBO calculated just how under-funded; by 2030, the Ryan's budget would dramatically shift health care costs to seniors, leaving each on average with 68 percent of the tab and an extra $6,500 in annual premiums.
Those horrible numbers led to Ryancare 2.0. The 2012 version of his Medicare overhaul maintained traditional Medicare as a "public option" in the new Ryan budget blessed by 98 percent of Congressional Republicans. While it did not earn the vote of Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, it did earn the backing of Mitt Romney. Romney didn't just merely proclaim in his 59-point, 162-page "Believe in America" manifesto that "the plan put forward by Congressman Paul Ryan makes important strides in the right direction" after having declared he would have signed the 2011 version if it crossed his desk. This August, Romney announced their plans are "close to identical." A quick glance at his website confirms that judgment:
"Traditional" fee-for-service Medicare will be offered by the government as an insurance plan, meaning that seniors can purchase that form of coverage if they prefer it; however, if it costs the government more to provide that service than it costs private plans to offer their versions, then the premiums charged by the government will have to be higher and seniors will have to pay the difference to enroll in the traditional Medicare option."
Nevertheless, the Congressional Budget Office (see chart above) this spring similarly concluded the newer Ryan plan endorsed by candidate Romney will still result in significant cost shifting to seniors. Looking at the CBO's March 2012 assessment of the new House GOP budget, Think Progress explained why version 2.0 of Ryan's voucher program was little better than the first:
Beginning in 2023, the guaranteed Medicare benefit would be transformed into a government-financed "premium support" system. Seniors currently under the age of 55 could use their government contribution to purchase insurance from an exchange of private plans or--unlike Ryan's original budget--traditional fee-for-service Medicare... But the budget does not take sufficient precautions to prevent insurers from cherry-picking the healthiest beneficiaries from traditional Medicare and leaving sicker applicants to the government. As a result, traditional Medicare costs could skyrocket, forcing even more seniors out of the government program. The budget also adopts a per capita cost cap of GDP growth plus 0.5 percent, without specifying how it would enforce it. This makes it likely that the cap would limit the government contribution provided to beneficiaries and since the proposed growth rate is much slower than the projected growth in health care costs, CBO estimates that new beneficiaries could pay up to $2,200 more by 2030 and up to $8,000 more by 2050. Finally, the budget would also raise Medicare's age of eligibility to 67.
But it's not just the next generation of American elderly who will feel the sting of the Romney-Ryan reforms. During the first presidential debate, Romney denied he is "proposing any changes for any current retirees or near retirees." That simply is not true. His call to repeal Obamacare would take away free preventative care now part of Medicare, including cancer screenings, mammograms and other services received by 18 million Americans in the first seven months of 2012 alone. Even more costly to our parents and grandparents, Romney would reopen the "donut hole" in the Medicare prescription drug program. That change alone saved 5.4 million seniors over $4.1 billion last year.)
But the Republicans' attack on today's elderly doesn't end there. The Romney-Ryan ticket has proposed slashing Medicaid by a third over the next decade and turning over the reduced funds to the states in the form of block grants. Combined with the repeal of Obamacare, Romney's gutting of Medicaid would add an estimated 44 million to the ranks of the uninsured, leaving a total of 72 million Americans without coverage. But the Romney-Ryan plan to savage Medicaid won't just impact the poor and working Americans. Those steep reduction threaten the 6 million elderly recipients of Medicaid, a program will which pays for 33 percent of all nursing home care.
As it turns out, what we know for sure about Mitt Romney's assault on senior citizens may pale compared to what we don't. Romney, after all, has promised to magically offset $5 trillion in tax cuts and $2 trillion in new defense spending over the next decade by closing as yet unnamed tax credits, deductions and deductions. But among Uncle Sam's $1.1 trillion in annual tax expenditures are a host of tax breaks for the elderly. That figure is forecast to hit almost $1.4 trillion by 2015. While the home mortgage and health expense deductions top that list, untaxed Social Security benefits will reach $44 billion annually in three years. And that's just one example. Mitt Romney has called for raising the retirement age to 67 for those now 55 and under. (In his 2008 campaign, Romney supported President Bush's proposal to privatize the retiree pension system.)
Which tax breaks Romney will end remains a mystery. But as he has repeatedly made clear, current and future elderly—and everyone else—will have to wait until after Nov. 6 to find out just how badly Romney will stick it to them.Zonkey Location
Map of Africa Map of Africa
Zonkey
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The Zonkey is a hybrid animal that is created by cross-breeding two different species of animal that belong to the same genetic group. Technically though, an individual is only classed as a Zonkey if it is sired from a male Zebra and female Donkey, as one that has a male Donkey and female Zebra parents is known as a Zedonk. Like many other animal hybrids around the world including the Mule and the Liger however, the Zonkey is a sterile creature meaning that it cannot produce offspring of its own. Unlike the Liger though, it is actually quite possible for Zonkeys to live in the wild as Zebras and Donkeys are naturally found in close proximity to one another in parts of Africa. Although they are very rare, cases of wild Zonkeys have been reported but the majority of them today are found in zoos around the world and are bred as tourist attractions.The Zebra and the Donkey are closely related to one another and both belonging to the Horse family means these two species share a number of similar characteristics including their size. The Zonkey tends to be of a similar size to these animals but takes on a more definitive Donkey-like appearance, with the obvious exception of inheriting the uniquely-striped pattern on their fur from their Zebra parent. Zonkeys tend to be either tan, brown or grey in colour with a lighter underside, and it is on the lighter parts of their body like their legs and belly where the Zonkey's darker stripes are most prominent (they are much harder to see on the darker parts). The Zonkey also has a black mane which extends along the ridge of their back to the tip if their black tail, and a large head and ears which makes the Zonkey look much more like a Donkey than a Zebra.Out of the three species of Zebra that are found living on the African continent, two are found in Eastern Africa whilst the other is found in more southern regions. Generally preferring to inhabit savannas and open woodlands throughout their historical range, Zebras are often found in enormous herds particularly on the Serengeti plains where they migrate thousands of miles following the rains that bring new grass. Some are also found in close proximity to Human settlements where they are known to have to compete with domestic livestock, such as Donkeys, for food. It is in these areas where Zonkeys are most likely to be produced naturally in the wild as it gives the two separate species the opportunity to mate. Sadly however, the world's Zonkeys tend to be found in zoos and animal institutions where they are generally bred deliberately.Despite being very similar animals both in appearance and behaviour, one of the biggest differences between the two is that unlike Donkeys which have been domesticated by Humans for thousands of years, Zebras remain to be wild animals and therefore have a naturally more aggressive nature. Along with their stripes, the other thing that Zonkeys seem to inherit from their Zebra parent is their wild streak as they too are known to be fairly aggressive towards Humans and sometimes other animals. One of the Zonkey's most favourable characteristics is their sheer power which is made up of the stamina of the Donkey mixed with the speed and strength of the Zebra, which has led to them being used as work animals mainly to pull heavy loads.For a Zonkey to be produced, a male Zebra must have mated with a female Donkey (if the parents are the other way round the offspring is known as a Zedonk). After a gestation period that can last for more than a year, the female Donkey gives birth to a single Zonkey foal that, like Zebra and Donkey foals is able to stand up just minutes after birth. The Zonkey foal would generally remain with its mother until it was between five and six months old when it would become independent and join another herd. This kind of behaviour however, actually happens slightly later with Zebra foals as they can take up to four years to leave the herd. Like numerous other hybrid animals, the Zonkey itself cannot produce offspring of its own, as the cross-breeding of two different species often results in their young being sterile and unable to continue a population.Like Donkeys Horses and their other relatives, Zonkeys are herbivorous animals meaning that they survive on a diet that is solely comprised of plant matter. The majority of their food is made up of grasses and herbs that grow on the ground and like all equines, the Zonkey has flat, broad teeth which are the perfect tools for grinding down the fibrous grass. Along with grazing, Zonkeys also like to browse for other types of food including fruits and berries which are found growing more commonly in less arid areas. Due to the fact that Zonkeys are naturally found in the African wilderness there is always competition for both food and water from other animals inhabiting the same area and so they are always on the move in search of greener pastures.Despite their large size and the fact that they are long-living animals, both Zebras and Donkeys (and therefore Zonkeys) are important prey to numerous carnivores throughout their natural range. Lions and Hyenas are their most common predators, along with African Hunting Dogs and large felines like Leopards and Cheetahs. Even though they remain a stable food source for these large predators, they are often hard to catch and Zebras particularly are known to protect wounded individuals to prevent them from being hurt any more. Although rarer today, one of the biggest threats to both Zebras and Donkeys in Africa has been the fact that they have been subjected to hunting for both their meat and their skins. They are also being pushed into more isolated regions of the natural habitats meaning a decrease in the likelihood of wild Zonkeys.Although we often only think of Donkeys as being domesticated animals, wild herds of Donkeys can still be found living on the continent and in herds up to 100 strong in northern Africa, but this is an area that is not inhabited by Zebras and so the chances of a Zonkey occurring under these conditions would be extremely rare. Zonkeys have been mentioned by naturalists for centuries including Darwin who mentioned the possibility of a fertile female Zonkey that was being exhibited at the London Zoo. The Zonkey is thought to be a popular work animal as they have an apparent resistance to certain pests and diseases, something which is thought to have been inherited from their Zebra father.Originally bred by Humans to pull heavy loads and thought to have appeared in zoos in the 19th century, the Zonkey first became really famous when one was accidentally sired in Colchester Zoo in the 1970s, and they have since continued to exhibit Zonkeys as a popular tourist attraction. Along with now being bred in zoos around the world, Zonkeys are also bred for riding and as work animals involved in transport and pulling heavy loads due to their strength and stamina. In the wild in Africa however, Zebras have come under particular threat from people due both hunting and loss of habitat for growing Human settlements or land clearance for agriculture.Due to the fact that the Zonkey is a cross-bred animal and that it cannot continue a population, it is not listed by the IUCN. The three Zebra species though are all listed with the Plains Zebra as Least Concern, the Mountain Zebra as Vulnerable and the Grevy's Zebra as Endangered. This means that the chances of Zonkeys occurring in the wild are becoming slimmer and slimmer, with the majority of them today found in zoos and used as work animalsThe City of Vancouver is proposing a 3.9 per cent property tax hike to help pay for its 2018 budget.
It includes new spending the city says is needed on actions to "address housing supply, affordability and critical social issues."
The proposed increase amounts to an extra $87 per median single family home (assessed at $1.823 million) or $29 for a median strata unit (assessed at $609,000).
A chart by the City of Vancouver showing what a property tax bill looks like for a median single-family home in various Metro Vancouver municipalities. (City of Vancouver)
In a news release, the City of Vancouver said the average increase in the last five years was 2.3 per cent and overall tax rates were still "in the mid-range among Metro Vancouver municpalities."
The city said the majority of the tax increase will pay for ongoing city services and fixed costs such as wages, energy, rent and maintenance.
The remainder is targeted toward new investments aimed at improving the housing supply, affordability and social issues, according to the city's statement.
Funding will be aimed at a variety of initiatives, including:
Enabling the opening of 600 new units of temporary modular housing for the most vulnerable, including low-income residents.
Funding for affordable housing, including land acquisition for social housing in the Downtown Eastside and redevelopment of Rodden Lodge and the Evelyne Saller Centre.
Additional staffing to reduce wait times for development permits, including faster approvals for affordable housing.
A new Indigenous Healing and Wellness Centre in the Downtown Eastside.
Additional funding will be used to respond to the opioid crisis and improve streets, utilities, facilities and provide snow response.
The budget also includes a 7.9 per cent increase in utility fees, and two per cent increase for recreation fees.
Above inflation
Last year, the city also passed a budget with a 3.9 per cent property tax increase — the first time in many years that property taxes went up significantly more than inflation.
Vision Vancouver Coun. Heather Deal said it's necessary because about 85 per cent of the increased revenues are tied to fixed costs like rent, energy and wage increases.
"We have to remember that we're dealing with some bases that we don't have control over every day, which is wages, which is done through collective agreement, which we support as a city and also things like various fees like energy," she said.
"So, the rate of inflation is great, but we also have to tie it to our base and fixed costs."
NPA Coun. George Affleck, who announced he wouldn't be running for re-election earlier in the day, said the city could do a better job of finding ways to limit the tax increase.
"This is beyond what I think is acceptable. Whatever excuse there is, it's not good enough, and we should be doing better for the people of this city," he said.
"This makes Vancouver more unaffordable, and our goal should be the alternative."
A public hearing on the budget will be held Dec. 1 from 4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., with city council set to vote Dec. 12.
The full draft of the budget is available here.
With files from Brenna RoseImage copyright Reuters Image caption Restaurants are closed in several major cities
US businesses and schools faced disruption on Thursday as workers and students stayed home to highlight the contribution of immigrants.
Schools, restaurants and grocery stores shut across the country, from Los Angeles to Chicago to New York.
Some schools saw student-led walkouts, despite appeals not to.
The Day Without Immigrants protest, spread by social media, urged foreign-born workers to refuse to participate in the US economy for a day.
About 50 restaurants in Washington were shut on Thursday, as well as in other cities including Boston and San Francisco.
At the Pentagon in Virginia, the heart of America's military where about 25,000 people work, at least seven restaurants announced they would be shut for the day.
In Massachusetts, Wellesley's College's art museum removed all artworks created or donated by immigrants.
Image copyright AP Image caption A painting by Scottish-born artist James McDougal Hart was shrouded by Wellsley administrators
Image copyright AP
In New Mexico, the US state with the highest percentage of Hispanic residents, many businesses were shuttered from Albuquerque to Santa Fe.
Standing in the 9th Street Market in Philadelphia, Rani Vasudeva was struck by the usually bustling hub of commerce's quietness.
"It's actually very sad," said the 38-year-old university professor. "You realise the impact the immigrant community has. We need each other for our daily lives."
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Marches took place across the US
Day of action around the US
Grocery stores, markets and restaurants in cities such as New Orleans, Philadelphia and Chicago were quiet during normal lunch hours
Rallies have taken place taken place in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Austin, Texas. Thousands of people have joined demonstrations in Chicago and Detroit
A Senate coffee shop closed down on Washington DC's Capitol Hill
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Becoming citizens in the shadow of the Trump presidency
The Los Angeles United School District, the nation's second largest district, rang parents to warn them.
"I urge students and staff not to disrupt learning by participating in protests or walkouts during the instructional day," chief-of-staff Alma Pena-Sanchez said in a voicemail message sent to parents.
One school in the US capital decided to close down for the day, in order to allow teachers to protest.
The 426 primary students of the Latin American Montessori Bilingual Public Charter School were given the day off in solidarity with the boycott.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Earlier this month 6,700 immigrants were sworn in as citizens at the LA Convention Center.
Andy Shallal, who is closing several of his Washington-area restaurants, is from Iraq - one of the seven countries on Mr Trump's proposed travel ban executive order.
He told local media that "as an immigrant myself, I could not stand on the sidelines and watch the rest of my staff not be here. I wanted to make sure we are in solidarity with them".
One of the protest leaders, Spanish-American celebrity chef Jose Andres, had a public falling out with Donald Trump when he decided to pull out of a contract to open a restaurant in the president's new Washington hotel.
Mr Trump is currently suing him for $10m (£8m) for breach of contract; the chef is counter-suing for $8m (£6.4m).
A march was also planned for the White House.
Last month, nearly 500,000 protesters took to the streets of Washington to protest over the presidency of Donald Trump and to draw attention to issues affecting women.
How the boycott is being debated
Many social media users have taken to Twitter using the hashtag #DayWithoutImmigrants to weigh in on the debate.
In the last 24 hours the hashtag has been used almost 200,000 times.
@LyssaG21 tweeted: "Many of the immigrants in our country work low paying jobs that most Americans won't work for, remember that."
While others wanted to point out what they saw as the positives: "Finally a day when I will get an English speaking customer service rep" suggests @NAWparty.
But some were not happy.
This #DayWithoutImmigrants is a great idea. Hopefully they'll all pack up and go back home to save us the time and effort of deportations. @MarkDice
The social debate also wanted to make the distinction between illegal immigrants and economic migrants. @tumblrisntfacts tweeted: "A #DayWithoutImmigrants would be horrible. A day without ILLEGAL immigrants would be following the law."
But others argued that it was about standing up for communities who feel victimised "It's not about if you're LEGAL or ILLEGAL it's about finally speaking up." suggests @aesthetixsammy.
While @oxminaox posted: "To those of you protesting today, thank you. Many have fears and need people like you to raise your voices. Stay safe."A Mexican police chief believed to be working with drug cartels by providing protection was arrested along with two officers.
A press release from the state prosecutors office reports that the chief of police from Namiquipa, Chihuahua, and two police officers were arrested during an operation carried out by agents of the state attorney general’s office after an investigation revealed the three were providing protection to Arturo Quintana Quintana, “El 80”. Quintana is a top leader within the Juarez Cartel, according to local media reports.
At the time of their arrests, they were found in possession of five long rifles that are classified for the exclusive use of the armed forces; three handguns; tactical equipment; ammo; a significant quantity of crystal amphetamine; and a vehicle that was illegally in the country.
Namiquipa is approximately 125 miles west of the state capital of Chihuahua and is in the path of what is considered a key drug smuggling route into the United States. The region has been plagued by violence as the Sinaloa Cartel seeks to displace Nuevo Cartel de Juárez (NCDJ) that maintains control of western Chihuahua. The violent confrontations are occurring between members of La Linea–the armed wing of the Juarez Cartel–and La Gente Nueva—loyal to the Sinaloa Cartel.
“El 80” is considered a top priority target for law enforcement since much of the cartel violence is attributed to his organization. Quintana is also listed as a wanted fugitive by the U.S. Department of Justice for various drug trafficking and smuggling charges in connection with the Juarez Cartel.
Breitbart Texas previously reported on Quintana’s criminal activities. He was originally believed to be responsible for the high profile murder of journalist Miroslava Breach but in October, the state attorney general’s office identified members of La Gente Nueva within the Sinaloa Cartel as the responsible party, according to media reports.
The three detainees were placed at the disposal of the federal authorities, who will take the lead of the investigation with assistance from the state attorney general’s office.
Robert Arce is a retired Phoenix Police detective with extensive experience working Mexican organized crime and street gangs. Arce has worked in the Balkans, Iraq, Haiti, and recently completed a three-year assignment in Monterrey, Mexico, working out of the Consulate for the United States Department of State, International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Program, where he was the Regional Program Manager for Northeast Mexico (Coahuila, Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Durango, San Luis Potosi, Zacatecas.)Are you in the region, and did you feel the quake? Send us your images and experiences, but please stay safe.
(CNN) -- At least 34 people have died and 80 are injured in Pakistan after a powerful earthquake struck near the country's border with Iran, sources tell CNN.
Army doctors and Frontier Corps paramilitary forces are taking part in rescue efforts in Mashakel, according to a Pakistani official involved in relief efforts.
Officials earlier said that dozens more were injured in both countries.
Akbar Hussain Durrani, home minister of Pakistan's Balochistan province, confirmed that six people had died and more than a dozen were injured in the province's Washuk district.
The quake injured a dozen people in southeastern Iran, authorities said. They were treated at a hospital, the Crisis Management Office of Sistan and Baluchestan province reported. No one was killed, said Reza Arbabi, the office's director.
Sistan and Baluchestan province borders Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Earlier Tuesday, Iran's semiofficial Fars news agency quoted a politician from the province as saying that 40 people had been killed in the earthquake.
However, Arbabi and Sistan and Baluchestan Gov.-general Hatam Narouie disputed that there were deaths.
Fars later quoted Narouie as saying, "Fortunately, the quake did not cause any deaths or serious property damage. Telephone lines are now working, and water and electricity (are) normal."
Narouie told Fars that the news outlet should rely only on information from the crisis office.
Damage in Pakistan
The quake destroyed more than 50 shops in the Washuk district, Durrani said.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake was preliminarily measured at 7.8 magnitude. The Iranian Seismological Center said the earthquake had a magnitude of 7.5.
"Thank God it doesn't appear that there is too much destruction," a disaster official said on a broadcast by Iran's IRIB from the city of Khosk.
The official described seeing five injured people and some cracked or collapsed walls but no sign of major damage.
The Iranian Red Crescent has dispatched five assessment teams to the region, the aid group said Tuesday.
Interactive map: World's biggest earthquakes since 1900
State of emergency
The epicenter of the quake, which struck about 3:15 p.m. local time, was about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of the city of Saravan, according to the Iranian Seismological Center.
A state of emergency has been declared in the Saravan area, and rescue workers have been deployed from other provinces, Iran's state-run IRNA news agency reported.
"Our teams have been deployed to the area for the first rapid assessment, but they have not reported back yet," said Hassan Esfandiar, head of communications for the Iranian Red Crescent.
The area is rural and sparsely populated, leading to hopes that casualty figures may not climb much higher.
Carrieann Bedwell, a USGS seismologist, said a 7.8-magnitude quake was "a large event for any area" and could be expected to cause damage in inhabited places.
No effects have been reported on any nuclear plants in the region.
The earthquake caused no damage to Bushehr nuclear power facility in Iran, the Iran Nuclear Regulatory Authority told the International Atomic Energy Association.
Interactive: Measuring the magnitude of earthquakes
Aftershocks can be expected for days or weeks after a quake of that magnitude, she said.
The USGS placed the epicenter 53 miles east-southeast of Khash, 103 miles northeast of Iranshahr and 123 miles southeast of Zahedan.
It initially said the quake had a depth of 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) but later revised that to 82 kilometers (51 miles.)
Shafiq Ahmed, an official with Pakistan's meteorological department, said the tremor, which he put at magnitude 7.9, struck inside southern Iran, near the border with Pakistan.
Tremors were felt in southern Pakistan, including the city of Karachi, and across Balochistan province from Gwadar on the southern coast to Quetta and the border with Iran.
'Children were crying'
Taghi Akhavan, an employee at Shaygan Hotel on the Iranian resort island of Kish, said he felt the quake about 3:30 p.m. local time.
He said several guests also reported feeling what they described as a mild tremor, but the hotel did not evacuate guests. He said he has not seen any damage.
Journalist Rabia Ali was among those to feel the quake in Karachi.
"I was at home. I was in my bed, and the bed started moving for a good 15 seconds," she said. "We realized it was an earthquake, and we started evacuating. Everyone came out onto the street and started praying. The children were crying."
She said that |
Virginia Hospital Center.
: A “We are proud to be one of only 82 hospitals in the country to receive an 'A' 11 times in a row, demonstrating our continued, consistent commitment to patient safety. The Leapfrog Group continues to be a leader in helping patients understand the complex world of healthcare by providing an objective, transparent, and easy to understand evaluation system on hospitals,” said Jeffrey DiLisi, the chief medical officer of the Virginia Hospital Center. Warren Memorial Hospital : A
“We are honored and gratified to receive such high recognition for our continuous commitment to improving patient safety," the hospital's senior vice president Floyd Heater said in a statement.
: A “We are honored and gratified to receive such high recognition for our continuous commitment to improving patient safety," the hospital's senior vice president Floyd Heater said in a statement. Winchester Medical Center: A
“We are honored to once again receive this esteemed recognition, which demonstrates our ongoing organization-wide commitment to fostering a culture of safety and delivering high quality care — for every patient, every time," a hospital spokesperson said in a statement.
Maryland
Adventist HealthCare Shady Grove Medical Center : D
"We don’t believe our grade is a reflection of the care we give at Shady Grove. The information in the report was not complete quality of information," Tina Sheesley, Director of Public Relations and Marketing for Adventist Shady Grove, said.
: D "We don’t believe our grade is a reflection of the care we give at Shady Grove. The information in the report was not complete quality of information," Tina Sheesley, Director of Public Relations and Marketing for Adventist Shady Grove, said. Adventist HealthCare Washington : C
: C Calvert Memorial Hospital : C
: C Doctors Community Hospital : C
: C Fort Washington Medical Center : D
: D Frederick Memorial Hospital : C
: C Holy Cross Hospital : C
: C Howard County General Hospital : A
"This rating is an affirmation of the work we are doing to deliver quality outcomes, patient safety and the best overall experience," Steven C. Snelgrove, president of Howard County General Hospital said.
: A "This rating is an affirmation of the work we are doing to deliver quality outcomes, patient safety and the best overall experience," Steven C. Snelgrove, president of Howard County General Hospital said. MedStar Montgomery Medical Center : C
: C MedStar Southern Maryland Hospital Center : D
: D MedStar St. Mary's Hospital : C
: C Suburban Hospital : B
This is the first year Suburban Hospital was ranked by Leapfrog, a hospital spokesperson said.
: B This is the first year Suburban Hospital was ranked by Leapfrog, a hospital spokesperson said. University of Maryland Charles Regional Medical Center : C
"As with all hospital performance'report cards,' Leapfrog grades must be viewed and interpreted with appropriate context. Some of the data used to calculate grades is outdated, and does not accurately reflect the most recent performance or the many initiatives underway to enhance safety and quality," a University of Maryland Medical System spokesperson said about all of the system's hospital rankings.
: C "As with all hospital performance'report cards,' Leapfrog grades must be viewed and interpreted with appropriate context. Some of the data used to calculate grades is outdated, and does not accurately reflect the most recent performance or the many initiatives underway to enhance safety and quality," a University of Maryland Medical System spokesperson said about all of the system's hospital rankings. University of Maryland Laurel Regional Hospital : D
: D University of Maryland Prince George's Hospital Center : D
: D University of Maryland Shore Medical Center at Dorchester : C
: C University of Maryland Shore Medical Center at Easton: C
News4 reached out to every hospital on the list.
Go here to see the full list of hospital grades and rankings.
The hospital grades were released as officials announced that a doctors group associated with George Washington University will take over emergency medical services at United Medical Center (UMC). A patient died at UMC this summer, and witnesses told The Washington Post he had been mistreated.
Also this summer, UMC was ordered to stop delivering babies because of "deficiencies" in its care.
Leapfrog gave 159 hospitals in the U.S. D grades and 15 hospitals received failing marks. Two of those hospitals were in D.C., and others are located in California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Mississippi, New York and Tennessee.
More than 800 hospitals earned an A grade, with the highest percentages found in Virginia, Rhode Island, Maine, Hawaii and Idaho. The five states with the lowest percentage of A-grade hospitals are Washington, D.C., North Dakota, Delaware, Maryland and New York.
The biannual 2017 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades report shows the safety grades of hospitals in five states — Oregon, Rhode Island, Hawaii, Wisconsin and Idaho — have improved significantly since Leapfrog first issued grades in 2012. Rhode Island had the most dramatic improvement, jumping from 50th in 2012 to number one in the fall of 2017.
"What we've learned is that transparency has a real impact on patient safety. By making the Hospital Safety Grades public, we've galvanized major changes in these states and many communities," said President and CEO of Leapfrog, Leah Binder, in a statement.
Leapfrog uses data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Leapfrog Hospital Survey, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Hospital Association’s Annual Survey and Health Information Technology Supplement to rank their hospitals, according to their website.
Based on that data, Leapfrog measures 27 aspects of patient health and safety. Then, Leapfrog says researchers weigh the evidence, opportunity for improvement and impact of each measure to calculate a grade. If data in several categories is missing, Leapfrog won’t rank that hospital.
Leapfrog tells people to look at three measures in particular when choosing a health care provider: hand washing, blood infection during an intensive care unit stay and patient falls.Nothing better illustrates the phoniness of politicians than the ease w/ which they shift from blasting one another to praising one another. — Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 5, 2016
Ted Cruz has, notably, not endorsed Donald Trump as of today. One of his most vocal supporters, Steve Deace, says he shouldn’t — ever. Deace gives several reasons, and his piece is worth reading in full. Here is one reason that stands out:
4. This is a rare opportunity in politics when the morally righteous thing to do is also the most politically expedient. It’s rare in politics to be politically rewarded for doing the most principled thing, but that is the case here for Cruz. And it will be much easier for him to win over people mad at him for not “unifying” later than it would be to reunify his base if he were to endorse. Look at all the voters who don’t care Trump is a progressive and a Hillary donor. Look at all the other candidates groveling before the same Trump they once insulted. These are soulless people that will come to your beck and call in the future if you’re winning. But Cruz’s odds of winning diminish if he splits his base.
This echoes what I said on the day of the Indiana vote, even before the polls closed and Cruz bowed out:
When you can combine principle (which I believe Cruz has) with a long-term (2020) calculation, you may have a recipe for opposing Trump. — Patterico (@Patterico) May 3, 2016 Cruz calculated it was in his interest to take on GOP leadership. Why not calculate that it's in his long-term interest to oppose Trump? — Patterico (@Patterico) May 3, 2016
I think Cruz genuinely believes (as I do) that Donald Trump will end up as a disaster, either because he will hand the election to Hillary Clinton — or else will get into office and stab conservatives in the back so many times that they’ll look like someone sicced O.J. on them.
At some point the depth of Trump’s incompetence and betrayal will be obvious to all but his most mindless supporters. So why not be the person who actually stood athwart history yelling stop? — in the words of the founder of National Review, which actually did that in this primary, to their everlasting credit.
Deace’s point about the other soulless candidates is dead on target. I have already written about Perry and Jindal. Perry said Trump was a “cancer on conservatism” and now rolls on his back hoping Trump will rub his belly and make him VP. Jindal called Trump a “shallow, unserious, substance-free, narcissistic egomaniac” and a “madman who must be stopped.” Jindal now says he’s voting Trump! Guess the madman doesn’t have to be stopped any more.
I also wrote about Marco Rubio, who said Trump is a “con artist who should not get access to nuclear codes.” He also said we should not hand “the nuclear codes of the United States to an erratic individual.” Apparently he didn’t mean a word of it — or his “pledge” is more meaningful than the future of the world.
These people are pathetic, weak, and unprincipled. They were in a tough spot, to be sure, having “pledged” to support the nominee — but they put themselves there.
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE PLEDGE???!!!1! People will, of course, throw that in Cruz’s face, just as they have thrown it in the other candidates’ faces. Never mind that Trump broke the pledge before he became the nominee. Cruz must be held to a higher standard than the lying Trump.
The Smart Set assumes Cruz will endorse, just like the rest of these weasels, because he made that same “pledge” everyone else did, and he is certainly thinking of running again in 2020. But if Cruz is worried about people throwing stuff in his face, let’s not forget that he also said this (video at the link):
Donald Trump alleges that my dad was involved in assassinating JFK. Now, let’s be clear. This is nuts. This is not a reasonable position. This is just kooky.... This man is a pathological liar. He doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth.... The man cannot tell the truth, but he combines it with being a narcissist. A narcissist at a level I don’t think this country’s ever seen. Donald Trump is such a narcissist that Barack Obama looks at him and goes: ‘Dude, what’s your problem?’ Everything in Donald’s world is about Donald. And he combines being a pathological liar — and I say pathological because I actually think Donald, if you hooked him up to a lie detector test, he could say one in the morning, one thing at noon, and one thing in the evening, all contradictory, and he’d pass the lie detector test each time. Whatever lie he’s telling, at that minute, he believes it. But the man is utterly amoral. Let me finish this, please. The man is utterly amoral. Morality does not exist for him. It’s why he went after Heidi directly and smeared my wife. Attacked her. Apparently she’s not pretty enough for Donald Trump. I may be biased, but I think if he’s making that allegation, he’s also legally blind. But Donald is a bully. You know, we just visited with fifth graders. Every one of us knew bullies in elementary school. Bullies don’t come from strength. Bullies come from weakness. Bullies come from a deep yawning cavern of insecurity. There is a reason Donald builds giant buildings and puts his name on them everywhere he goes. And I will say: there are millions of people in this country who are angry. They’re angry at Washington. They’re angry at politicians who’ve lied to them. I understand that anger. I share that anger. And Donald is cynically exploiting that anger. And he is lying to his supporters.
It’s worth remembering that Cruz made his “pledge” before Trump called his wife ugly, insinuated that his dad was involved in the JFK assassination, blatantly lied on national TV about whether he had impersonated his own publicist... and God only knows what he’ll do over the next six months.
Cruz is laying low now, but I suspect he’s already made his decision. He won’t support Donald Trump. But the way he’s doing it is clever. He has made adherence to constitutional principles the key to whether he can support Trump. As a smart Cruz observer, Erica Greider, has noted:
[Cruz] specified a series of lofty standards that he expects a presidential candidate to meet, knowing full well that Trump struggles to meet standards, and visibly resents expectations. He later made no distinction between Trump and the presumptive Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, when offering the following observation: “I fear that our nation may be facing four very challenging years.”
Cruz already knows that Trump can’t and won’t adhere to constitutional principles. But as Trump continues to tack left in the general election, he will drift further and further away from any semblance of constitutionalism and support for limited government.
And Cruz can then say that he can’t support a nominee who doesn’t stand for conservatism.
Cruz could always disappoint me and his other followers, and fall in line like the rest. It wouldn’t be the first time I have been disappointed by politician.
But somehow I think Ted Cruz will not disappoint.ATLANTA -- Whenever I hear multiple scouts refer to a top prospect as a "baller", I make it a point to check him out in a big game to see if the performance matches the hype. After hearing the buzz on Florida State CB Jalen Ramsey, I couldn't wait to see him take on Houston in the Peach Bowl. Given the high-octane nature of the Cougars' offense and the number of explosive playmakers on the perimeter, I thought this was the perfect game to assess Ramsey's skills. After conducting an extensive film study and taking copious notes from Florida State's 38-24 loss to Houston in the Peach Bowl, here's my take on the Seminoles' budding superstar:
Athleticism
Ramsey is a fluid athlete with outstanding agility and movement skills. He quickly flows through transitions and breaks, exhibiting terrific balance and body control. Ramsey shows above-average speed and burst, yet appears to have little problem staying in the hip pocket of speedy receivers down the field. With Ramsey also displaying top leaping ability, there is little concern about his overall athleticism and explosiveness as a perimeter defender.
Run defense
It is hard to find cornerbacks with a "knockout" mentality on the field, Ramsey is one of the most physical corners that I've watched on tape. He plays with an ultra-aggressive demeanor; his physicality and toughness is reflected in his willingness to hit runners squarely on the perimeter. While his tackling skills are solid, I was most impressed by his instincts and awareness as run defender. Ramsey isn't afraid to mix it up, and his overall aggressiveness could make him a standout hybrid defender (corner-safety-nickel) at the next level.
Cover skills
Ramsey is a natural cover corner with fluid movement skills and sound technique. He is a rare corner capable of utilizing a variety of techniques (press and off) to blanket receivers on the perimeter. Although Ramsey's versatility is impressive, he is at his best when aligned nose to nose on receivers in bump and run coverage. He possesses the length to strike receivers with strong jams, but he also flashes enough lateral quickness and swivel to shadow receivers without making contact.
As a zone defender, Ramsey shows great vision, instincts and awareness. He has a nice feel for reading routes. Most important, Ramsey isn't afraid to pull the trigger when he sees the ball come out. Although his instinctive aggressiveness isn't reflected on the stat sheet, evaluators will fall in love with his overall playmaking ability when scouting the tape.
Best of the bowls SEE PHOTOS Check out the best images from the 2015-16 college football bowl season.
Against Houston, Ramsey initially aligned at "boundary" corner and snuffed out receivers with his aggressive technique. However, he later "traveled" to shadow the Cougars' WR1 (Demarcus Ayers) after he made a few plays on the perimeter. Ramsey's versatility, competitiveness and football IQ will prompt defensive coordinators to build sub-packages (nickel and dime) around his unique talents as a cover corner.
Football IQ
For all of the physical traits needed to thrive as a defensive back as a pro, defensive coaches covet playmakers with high football IQs. Given that fact, I would expect evaluators to fall in love with Ramsey based on his natural instincts, awareness and diagnostic skills. He has a terrific feel for the game and his ability seamless transition to multiple positions in the secondary suggests that he understands where he fits in the puzzle. With more NFL teams searching for smart defenders with diverse skills, Ramsey's intelligence and awareness will make him a huge asset to a dynamic defense.
Against Houston, Ramsey's versatility and intelligence was on full display. He seamlessly transitioned between both corner positions. Most impressive, Ramsey flashed the ability to blitz off the corner, which makes him a possible slot rusher for teams utilizing exotic blitz schemes.
Conclusion
Ramsey is a rare find as an ultra-competitive hybrid defensive back with exceptional skills and a high football IQ. He can start at LCB for an NFL squad from Day 1, but he might be best suited for a chameleon role as a pro. Ramsey is instinctive and dynamic around the box that he should thrive as a nickel defender in an exotic defense. If I had to compare him to a current pro, I would cite Charles Woodson based on his unique skills as a multifaceted playmaker. With more teams searching for electric talents in the back end, Ramsey should be viewed as a blue-chip talent whenever he enters the draft.
Follow Bucky Brooks on Twitter @BuckyBrooks."Soldier of Love" is a 1989 song by American singer Donny Osmond, which became his comeback hit.[2][3][4]
A Top 30 hit in the UK in 1988, the track was not initially released in the US as Osmond did not have a record deal there. However, a cassette of the song from a British import was sent by an Osmond fan to Jessica Ettinger, the acting Program Director and Music Director at ABC's WPLJ-FM New York. Ettinger liked the song but was concerned that Osmond, a former child star, wouldn't be accepted by the current pop audience.
Ettinger, believing the song to be a hit, up-ended the top 40 music and radio industry by giving it a slot on her playlist. Osmond was not only unsigned by any record label in the U.S., but the song itself was unavailable for purchase in the U.S. at the time. To give the song a chance, she created a "mystery artist" promotion; put the song in rotation, and kept listeners guessing who the artist was for several weeks.[5] Eventually, Ettinger had her air talent reveal that the song was by Donny Osmond, who appeared live on the air at the same time. Osmond was soon signed by Capitol Records, which copied Ettinger's promotion idea nationwide and released the song as a single. "Soldier of Love" reached #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1989,[6] behind Fine Young Cannibals' "Good Thing"; and Osmond credits Ettinger with re-launching his career by listening to the music and not pre-judging whether a song could be a hit based on the name of the artist.
The song is set to a post-disco beat.[7] Songwriters are Carl Sturken and Evan Rogers.[8] The music video for the song was by John Scarlett Davis and produced by Nick Verden for Radar Films. Shot on location at London's Docklands.
Charts [ edit ]
Year-end charts [ edit ]
Chart (1989) Position Canada Top Singles (RPM)[9] 66
References [ edit ]back to news News Attention! This news was published on the old version of the website. There may be some problems with news display in specific browser versions. Answers from developers! It's time for another round of Questions and Answers! Ground Forces Do crew skills affect reloading speed with an automatic loader? No, they don’t. Will the durability of tank destroyer rockets be corrected from super-durable to ordinary levels, with real-world values? Maybe they won’t blow up, but they could be knocked out and have to be reloaded when shot with machine guns, for example. Yes, we plan to change the parameters for launchers and rockets, and add other components (the ATGM sight) to the DM, so that hitting them can knock the rocket system out and block the ability to launch. Will there be a division between types of APDS shells such as solid homogenous APDS and soft-alloy core APDS? I’m referring to the APDS for the Leopard, М60, М60А1, Vickers, Centurion Mk 10, Chieftain, and T-10M. Yes, we plan to introduce more types of APDS with differentiation based on DM mechanics (penetration depending on angle, post-penetration effect etc.). Will armoured APCR and HESH shells be fixed? Right now it is a sometimes strange picture – a HESH shell creates a big shrapnel vector in the post-penetration space, dealing critical damage to internal modules, while an APCR can deal precise, non-penetrative damage through modules that is specific to the fragmenting action of HESH shells in particular. The APCR had significantly more shrapnel, with a temperature of 700-1000 degrees. Its penetrative ability allowed the high-speed shrapnel to pierce crew members’ bodies and compartments, setting the ammo rack and fuel tanks alight. The HESH shell had incommensurately less shrapnel, a speed of up to 600 m/s, a temperature no higher than 200 degrees. I.e. it couldn’t set alight a fragment of the tank’s armour or pierce crew members’ bodies, while saving energy for a subsequent hit on a module and crew in the post-penetration space. We plan to rework the hit action of HESH shells, in particular we plan to fix their ability to set alight the engine or fuel tank. For APCRs, we have plans to move them gradually to a new system of secondary fragmentation. Will the new experimental APCR for the 12.8 cm Pak 44 be added? The one you spoke about back in the tank closed beta test. Since a great many MBTs have been added, and it can be difficult to hit them with old German cannons (88-105-128). Also, is modern ammunition for the 88 cannon possible? No, we have nothing like that planned. Can we expect a reduction in BR for the Maus and IS-4 in RB? (The tanks have completely died out in battles after the introduction of ATGMs and powerful MBT shotguns) We have taken a look at the popularity statistics over the last 10 days, and in terms of number of battles in rank 5 ground vehicles (AB/RB/SB combined), the Maus and IS-4 occupy positions 23 and 24 out of 50 in the table. The difference in number between uses vs tanks is in the top 5, not 10 or 100, is 4-5 times, a difference of 2 times vs 10th place for example. For example, these tanks are used more often than their ‘killers’ the M60A2 or the Chieftain Mk 5. i.e. it’ i incorrect to say that these tanks have died out. They aren't the most popular vehicles, but they are played. As for changing their BR, or the BR of tanks that cause them to ‘suffer’, yes, redistributing top rank tanks by BR is possible, but it’s worth remembering that in any case, there’ll be a certain split by rank, and these tanks will still encounter some more modern vehicles. Why is there so much smoke in the flight trajectory of an ATGM? In reality, this smoke would prevent tracking the tracer and the aiming system would lose control over it. There was a bug report for this, but no response. The smoke problem existed in reality. Consider that the aimer observes the entire volume of the smoke with the entire trajectory. For example, you can read about this problem in Vehicles and Armaments No. 2010-01 “The Dragon That Scourges Tanks – the IT-1”, pages 10-11. Please tell us, do you have any plans for the T-62? Installing DShK, spaced armour on the sides of the tank, or possibly some other modification of the tank? We’re aware of the multitude of modifications and additions for this tank, as with the T-55, which significantly increase its effectiveness, but as we answered before in our Q&A dedicated to the introduction of era 6, these modifications might appear if necessary as a balance correction, with a simultaneous change in the vehicle’s BR. Do you have any plans to replace tanker models in German and Soviet vehicles with open cabins for models that look like tankers, instead of soldiers? Currently no, and in addition, not all crews of these vehicles were necessarily tankers specifically, or artillerymen/AA crews. Plans previously included the addition of a historical magnifying sight for all eras. How do matters stand on this now? Yes, we plan to add historical magnification for all eras. But with the condition that if the real magnification was lower than x3, then in the game it will be set at x3, for player comfort. Aircraft Can we expect new maps for aerial RB? New maps for aerial RB haven’t been released in 3 years. The current ones are really boring now (Sicily - Norway) We still have more aircraft maps in the game than tank maps, but that doesn’t mean we don’t plan to add more. Yes, we have plans to both add new maps and change matchmaking settings in such a way as to let players play on a wider variety of maps. Why does the crew get 3 times less skill experience in RB than in AB, and when the pilot dies – 3 times less again? I agree that virtual life must be preserved, but 9 times less experience is excessive. Could you bring RB in line with AB, but leave the penalty when the pilot dies? Then in the worst case, the crew would get 3 times less XP. In aerial RB, pilot death doesn’t influence the reduction in crew XP. The difference in the amount of experience in comparison with aerial AB is linked to the fact that in RB fewer crew members are required on average. And the difference isn’t 3 times, it’s roughly 2.6. Other Will there be Vulcan АPI and TXAA antialiasing, or will 6x FXAA at least be returned? Vulcan is very interesting to us and we support its development (link). We hope that it might replace OpenGL in the Linux and Windows versions in the near future, and possibly Direct X 9.0. That depends on whether graphics card manufacturers support it. The launcher did have a x6 MSAA setting. But since almost no graphics cards (old and new) support it, we removed that antialiasing variant from the settings. MSAA is actually pretty poorly compatible with modern lighting technology, so manufacturers don’t bother to support it. Various types of temporal antialiasing are more suitable for modern lighting. Unfortunately, they have their own limitations and price. But we are not ruling out the possibility of using temporal anti aliasing in the future at some point. Questions translated from recent Russian stream Potentially, rank V Soviet ATM’s have many similar vehicles that require researching due to the introduction of rank 6, do you plan to combine some of them in one “folder” so that it won’t be necessary to research all of them to progress Yes we plan to do this with several vehicles, and not only in the Soviet tree. USSR has an awesome attacker - the SU-6 with rocket armament. However they have no jet attackers unlike other nations. Are you planning anything? Yes. At the moment we are working on S-5 containers and high-calibre rockets for the MiG-17. There is no ETA right now though Since you are introducing the BMP-1, do you have any plans for the BMD? That’s possible, however we cannot discuss when. We now have destroyers in Naval Battles, should we expect glide bombs? We are discussing this. There are several difficulties. From the historical point of view after such bombs appeared all vessels received jamming transmitters and these bombs became useless. The second thing is that bombs were controlled by a joystick aiming system using a bomb tracer. So the control is similar to that of 1st gen ATGMs only in an aircraft. Thus accuracy would be pretty low even if a player does everything right. Thus we haven’t decided yet whether we will implement this feature or not. The Su-6 and Thunderbolt are very deadly attackers when using rocket loadout in combined battles, do you plan to change their BR or spawn point requirements? At the moment not all armament uses the new system (recalculation to a TNT equivalent). Thus currently rockets are a bit more powerful than they were IRL, once we apply changes to all rockets they will become less deadly, however they will still be efficient if you manage to shoot against the top surfaces of the enemy vehicle. What about armour fatigue? These are complex mechanics, we have completed only part of the work and are still working on it. Besides the new vehicles what else should we expect in 1.71? Any changes in game mechanics? DM? Other features? We plan a lot minor changes in different spheres. We will not announce them yet, probably some of them will not be finished by 1.71 release, but yes, there are changes in DM and ammo. What about automatic fire extinguishers? That’s an interesting question, but implementing this system will be bad for gameplay - for both sides, it will also decrease the importance of player skill. This is why most likely we will not introduce such a system. Do you plan to increase the IS-6 BR? All BR changes should be made after the release of the update. The introduction of rank 6 will most likely lead to BR changes in many vehicles, not only top-rank ones. Let’s wait and see. Will the KPz-70 be placed after the Maus? These are our plans at the moment, yes. As far as I understand, the current top ground vehicles in rank 5 will be moved to early rank 6, will they receive new ammo? It depends on the balance in the game. If it will be required, then yes they will. Are there any plans in further development of the tank destroyers without armour? Like open-top vehicles with ATGMs? That’s possible. Especially when “Ontos” is actually close to this idea. No promises however so far. Have you stopped the development of aircraft? Of course not. We have just introduced a whole new nation in the previous update! As well as many other aircraft. All the game aspects are being developed in parallel. There will be lots of interesting stuff in the aviation part of the game later this year. What about the visibility system? Disappearing tanks are frustrating. We are constantly working on it. We never planned to introduce vehicles that fire whilst being invisible, all such bugs are being fixed. We are always looking for your questions! Feel free to submit them in comment section, or on our Official Forum! The War Thunder TeamWhile most of you have probably heard of the KeSPA Awards for Korean gaming — because Korean League of Legends is both better publicized in the west and just better — Tencent and PLU have also rolled out an annual award show in tandem with the Demacia Cup. The award show features several categories for players and teams in the LoL Pro League and at the top of the LoL Secondary Pro League ranging from MVP to best management. Some categories are voted on by fans, while others are decided by a panel of judges.
Last year’s award ceremony was a joke. EDward Gaming, the team that had won both LPLs and placed Top 2 in both regular seasons as well as raking in the trophies at several other LAN tournaments, didn’t win a single award. OMG received best club, Gao “Gogoing” Diping, Yin “Loveling” Le, Yu “Cool” Jiajun, Jian “Uzi” Zihao, and Yoon “Zero” Kyungsup won best player in each of their respective roles. Uzi won season MVP. Royal Club Huang Zu’s coaches won best coach. EDward Gaming had representatives nominated in ever possible category, but didn’t win a single award.
EDG didn’t even attend the ceremony and walked off stage after winning the Demacia Cup Grand Final that preceded it. Because of EDward Gaming’s lack of popularity, originating from the way in which the team formed, they lost the recognition they deserved. Naturally, I had a lot to say about it.
This year, EDward Gaming’s players and team once again have been nominated in every possible category. Ming “Clearlove” Kai leads the fan vote for best player by more than twice the votes of Jian “Uzi” Zihao, the runner up. This year’s award ceremony has a chance to fix the wrongs of 2014.
Just in case they don’t, let me introduce Kelsey Moser’s first ever Annual LPL End of Year Awards, where EDward Gaming win awards they deserve to win, just like everyone else.
Fan Votes
At the moment, the two categories voted upon by fans are Top Player and Best Caster. Clearlove has over 1.4 million votes, with Uzi in second place, possessing only 400,000 votes. Given Clearlove’s general consistency, his overall improvements as a jungler, and his function as the core of the team that won most of the events of 2015, I find it nearly impossible to vote in another player over him for the year.
I can’t weigh in on best caster because I don’t speak Mandarin Chinese.
Annual MVP
Nominees: EDward Gaming’s Clearlove, Invictus Gaming’s RooKie, LGD Gaming’s GODV
Official criteria: MVP points, Team performance
My pick: Clearlove
Unmentioned: Pyl, Acorn
EDward Gaming, Invictus Gaming, and LGD Gaming consistently placed the best in LPL events throughout the year. It’s only natural that the MVP should be granted to players from those teams. As Clearlove remained the constant factor in EDward Gaming when they rifled through their roster, possessed high form outside the World Championship, and led his team to the most tournament victories this year, it’s hard to pick anyone else.
From Invictus Gaming, I agree with the choice of Song “RooKie” Eujin, who at times appeared to be the only player on iG who cared. You can make a case for giving the MVP award to RooKie over Clearlove given that EDward Gaming’s main roster had stronger players around him, but considering Clearlove’s rotating top and mid laner as well as the obvious difficulties Kim “Deft” Hyukkyu experienced this summer, this argument isn't as strong as one might like.
While I agree Wei “GODV” Zhen did a lot of the carrying for LGD Gaming in the summer, he wasn’t the most consistent performer. Gu “imp” Seungbin showed strong form, but only truly became the team’s main carry in the summer playoffs. I’d prefer to nominate Choi “Acorn” Cheonju for his influence as a Teleport user or Chen “Pyl” Bo whose absence was quite obvious in the first week of the split when LGD played as if they had no heads. Both players had more consistent forms and did more for the team.
Best Club
Nominees: EDward Gaming, LGD Gaming, Snake
Official criteria: L.ACE club management scorecard, club performance, management and brand management
My pick: EDward Gaming
Unmentioned: N/A
Snake had extremely strong branding by announcing their gaming house, collecting the China Rare Earth sponsorship, and promoting AD Carry Yang “kRYST4L” Fan and Li “Flandre” Xuanjun as young players from LSPL. The team also made some of the smartest roster decisions, moving for players that worked best with the team over those that might just have bigger names. If this category only featured management decisions, Snake might edge out EDG.
I think Club Performance overall is much more fundamental in my personal criteria, and EDward Gaming beats out the competition in most cases. EDward Gaming also made much more gains in marketing and popularity this year relative to last year. Though their roster rotation decisions raised questions, some resulted from player injury beyond the team’s control, and they could yet payoff if AD Gaming qualifies for LPL this summer.
LGD only makes the list as a result of branding, merchandising, reaching and international audience, and club performance. Some of their management decisions and public relations were a nightmare, and they only beat EDward Gaming’s performance in a single tournament.
Best Coach
Nominees: EDward Gaming’s Aaron, Invictus Gaming’s Mafa, Qiao Gu’s Hiro
Official criteria: Team performance, coaching sessions, value added
My pick: Aaron
Unmentioned: Snake’s Jun
I don’t like giving out best coach awards as insight is usually required to make a fair assessment. As a third party, one can only go by what a team’s players and staff have to say about their coach, as well as what the coach can say about the game and the team’s results. This often will provide an imperfect picture.
That said, based on my limited insight, I don’t think Won “Mafa” Sangyeon should have been nominated. While his drafting during the spring and parts of the summer was the best in the league, he publicly admitted that he had stepped away from the team for extended periods of time because he felt disrespected. The fault of this likely falls down to Invictus Gaming’s management for not enforcing his decisions, but it also means it’s hard to consider him a viable candidate for the 2015 Coach award.
I’d rather see Snake’s Chen “Jun” Linjun or Liang “Sad” Wei nominated. Opposite Invictus Gaming, Snake often had atrocious draft phases, but the team credited their coaching staff for strategy and ability to see how each player fit into the team. Snake worked together cohesively, and their contributions shouldn’t be overlooked.
Naturally, I’d opt to pick Aaron to win. His track record as one of the best coaches in the world and his ability to get his team to work as a unit is definitely unmatched in China, and |
the high-tech industry. In 1970 McCluskey helped establish the Stanford Computer Engineering Program and in that same year became the first president of the IEEE Computer Society.
Recalling these times in his 2008 lecture, McCluskey observed that nowadays collaborations between electrical engineers and computer scientists are common, even obvious, but in those days it was the exception rather the rule.
Among other notable research efforts, McCluskey founded the Center for Reliable Computing (CRC) at Stanford University, which made major contributions to the testing of computer chips and helped design fault-tolerant systems to avoid so-called computer "crashes" that cost money and lives – spurring research that will only become more essential as self-driving cars and other autonomous technologies become a reality.
In recognition of his lifetime achievements, McCluskey was awarded the IEEE John von Neumann Medal in 2012, one of the top honors bestowed in computing.
"Professor McCluskey had a profound impact on the field of electronics," said Shekhar Y. Borkar, an Intel Fellow and director of Extreme-Scale Technologies at Intel Corporation.
Over the years McCluskey helped recruit many notable researchers to Stanford, including John Hennessy, who went on to become a computer industry innovator and president of the university.
"Ed McCluskey was a pioneer in the computer engineering community, and I am deeply saddened to learn of his death," Hennessy said. "Ed was the founding director of the Digital Systems Laboratory at Stanford [renamed the Computer Systems Laboratory]. He recruited me to Stanford to join the laboratory in 1977. In addition to shaping the development of digital systems, he was a great educator, producing an incredible group of PhD graduates, many of whom have gone on to become industry leaders. We were very fortunate to have him as our colleague. He will be deeply missed."
Known for unusual hats and his green school bus
Among the 75 PhDs that McCluskey mentored over the years, one of the earliest is Dan Siewiorek, who earned his doctorate from Stanford in 1971. Siewiorek, today a noted professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, began his studies with McCluskey in 1968, a turbulent year on many campuses. Siewiorek recalled one time when a building on the Stanford campus was occupied by protestors and McCluskey decided to find out what was on the students' minds.
"He donned his poncho and gaucho hat and joined the discussion circle outside the building," Siewiorek recalled. "I often wondered whether the protestors realized they were conversing with a Stanford engineering professor."
Unusual hats were a McCluskey trademark – a collection of thumbnail images shows him wearing headgear from Mickey Mouse ears to a powdered wig – as was the open-mindedness that characterized his personal and professional views.
"He thought 'out of the box' in almost every way," said Michael Flynn, a professor emeritus of electrical engineering at Stanford, who recalls his former colleague's charming idiosyncrasies, like the green school bus in which he took his family camping.
The school bus is part of the McCluskey family lore, which began back at Bell Labs, when Edward met and married Roberta Jean Marie Erickson, who became the mother to six children born during the years when he worked at Bell and taught at Princeton.
As McCluskey recalled in his 2008 ACM lecture, it was in order to get his family of eight from Princeton to Stanford that he decided to buy and convert that green bus to move everyone to their new home in Palo Alto.
"I remember riding that bus to California," said his son Joe McCluskey, who was 7 at the time. "We used to go camping on it all the time. He loved the outdoors. That's something everyone who knew him would remember."
Edward and Roberta McCluskey were divorced and she passed away in 1996. In 1981, he married Lois Thornhill McCluskey, who was his companion to the end. In addition to Lois, he is survived by five of his six children, 11 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
The family asks that anyone wishing to remember Edward McCluskey with a donation make a gift in his name to the Sempervirens Fund, Peninsula Open Space Trust or Save the Redwoods League.
Media Contact
Tom Abate, Stanford Engineering: (650) 736-2445, tabate@stanford.edu"For the Chinese people this deal means more beef and better wine," he said.
Mr Abbott said he had also received a letter of congratulations from President Xi and had sent one back to the Chinese leader in return.
Dr Hucheng paid tribute to Mr Abbott and President Xi Jinping for bringing the negotiations to a conclusion as well as all officials and those in both societies who supported the decade long negotiations.
"This agreement will provide us with a more open arrangement for trade and investment," Dr Hucheng said.
"It will provide a strong impetus for growth for both our countries," he added.
The text of the deal will now be tabled in parliament and is expected to come in to force by years' end.
The deal will ensure 85 per cent of all Australian exporters enter China tariff free initially rising to 95 per cent when it is in full force.
China is Australia's biggest trading partner with the two way trade valued at more than $160 billion in 2014.
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A Centre for International Economics report released ahead of Wednesday's signing found Australia's three North Asian FTA's with China, Japan and Korea should see exports grow by 11.7 per cent or nearly $17 billion more by 2035.
The report says dairy exports will be 59 per cent higher, meat products including beef 42.9 per cent higher, wool 22 per cent higher and vegetables, fruits and nuts 34 per cent higher.
The report also found services exports would be up by 13.9 per cent or $2.2 billion larger by 2035 with the three FTA's expected to create 178,000 new jobs within Australia.
Under the deal Australia will remove the existing 5 per cent tariff on Chinese electronics and whitegoods, meaning cheaper goods for Australian consumers but some reduction in government revenue.
Decade long negotiations over the deal came to fruition when Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Chinese President Xi Jinping concluded talks at a meeting in November last year.
Mr Robb and Dr Hucheng later signed a formal declaration of intent.
On Wednesday ahead of the signing Mr Robb said the clinching of the three North Asian trade agreements were "hugely significant" because it involved half of Australia's export markets.
"Given what's going on with the region and the extraordinary explosion of people going into the middle class, this is I think a landmark set of agreements and it will see literally billions of dollars, thousands, many more hundreds of thousands of jobs and will underpin a lot our prosperity in the years ahead," Mr Robb told the ABC.
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"This is a document which is just not what we sign today but a living document we will review progressively...that will reflect what's going on in the region and the growth and opportunities," Mr Robb added.
But Labor Trade spokeswoman Penny Wong said the Opposition wanted to scrutinise the detail of the deal.
Labor is concerned temporary work visas under the deal will allow companies to bypass local workers and clauses which would allow companies to sue the government over laws which hit their profits.
"We look forward to considering the text through the parliamentary processes now the government's finally seen fit to release it to the Australian people," Senator Wong said.
However the FTA signing comes at a time when there are senitivities in Australia about the Chinese acquistion of farmland and real estate.
A Lowy Institute of International Affairs poll released earlier this month showed 70 per cent of the 1200 people surveyed believed Australia allowed too much Chinese investment in residential real estate.
However fewer people in the 2015 poll found China a military threat despite rising tensions between the US and China over the North Asian maritime disputes.
Only 39 percent regarded China as a military threat to Australia in the next 20 years this year, down from 48 percent in the 2014 poll.1. Australia’s policy is fine because other countries are using direct action, too, and not emissions trading schemes
This one was trotted out most recently by the treasurer, Joe Hockey, who said he welcomed the US-China climate deal because “the United States and, in fact, China both have direct action plans”.
“I might’ve missed it... but I don’t recall either the president of China or the president of the United States saying they were going to introduce a carbon tax,” he told the ABC.
This myth – accepted by many in the media – confuses the actual point of comparison between different countries’ climate policies – how much they reduce greenhouse gases – with the domestic policies by which those countries choose to do it.
If you define “direct action” as any policy to reduce emissions that isn’t a trading scheme it could include any regulation, or subsidy – covering ones that have a real chance of cutting greenhouse gases, like Barack Obama’s power plant regulations and ones that most experts think will struggle, like Australia’s “reverse auction” emission reduction fund.
Suggesting that any kind of policy that isn’t a market is equally effective just because it isn’t a market – without considering its merits – is not only weird for a liberal politician, it’s also patently silly.
2. Australia’s policy is fine because we might meet our 2020 target to reduce emissions by 5%
Most modelling exercises suggest this is in fact unlikely, but Australia is at least in with a better chance because the job keeps getting easier before Direct Action has even started. In 2012 the promise to reduce emissions by 5% of 2000 levels by 2020 was calculated to require the cumulative reduction of 755m tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Last year new government calculations reduced that figure to 431m tonnes. Now calculations by Frontier Economics say the figure could be as low as 225m tonnes, if the renewable energy target stays in place to drive investment into clean generation, or somewhere around 300m tonnes if the government succeeds in paring back the RET. Official figures are soon likely to confirm this drop.
Whether we meet the 5% target or not, the real problem with Direct Action has always been that it doesn’t prepare the economy for the deeper cuts that must inevitably follow after 2020 – the ones the US and China have just promised to make and that Australia is going to have to make by next year. Making deeper cuts only using the “emissions reduction fund” will be prohibitively, ridiculously expensive.
This point was made succinctly by Malcolm Turnbull in 2010 after he was deposed as Liberal leader, when he said direct action-style schemes were “a recipe for fiscal recklessness on a grand scale” and would be “a very expensive charge on the budget in the years ahead”.
The “blue book” prepared by the Treasury for a possible incoming Coalition government in 2010 made the same point, saying “a market mechanism can achieve the necessary abatement at a cost per tonne of emissions that is far lower than alternative direct-action policies”.
3. Australia’s policy is fine because China and the US emit more greenhouse gases than we do
Even more bone-headed than the previous myths, this was advanced most succinctly in recent days by Liberal National party senator Ian Macdonald, who famously wore a hi-vis “Australians for Coal” vest in the Senate chamber, and who said in a statement on Friday:
“China emits 24% of the world’s carbon emissions. The US emits 15% of the world’s carbon emissions. Australia emits less than 1.5% of the world’s carbon emissions. When the US and China get down to our level of emissions then we should join their plans. Until then, we should compete with the US and China in trade and local jobs terms by doing what we and the previous government both committed to and that is reducing our 1.4% of global emissions by 5%.”
It is true that the US and China are the two biggest emitters in the world, and therefore critical to a successful international agreement – which is why Wednesday’s announcement was so important. But it is also quite obviously true that no international agreement will ever be possible if countries like Australia opt out forever, which is what Macdonald is effectively suggesting. The senator also falls for another of the myths …
4. Australia’s bipartisan target for 2020 is 5% with no increase on that ever contemplated
Before the election Abbott and the environment minister, Greg Hunt, repeated a Coalition commitment to increasing Australia’s emissions reduction target by a minimum of 5% rising to 25% under specific conditions for global action set down in 2009 and accepted by both major parties.
The range of targets and conditions under which Australia’s target would be raised above 5% were repeated by Hunt in the Australian Financial Review in which he wrote “the Coalition is committed to a target of a 5% reduction in emissions and the conditions for extending that target further, based on international action”.
In a speech to the Grattan Institute thinktank Hunt said “we also accept, and we gave support to the government for the targets, not just the 5% but also the conditions for change... we accept the targets, clearly, categorically, absolutely”.
And Abbott stated the Coalition’s commitment in a letter to former prime minister Kevin Rudd in December 2009, subsequently released under freedom of information laws, in which he requested information on the costs of the proposed emissions trading scheme, but also wrote “the Coalition’s position of bipartisan support for emissions reduction targets – subject to the conditions that were earlier outlined – remains unchanged”.
But since the election, Abbott insists he never promised anything other than 5%.
Whether or not 5% is a “fair share” of global emission reductions for Australia is debatable. If you adjust the starting years to allow for a fair comparison, it is broadly comparable with the US. But when the independent Climate Change Authority (which the government would like to abolish but hasn’t been able to yet) analysed the question, it found the conditions set down in 2009 had been sufficiently met for Australia to treble its 2020 target to 15%.
5. Australia’s policy is superior because it is happening now and the pledges being made by China and the US are for target dates that are ages and ages away
This astonishing argument was advanced by the prime minister on Thursday in response to the US and Chinese president’s announcements.
“It is all very well to talk about what might happen in the far distant future but we are going to meet our 5% reduction target within six years. So, we are talking about the here and now... We are talking about the practical; we are talking about the real. We are not talking about what might hypothetically happen 15, 20, 25, 30 years down the track,” he said.
Actually, they made 2020 commitments as well, and did stuff to meet them. This is about what Australia will do after 2020, which we need to announce by early next year and well in advance of the UN conference in Paris next December, so not in the far distant future. That pressure is even more intense after the US and Chinese announcement of their post-2020 targets.
And contrary to the argument advanced by Greg Sheridan in his article snappily entitled “US-China emissions caper won’t change a thing” where he argues the announcement doesn’t “actually require Beijing to do anything for a long time in the future”, shifting to a low emissions economy takes time and meeting a target in 10 or 15 years’ time requires changes to start now. That’s the whole point of the negotiation. There’s plenty of room to analyse whether the US and Chinese pledges require adequate greenhouse reductions, but suggesting that they should be “taken with a pinch of salt” because the target years are in the future misses the point of having target years.
6. Australia’s policy is not out of step because China and the US want to reduce emissions by using coal-fired power stations with carbon capture and storage, and by switching to lower emission fossil fuels
Carbon capture and storage is in fact the only way the world will be able to continue using coal-fired power in the long term, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and it is a key part of the US-Chinese agreement.
You would think this would make it a priority for any Australian government, especially one that believes “coal is good for humanity”, and that would bear a similarity with the China-US announcement.
But in the budget the government cut $459.3m over three years from its carbon capture and storage flagship program, leaving $191.7m to continue existing projects for the next seven years. (The program had already been cut by the previous Labor government and much of the funding remained unallocated.)
And the coal industry has “paused” a levy on black coal producers, which was supposed to build a $1bn industry fund to also finance research and demonstration into clean coal technology. It cited low coal prices for the halt. Some $250m has been spent from the fund on demonstration plants and a further $46m worth of grants are under assessment.
The objectives of Coal21, set up in 2006, have also been changed to allow the industry to use funding already collected to promote the use of coal. Its constitution now allows money to be spent on “promoting the use of coal both within Australia and overseas and promoting the economic and social benefits of the coal industry”. About $50m has been set aside for “energy literacy”, but only a small amount has been spent.I looked at my uncle after playing him my newest music video, “Part of Me.” I wasn’t sure what response to expect from him. This new video was different, unexpected, and a stark departure from my debut, “I Am a Girl.” His face registered an expression that was all too familiar. It’s the exact same look that directors gave me when I explained my concept for the video of “I Am a Girl.” The same look my songwriting teacher, who is a music industry veteran, gave me when I told her that “Part of Me” would be my follow-up song. The look that gave me a feeling that I was not doing what I was supposed to do as a “trans musician.”
In seeking visual collaborators for “I Am a Girl,” I found that directors immediately suggested shooting scenes where a trans woman is offering sex services on the street, putting makeup on, cutting her veins while screaming and crying, and showing invasive shots of binding, tucking, or injecting hormones into her body. When I refused to include those scenes in the script, directors who had signed on for the video dropped out at the last minute; they felt those scenes were needed in a video like this.
I understood where they were coming from; after all, this is the predominant theme in trans stories we see today. However, I wanted to reclaim the narrative. With “I Am a Girl,” I wanted to show that diversity exists within the trans community; that the community is made up of people of all ethnicities, ages, faiths, and stages within their own transitions. I wanted to show how big a part we have in the fabric of society and that we exist in every sector, making positive contributions. In the video, it was just as important to feature transgender people who are waitresses, teachers, journalists, advocates, architects, and medics without painting them as victims. It was just as important to not paint them with “trans” being their entire identity.
With my new video, “Part of Me,” I wanted to advance this concept of showing people right where they are in life and representing all sides of who they are. I wanted to make a statement: The only thing “trans” about this new video is that I, the performer, happen to be trans. I was not making “trans music.” I was just making music.
My uncle put down the phone from which the video was playing. He was quiet for a minute before saying, “Summer, do you know this band in the U.K. that has a trans musician?” Truth be told, there are less than a handful of trans musicians in the world who have any degree of mainstream coverage, so it wasn’t difficult to immediately figure out who he was referring to. My uncle walked over to the table, picked up his iPad, and started playing a song by Antony and the Johnsons. My uncle gave me feedback as the song was playing: “Summer, listen to this singer. You can hear her struggle, you can hear her pain, it’s so obvious. The video you showed me is light and poppy, about a celebrity crush. But you should talk about your struggle as a trans woman; people want to listen to that. You should write more songs about not being accepted as a woman or wanting to be a woman or something like that.”
I bit my tongue as I listened. After all, it was similar to what my songwriting teacher had said after I played her my new song: “Summer, I think it would be better if you wrote about not being accepted as a daughter rather than about a celebrity crush. People would respond better to that.” I didn’t say what was on my mind because I knew what they were implying: The narrative surrounding a trans woman should be limited to one that is sad and painful.
I disagree.
As a teenager, I often looked to the media for evidence that people like me mattered and that we were capable of success. That our stories weren’t reduced to only one aspect but were nuanced and varied. But what I saw and still see often proves otherwise.
This is why songwriting is so cathartic and meaningful to me: Through music, I get to tell a different story about myself. Although my song “Part of Me” isn’t revolutionary or radical, it is a song that gives me permission to feel the feelings that I had to suppress as a youth in a conservative Christian household. This song, like all my other songs, was my way of learning to see myself through my own eyes and to acknowledge that while there’s a part of me that has experienced sadness, there are also parts of me that are silly, sassy, and even downright cheesy. I believe that only when I can acknowledge all these parts will I find the strength to move forward because I’m not leaving any part of me behind.
That is why I’ll always do what I’m not supposed to do as a musician who happens to be trans. That is why I will always write, perform, and exist not as a trans musician but as a musician who is trans.
Check out "Part of Me" below and "I Am a Girl" here.
SUMMER LUK is a pop musician from Hong Kong who now resides in New York City and is an advocate for LGBTQ causes. Photo: Jesse Ditmars.The Bank of Japan (BoJ) is to buy a further 10 trillion yen (£79bn) of bonds, bringing the total accumulated so far in its battle against deflation to 80 trillion yen, or 20pc of Japanese GDP.
Jun Azumi, Japan’s finance minister, praised the bank’s “bold” efforts to hold down the yen, lending credence to suspicions that the real motive is to counter “beggar-thy-neighbour” currency devaluations by other powers and prevent the strong yen choking Japan’s export industry.
Yunosuke Ikeda, from Nomura, said the Bank of Japan had yielded to “immense political pressure” after months of criticism. Governor Masaaki Shirakawa is a champion of orthodoxy, a soulmate of Germany’s Jens Weidmann.
Mr Shirakawa stated on Wednesday – almost with regret – that Japan now has the “easiest monetary conditions” in the rich world. “I do not think that you could argue that the BoJ is less bold than the Fed,” he said.
David Rea, from Capital Economics, said attempts to weaken the yen are doomed to failure as Japan’s safe-haven role makes it a magnet for funds fleeing the unresolved crises in the rest of the world. He expects the yen to strengthen from 78 yen to the dollar to 70 yen by late next year. It was at 125 yen five years ago. China’s yuan is pegged to the dollar so Japan has suffered a dramatic loss of competitiveness against China.
Japan’s economy clearly contracted in the third quarter as the post-Fukushima rebound stalled and trade slumped across Asia. Japan’s exports fell 8pc in July. The trade deficit reached a one-month record of $6.6bn (£4.1bn).
The fresh stimulus extends the bond-buying plan through 2013 and prevents a cut-off as Japan grapples with a budget crisis and its own version of the US fiscal cliff. Fitch Ratings said parliament’s failure to raise the legal debt ceiling had halted bond issuance and created the risk of sudden spending cuts, possibly worth 8pc of GDP. “This would probably be extremely disruptive,” it said.
Mr Shirakawa denied that the latest move is part of a concerted easing with global authorities. “I do not think any central bank would act simply because another central bank acted,” he said.
Japan blazed the trail for modern QE in 2001 and has been on monetary life-support for a decade, yet the country is still stuck in perma-slump. Critics say Japan’s actions were too half-hearted to turn the tide. “They didn’t do enough,” said Simon Ward, from Henderson Global Investors.
Japan flooded the reserves of the commercial banks in its early rounds of QE, rather than buying assets. This changed in 2010, but the BoJ predominantly bought bonds from banks. Monetarists say this does little to boost the broad money supply. If so, the stimulus is unlikely to gain traction.In the midst of all the Republican vs Democratic back and forth happening in the media, one media mogul is looking at a whole different party altogether.
Glenn Beck has been more than a vocal critic of Trump, and he definitely doesn’t like Hillary. So when a YouTube channel called “No More 2 Party System” stopped Beck to ask him whether or not he was going to forgo voting Republican, and instead vote for Libertarian Gary Johnson, Beck said it was likely.
“I am probably going to vote for Gary Johnson, because he’s the guy,” said Beck. “I haven’t made my final decision yet, but the two party system is fractured beyond repair.”
“Last week you had the Democrats saying we’re going to limit the 1st, 2nd – I make the case of the 3rd – 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th Amendment…and then John McCain gets up and does the same thing. What’s the difference?” said Beck.
Watch the interview below.
It should be noted that Glenn Beck did say that he hasn’t quite made up his mind yet, but if Beck follows through, then this will be a big get for Johnson.
Johnson himself is currently on the verge of making the 15% approval deadline to reach the debate stage, and appearing alongside Hillary and Trump. He currently sits at 13%, and with Beck’s endorsement, it may put him over the top.When the 83rd Legislative Session gavels in tomorrow, the tweets will fly fast and furious — not that they didn't during the interim, and especially during the height of election season. Twitter is as much a fact of life these for most Texas House and Senate members as email newsletters or old-fashioned ink-on-paper correspondence, and it's maybe the best way to keep up with them in real time as the dog days of January give way to the hair-on-fire days of May.
In addition to the news and data and events we provide here at the Trib, we're also big on connecting you with the people who represent you. So we're pleased to provide a Twitter list of the handles of the 120 state lawmakers who do the communications thing 140 characters at a time. (Yes, you're reading that right: One-third of the 181-member legislature isn't on Twitter. In 2013. You could have knocked me over with an avatar. We're hoping more members hop on the bandwagon before too long, and we encourage them or their staffers to let us know if/when they do.)
Follow one, some or all. It's best, we've found, not to let them out of your sight for too long.
Texas Senate Twitter Handles
Name District Newly Elected? Twitter Username Birdwell, Brian 22 SenatorBirdwell Campbell, Donna 25 X DonnaCampbellTX Carona, John 16 JohnCarona Davis, Wendy 10 WendyDavisTexas Deuell, Robert "Bob" 2 bobdeuell Duncan, Robert 28 senatorduncan Ellis, Rodney 13 rodneyellis Estes, Craig 30 EstesForTexas Hancock, Kelly 9 X KHancock4TX Hegar, Glenn 18 Glenn_Hegar Hinojosa, Juan "Chuy" 20 TxChuy Huffman, Joan 17 JoanHuffman Lucio Jr., Eddie 27 SenatorLucio Nelson, Jane 12 SenJaneNelson Patrick, Dan 7 DanPatrick Paxton, Ken 8 X SenKenPaxton Rodríguez, José R. 29 Josefortexas Schwertner, Charles 5 X DrSchwertner Seliger, Kel 31 kseliger Taylor, Larry 11 X Taylor4Senate Uresti, Carlos "Charlie" 19 CarlosUresti Van de Putte, Leticia 26 leticiavdp Watson, Kirk 14 KirkPWatson West, Royce 23 SenRoyceWest Williams, Tommy 4 texansfortommy Zaffirini, Judith 21 JudithZaffirini
Texas House Twitter Handles
Name District Newly Elected? Twitter Username Alvarado, Carol 145 alvaradoforSD6 Anchia, Rafael 103 RafaelAnchia Aycock, Jimmie Don 54 Aycockjda Bell, Cecil 3 X CBellJr Bonnen, Dennis 25 dbonnen Bonnen, Greg 24 X DrGregBonnen Branch, Dan 108 texansfordan Burkett, Cindy 113 cindyburkett_tx Burnam, Lon 90 lonburnam Button, Angie Chen 112 angiechenbutton Canales, Terry 40 X TerryCanales40 Capriglione, Giovanni 98 X VoteGiovanni Carter, Stefani 102 stefani_carter Clardy, Travis 11 X travisfortexas Coleman, Garnet 147 GFColeman Collier, Nicole 95 X NicoleCollier95 Cortez, Philip 117 X CortezPhilip Creighton, Brandon 16 RepCreighton Crownover, Myra 64 MyraCrownover Dale, Tony 136 X TonyDaleTX Davis, Sarah 134 SarahforHD134 Deshotel, Joe 22 RepJoeDeshotel Eiland, Craig 23 CraigEiland Fallon, Pat 106 X FallonForTexas Farias, Joe 118 RepJoeFarias Farney, Marsha 20 X DrMarshaFarney Farrar, Jessica Cristina 148 jfarrardist148 Fletcher, Allen 130 AllenFletcher Flynn, Dan 2 Dan_Flynn Frullo, John 84 FrulloForTexas Geren, Charlie 99 charliegeren Goldman, Craig 97 X GoldmanCraig Gonzales, Larry 52 larrygonzales52 Gonzàlez, Mary 75 X RepMaryGonzalez Gonzalez, Naomi R. 76 votenaomi Gooden, Lance 4 RepLanceGooden Guerra, Robert "Bobby" 41 BobbyGuerraRGV Guillen, Ryan 31 RyanGuillen Gutierrez, Roland 119 RolandG119 Harless, Patricia 126 PatriciaHarless Harper-Brown, Linda 105 lhbcampaign Hilderbran, Harvey 53 RepHilderbran Howard, Donna 48 DonnaHowardTX Huberty, Dan 127 DanHuberty Hughes, Bryan 5 RepHughes Hunter, Todd 32 toddahunter Isaac, Jason A. 45 ISAACforTexas Johnson, Eric 100 JohnsonForTexas Kacal, Kyle 12 X KyleKacal King, Ken 88 X KingForTexas King, Phil 61 PhilKingTX Kleinschmidt, Tim 17 RepKleinschmidt Klick, Stephanie 91 X StephanieKlick Kolkhorst, Lois 13 loisfortexas Krause, Matt 93 X RepMattKrause Larson, Lyle 122 RepLyleLarson Lavender, George 1 teamlavender Leach, Jeff 67 X leachfortexas Longoria, Oscar 35 X OscarLongoria35 Lucio III, Eddie 38 TXRepE3 Marquez, Marisa 77 MarisaMarquez Martinez Fischer, Trey 116 TMFtx McClendon, Ruth Jones 120 Ruth_McClendon Menéndez, José 124 Menendez4Texas Miller, Rick 26 X vote4rick Moody, Joseph 78 X moodyforelpaso Muñoz Jr., Sergio 36 SergioMunozJr Murphy, Jim 133 JimMurphy133 Naishtat, Elliott 49 ElliottNaishtat Nevarez, Alfred "Poncho" 74 X poncho_nevarez Oliveira, Rene 37 ReneOOliveira Paddie, Chris 9 X chrispaddie Parker, Tan 63 tparker63 Patrick, Diane 94 Diane4Texas Perez, Mary Ann 144 X votemaryann Perry, Charles 83 electcharles Pitts, Jim 10 RepJimPitts Price, Walter T. "Four" 87 FourPriceTX Raney, John 14 ElectJohnRaney Raney, John 14 X ElectJohnRaney Ratliff, Bennett 115 X BennettRatliff Raymond, Richard Peňa 42 RepPenaRaymond Reynolds, Ron 27 ronereynolds Riddle, Debbie 150 debbieriddle Rodriguez, Eddie 51 TXRepERodriguez Rodriguez, Justin 125 X RepJRod Sanford, Scott 70 X Scott_SanfordTX Sheets, Kenneth 107 RepKenSheets Sheffield, J.D. 59 X dr_sheffield Sheffield, Ralph 197 texassheffield Simmons, Ron 65 X RonSimmonsTexas Simpson, David 7 davidsimpsontx Springer, Drew 68 X DrewSpringer Stickland, Jonathan 92 X RepStickland Straus, Joe 121 SpeakerStraus Taylor, Van 66 RepVanTaylor Toth, Steve 15 X Toth_4_Texas Thompson, Ed 29 x RepEdThompson Turner, Chris 101 ChrisGTurner Turner, Scott 33 X ScottTurnerTX Turner, Sylvester 139 SylvesterTurner Villalba, Jason 114 X JasonVillalba Villarreal, Mike 123 MikeVillarreal Walle, Armando 140 RepWalle White, James 19 James_E_White Workman, Paul 47 paulworkman Wu, Gene 137 X GeneforTexas Zedler, Bill 96 bill_zedler Zerwas, John 28 RepJohnZerwas
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.If you've tried to use the UART on the GPIO header of the new Raspberry Pi 3, you may have been frustrated to discover that it doesn't work properly.
There are a few reasons this is the case, and I'll get into those further down the post, but the current workaround is this:
In /boot/config.txt, add the line core_freq=250. Save and reboot! The GPIO UART now operates at the correct baud rate, and is available at /dev/ttyS0, and NOT /dev/ttyAMA0 like before.
First things first, why is the GPIO header UART now on /dev/ttyS0, and not /dev/ttyAMA0 like before? The answer is that previously, the UART broken out at the GPIO header was uart0 on the BCM2835/6. However, uart0 is now used for Bluetooth instead, so on the Pi 3, it is uart1 that is broken out at the GPIO header instead.
But why change it at all?
The reason, and the crux of the problem, is that unlike uart1, uart0 is immune from changes in the core clock frequency (and has larger FIFOs). Unlike uart0, the baud rate for uart1 is dependent on the core clock. So if the core clock changes, the baud rate will change!
Interestingly, during my investigation, I had found that it was possible to temporarily 'fix' the serial console by initiating a SSH session with the Pi. By starting an SSH connection, the core clock was bumped up to hand the extra load, which brought the baud rate back into line with what my USB UART cable was expecting!
So, until we get a 'proper' fix (possibly setting PLLs correctly or dynamically with any changes to the core frequency), the best option seems to be setting the core clock to 250MHz, with core_freq=250 in /boot/config.txt.
Further information, from people who are cleverer than I am, can be found in this GitHub issue.Bastian Schweinsteiger received a warm welcome from the Old Trafford faithful
Manchester United new boy Bastian Schweinsteiger says he is "surprised" at how warmly he has been received by fans.
The World Cup-winning Germany midfielder has vowed to help the Old Trafford club return to former heights after signing a three-year contract following his move from Bayern Munich last month.
He came off the bench to make his United debut an hour into their season-opening win at home to Tottenham and has told Bild newspaper that is enjoying life in Manchester so far.
He said: "For me, it was a big surprise to see how many supporters welcomed me with warmth and enthusiasm at the opening league game against Tottenham at Old Trafford. It gave me goose bumps.
"I can promise I'll do everything I can, using all my experience, to try and help the club to reach the same international level as Real Madrid, Barcelona or Bayern."
And Schweinsteiger says he would love to come across his former team mates at Bayern during his stint with United.
Schweinsteiger has signed a three-year contract with United
"It's possible that over the next three years we'll meet in the Champions League," he said. "That would be a really good clash."
One match report playfully suggested that the United new boy had "eaten too much choucroute" but Schweinsteiger has not taken offence.
"The English have a particular sense of humour!" he added.So it looks like Goldman Sach's strategy is going to be "deny, deny, deny." "We didn't mean it like that," "You're misinterpreting," and "We wouldn't dream of it."
And yet, here we stand, in the smoking rubble of the American dream. And there they are, laughing it up in Park Avenue penthouses. Time for some karma, baby!
Goldman Sachs sought to protect itself from a collapsing housing |
)
METHOD 2: Using Registry Editor (regedit.exe)
Follow the simple steps mentioned below to enable the policy:
METHOD 1: Using Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc)
1. Type gpedit.msc in RUN or Start Menu search box and press Enter. It'll open Group Policy Editor.
2. Now go to:
Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Update
3. In right-side pane, double-click on "Turn off the upgrade to the latest version of Windows through Windows Update" option, set it to Enabled.
4. Apply the changes and restart your computer.
Now Windows 7 will never prompt you about Windows 10 upgrade through Windows Update.
PS: If you decide to re-enable Windows 10 upgrade in future, double-click on "Turn off the upgrade to the latest version of Windows through Windows Update" option and set it to Not Configured.
METHOD 2: Using Registry Editor (regedit.exe)
If you are using Windows 7 Home Basic or Home Premium edition, you'll not be able to run gpedit.msc command because these editions don't come with Group Policy Editor. But you can enable Group Policy Editor in these editions using this tutorial.
If you can't use or don't want to use Group Policy Editor, you can take help of Registry Editor for the same task. Just follow these simple steps:
1. Type regedit in RUN or Start Menu search box and press Enter. It'll open Registry Editor.
2. Now go to following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows
3. Create a new key under Windows key and set its name as Windows Update
4. Now in right-side pane, create a new DWORD DisableOSUpgrade and set its value to 1
5. Close Registry Editor and restart your computer to take effect. After reboot, Windows 10 upgrade will never appear on Windows Update.
PS: To re-enable Windows 10 upgrade in future, delete the DWORD DisableOSUpgrade created in step 4.
NOTE: If you are not familiar with Registry editing tasks, we are also providing ready-made Registry script to do the task automatically. Download following ZIP file, extract it and run.REG file. It'll ask for confirmation, accept it. Restart your computer and Windows 10 upgrade will be disabled in Windows 7:
PS: If you are using Windows 8.1 and want to prevent Windows 10 automatic upgrade, the methods mentioned in following article should work for you:
How to Disable Automatic Upgrade to Latest Windows Version in Windows 8 and 8.1
Also Check:
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Posted in: Troubleshooting, Windows 7
About the author: Vishal Gupta (also known as VG) has been awarded with Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award. He has written several tech articles for popular newspapers and magazines and has also appeared in a few tech shows on TV channels. (Connect with Us)
Similar articles you may likePuran Dhaka, or Old Dhaka, was a rather unlikely subject. I live here. It existed all around me. It was almost trying to find the unseen within the everyday. Old Dhaka had made me appreciate properly cooked greasy food, the sleaziest of slang, and it is where I had come to rediscover the same small town pulse of holding on to things rather than letting go.
My own childhood years in Comilla, a small town mostly surrounded by countryside and steeped in customs and traditional lifestyles, had made me not just appreciate but feel at home with relations which grew over time and bordered on tradition more than trend. But through the frames, my Old Dhaka started to divulge unseen lives and throw back at me more agonizing questions of assimilation, and even worse, deletion.
As I started to look, the world that seemed just ordinary and domestic began to unravel into an intricate web of ages-old wisdom and tradition. Festivals such as Holi celebrated with all its grandeur at Shankhari Bazar, which had seemed nothing more than fun, just throwing colors at one another, revealed bonds of belonging, spiritual continuity and rejuvenation. It ceased to be a mere Hindu festivity, but more a celebration in the joy of being. Old, regal structures that had seemed liked edifices were now symbols of “living art”.
The common sight of mothers’ bathing their children in the small courtyard and tired, old horses pulling carriages that had long ceased to be any “real” form of transport, were becoming dots in a matrix where living meant progressively building on what you have and not deleting structures, customs, ways of life which had come into place over centuries. It took time, but with every passing day, I realized why Sumitra Debi of Bonogram wants her own house and those surrounding it to stay the same. They were not merely houses; they represented her sixty years in this world. It is time and lives. Lives lived within the confines of walls breathe with those structures and their collective consciousness makes the fragments into a whole.
Words such as family, tradition, belonging mean a lot here. In fact, they are what bind. The ether, filled with collective growth, cannot be touched or seen. It is lived. Old Dhaka ceases to exist as just an area, and the streets I have called my own become one singular space that I call home.
Photographs & Text: Munem Wasif, Bangladesh | Website: www.munemwasif.com
Belonging, the Book by Munem Wasif is available for USD$50 at the IPA BOOK STORE
“It only takes a single glance to recognize a classic. The confirmation can be seen here, in this direct, forthright photography — the same quality that came through in the series devoted to “Salty Tears”, in which Munem Wasif examined, documented and questioned the situation regarding water in his country, Bangladesh. Classic by choice, starting with the choice of black and white, whose relative distancing from reality demands exacting precision in the composition. Arising, as always in photography, from a succession of rejections, eliminations and decisions, this choice precludes the picturesque quality that too often prevails when lands and peoples are viewed through the prism of exoticism. But black and white, while it places the photographer within a documentary tradition long associated with journalism, obliges him to go beyond merely transposing a visual record of the world. He must take a position, and he does, deliberately and consistently.” – Christian Caujolle
Photos and texts by Munem wasif | Preface by Christian Caujolle | Design by Nelly Riedel | Publisher: Clémentine de la Féronnière
160 pages, 69 pictures | Size 16.8 x 21.8 cm | Language of text: English and French | Year published: 2013Share
Friday marks the worldwide launch of the Nintendo Switch, and many early adopters are logging into Twitter on their brand-new hardware to show off their fancy new system. It seems, however, that the social media platform doesn’t know too much about Nintendo’s latest release.
When Twitter users log into the service on a new device, they’re sent an email to confirm that they really are who they say they are. This message contains information about how and where they logged in, so that anything suspicious can be reported.
However, when users log in via the Switch, it’s being reported as a device using Apple’s web browser Safari, according to a report from Nintendo Life. Of course, this is not the case — but there’s a reason that the console is causing some confusion for Twitter’s automated email system.
WebKit is one of several engines used to power modern web browsers. It was used to create Safari, and it seems that it’s used to help the Switch post content to Twitter. Whatever method Twitter’s login protection system uses to detect what device the user is working with, it seems that it’s not currently set up to acknowledge the Switch.
A fork of WebKit is also used to power Google Chrome and Opera, so it seems that Twitter should be able to discern between different browsers using the engine. The mostly likely explanation is that the service hasn’t got around to adding an identifier for the Switch just yet, which isn’t surprising, given that it’s only been on shelves for a matter of hours.
Whatever Twitter’s emails might claim, the Nintendo Switch isn’t running Safari, even if there are some similarities under the hood. Nintendo and Apple may have looked pretty friendly around the reveal of Super Mario Run for iOS, but the Switch isn’t being welcomed into the Apple ecosystem just yet.Hampton City Council is considering a proposal to build a $31.5 million aquatics center, possibly adjacent to the Hampton Coliseum, that would include a 100,000-square-foot building housing an Olympic-sized pool and a smaller lap pool as well as a kitchen, concession stands and seating for 1,500 spectators.
The idea of an aquatics center has been discussed in Hampton for years, but this is the first time the council or the public has seen so detailed a proposal. City Manager Mary Bunting is urging the council to move quickly on the project lest another locality in the area beat Hampton to the draw.
City staff presented details from a consultant's report that included two designs — one for a smaller community pool and the larger design backed by city staff.
The facility would likely be located near the Hampton Coliseum and include a leisure pool and splash park on the outside for local recreational use. The project would cost more than $31.5 million and take about four years to build.
Hampton has been pushing to develop its sports tourism base, a multibillion-dollar industry that Bunting has described as "recession-proof" thanks to the inclination of parents to continue spending on their children's activities while tightening their budgetary belts elsewhere.
A 2014 report from George Washington University and the National Association of Sports Commissions found that families were spending $9 billion a year to travel for sports and said that number was growing.
Local swim coaches and a pair of young swimmers from Kecoughtan High School lined up to praise the larger recommended design, saying it is exactly what they would need to grow local swim clubs, host regional or potentially national swim meets and have a large central swimming facility as a home base.
Dave Henderson, who runs the Southeast Virginia Aquatics swimming club, said he hosts swim meets at pools in Newport News and at Fort Eustis that draw 400 to 500 swimmers. The proposed facility would double the number of swimmers who could participate and would allow his club's space-constrained membership to triple from 150 swimmers to as high as 500.
CAPTION Amazon reveals new long-term energy plan for shipping by 2030, the online retail giant says it wants to cut carbon emissions in half. Amazon is calling this new initiative, "Shipment Zero." Amazon, via statement In the long run, Amazon adds that it wants to run 100% on renewable energy. Amazon reveals new long-term energy plan for shipping by 2030, the online retail giant says it wants to cut carbon emissions in half. Amazon is calling this new initiative, "Shipment Zero." Amazon, via statement In the long run, Amazon adds that it wants to run 100% on renewable energy. CAPTION Amazon reveals new long-term energy plan for shipping by 2030, the online retail giant says it wants to cut carbon emissions in half. Amazon is calling this new initiative, "Shipment Zero." Amazon, via statement In the long run, Amazon adds that it wants to run 100% on renewable energy. Amazon reveals new long-term energy plan for shipping by 2030, the online retail giant says it wants to cut carbon emissions in half. Amazon is calling this new initiative, "Shipment Zero." Amazon, via statement In the long run, Amazon adds that it wants to run 100% on renewable energy. CAPTION Payless to shut down all of its stores in the US and Canada. It is the latest in-person retailer to fall victim to the rise of Amazon and online shopping. Payless filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this week and will start shut downs next month. Payless to shut down all of its stores in the US and Canada. It is the latest in-person retailer to fall victim to the rise of Amazon and online shopping. Payless filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this week and will start shut downs next month. CAPTION The Pizza Shop in York County is an institution that is now owned by Brandon Triolet who started as a dish-washer at the restaurant while he was a student at Grafton High. The Pizza Shop in York County is an institution that is now owned by Brandon Triolet who started as a dish-washer at the restaurant while he was a student at Grafton High. CAPTION The old Kmart on Warwick Boulevard in the Denbigh section of Newport News has been purchased by the economic development authority. The old Kmart on Warwick Boulevard in the Denbigh section of Newport News has been purchased by the economic development authority. CAPTION CBS Refuses to air caannabis company's Super Bowl Ad Acreage Holdings, a U.S. marijuana company, says CBS rejected its 30-second commercial. George Allen, president of Acreage Holdings, said the ad doesn't focus on its products but shows how medical marijuana has helped people deal with pain. CBS Refuses to air caannabis company's Super Bowl Ad Acreage Holdings, a U.S. marijuana company, says CBS rejected its 30-second commercial. George Allen, president of Acreage Holdings, said the ad doesn't focus on its products but shows how medical marijuana has helped people deal with pain.
One sticking point is funding — the city has long suggested some kind of partnership model to defray the cost of such a facility, but those deep-pocketed partners have yet to materialize.
Bunting said nailing down partnership commitments was a "chicken-or-the-egg" issue that really hinged on the city making a move that broadcast its intention to proceed with the project.
However, the staff painted the facility as a potential boon for the city: Between direct economic impacts, such as money spent by swimmers and their families to stay in hotels and eat meals in Hampton, and the indirect effects on the larger local economy, planning and zoning director Terry O'Neill quoted figures on the order of $10 million annually injected into the city economy. That won't go directly into the city's coffers but would net some tax revenues.
Factoring in operations costs, debt taken on to fund the project and and revenue projections, the city would spend somewhere between $2.2 million and $3.2 million each year for the facility.
Mayor Donnie Tuck expressed some skepticism about those projections of revenue and use. He pointed to a 2014 feasibility study for a similar, though slightly smaller, facility in James City County, noting that even though the James City facility was anticipated to host more events than Hampton's, the county didn't predict anywhere near the revenue that Hampton's city staff claim would stream in from the facility.
The report from James City County shows that proposed sports facility, which would also include basketball and volleyball facilities, would take five years of growth to reach an annual revenue of $1.8 million, the figure Hampton Parks, Recreation and Leisure Department head Kevin Myers said was the city's mid-range revenue expectation.
He assured Tuck that the city projections — which showed much higher revenue and much lower operating costs than projections from Hampton's own consultant — were "attainable (in) year one."
Bunting said several other cities had done studies on indoor competitive swimming facilities, including James City County and Chesapeake, so if the city was going to do it, it needed to move fast.
"I think it's commonly believed that whoever moves first is going to own the market. It won't be worthwhile for someone to do another," Bunting said. "Someone is going to do it — the question is, who is going to do that and capture that economic impact?"
The illustrations presented to the council last week showed a facility next to the Hampton Coliseum, along the Coliseum River near Pine Chapel Road.
Planning director O'Neill said the pool facility could go elsewhere in the city, but the consultants recommended somewhere in Coliseum Central to take advantage of nearby hotel space. Exactly where is still up for debate, with several parcels in Coliseum Central listed as contenders.
"You have all the infrastructure in place to compete for those big events from USA Swimming," between the hotels and the nearby Hampton Roads Convention Center, O'Neill said.
O'Neill told the council that under the standard governmental procurement process, the project would take about four years to build. That could be sped up if the city opts for some kind of public-private partnership or a design-build arrangement where one firm comes in to handle the project from design through construction.
The project doesn't appear in the city's current capital improvement plan — the document that helps guide future budgeting for major projects and has plans out to 2021.
The council took no action on the aquatic center suggestion. Council members won't get into the weeds of planning long-term spending for major projects until later this month when it will meet to discuss strategic priorities. The staff will develop a new capital plan over the next several months, ahead of next spring's annual budgeting process.
Murphy can be reached by phone at 757-247-4760.Two of Canada's largest cable television distributors are expected to announce the launch of a joint video streaming service on Tuesday, in a bid to bolster their positions against growing competition from online services such as Netflix Inc.
Rogers Communications Inc. and Shaw Communications Inc. have scheduled a 10 a.m. event, to be co-hosted by Dina Pugliese of City's Breakfast Television, in Toronto on Tuesday. An advisory promises a product launch and demo for something cryptically referred to as "The Loch Ness Monster."
The product in question is believed to be a new online video streaming platform. Earlier this year, online industry publication Cartt.ca reported that Rogers was spending more than $100-million to secure digital video rights for an over-the-top service rumoured to be called Showmi. One e-mail invitation to Tuesday's event referred to the product as "Gladiator."
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The Globe and Mail reported as early as last year that Rogers was in negotiations to establish such a service.
In an interview in May of 2013, David Purdy, senior vice-president of content at Rogers, told The Globe he believed "that all major [broadcasters] will roll out a Netflix competitor."
"It's a common strategy to try and figure out how to roll out products that allow viewers to binge watch and to offer all-you-can-eat movie services," Mr. Purdy said.
A numbered company affiliated with Rogers, 8503028 Canada Inc., has registered the business name Shomi Entertainment in several provinces and is seeking to trademark the word "shomi" for use in Canada. The trademark application states the term would apply to a number of uses, among them, "subscription broadcasting services and subscription streaming services, including subscription television broadcasting, subscription audio and video broadcasts."
The numbered company was incorporated in April of 2013, and first filed the trademark application in August of that year.
Tuesday's announcement comes less than two weeks before the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) begins two weeks of high-profile public hearings on the future of television in Canada, dubbed Let's Talk TV. Among the companies appearing to make submissions will be Netflix and Google Inc., which owns YouTube, as well as Rogers and Shaw.Our 2013 summer graduation ceremonies take place between Friday 28 June and Saturday 06 July.
The musician and singer Eddi Reader is among those receiving honorary awards.
Graduation ceremonies
Full details of all our summer graduation ceremonies are available on our Academic Registry website.
Graduation ceremonies
Live video
The graduations will be streamed live from this page.
Graduation gifts Visit the University Visitor Centre or our online gift shop for official University gifts. Find the Visitor Centre on Campus maps University Gift Shop
Honorary graduates
Eddi Reader
The musician and singer will be awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Music at the McEwan Hall on Friday 28 June.
Simon Gage
On Saturday 29 June, the Director of Edinburgh International Science Festival will be awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science.
Anne Glover
On the same day, the Chief Scientific Advisor to the European Commission will receive an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science.
Quentin Cooper
The freelance Broadcaster, author and conference facilitator will be awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science on Monday 1 July.
Gordon Rintoul
The Director of National Museums Scotland will receive an Honorary Degree of Doctor honoris causa on Thursday 4 July.
Dame Stephanie Shirley
On Saturday 6 July, the Head of the Shirley Foundation, which donated £1m to the Patrick Wild Centre for Autism, Fragile X Syndrome and Intellectual Disabilities will receive University Benefactor award.
Full list of honorary graduates
The full list of honorary graduates can be found on our Academic Registry website.
Honorary graduatesComing Soon
Empress
After escaping from her horrific husband, Queen Emporia and her kids must hide from his army at all costs -- even by teleporting to different planets.
Black Moon
In 17th century Italy, a teenage midwife accused of witchcraft must choose between a star-crossed love and fulfilling her powerful destiny.
ReMastered: The Miami Showband Massacre
Ambushed by Ulster loyalists, three members of the Miami Showband were killed in Northern Ireland in 1975. Was the crime linked to the government?
Edoardo Ferrario: Temi Caldi
Italian comedian Edoardo Ferrario riffs on life at 30 and unpacks the peculiarities of global travel, social media and people who like craft beer.
Cobalt Blue
When a brother and sister fall in love with the same man, ensuing events shatter a traditional Marathi family. Based on Sachin Kundalkar's novel.
Maya and the Three
A Mesoamerican warrior princess embarks on a quest to recruit three legendary fighters to help save the world of gods -- and humankind.
Your Son
After his son is brutally beaten outside a nightclub, a surgeon takes the law into his own hands and seeks vengeance against the perpetrators.
Tales of the City
Middle-aged Mary Ann returns to San Francisco and the eccentric friends she left behind. Based on Armistead Maupin's books and starring Laura Linney.Palm oil plantations have an overall negative impact on biodiversity, according to research released this week. The study, published in Nature Communications, found palm oil plantations are home to fewer insect species than even intensive rubber tree plantations.
A forests expert at James Cook University, Bill Laurance, said of the research: “The big message is that oil palm is bad for biodiversity, in every sense of the word — even when compared to damaged rainforests that are regenerating after earlier logging or clearing.”
The study, conducted in Sumatra – an Indonesian island famous for its tiger and orangutan populations – found that palm oil plantations contain half the number of insect species that natural forests do.
Worldwide, palm oil is one of the most rapidly expanding crops, with the total area of land devoted to palm oil production tripling in the last 25 years. This expansion has been blamed for the rapid deforestation seen in both Indonesia and Malaysia in recent years.
In Sumatra, roughly 25% of palm oil plantations have been directly converted from forest. Still, Indonesia – one of the world’s leading palm oil producers — plans to double palm oil production by 2020.
The environmental and social consequences of palm oil production have been hotly debated over the past decade, particularly due to the industry’s impact on orangutans.
Losing predators
A decline in predatory insects — which help keep other species under control — was particularly worrying.
Laurance explained:
“This is analogous to the kinds of changes we see in larger animals, such as birds and mammals. The specialists and bigger predators tend to be highly vulnerable, and they’re often replaced by generalist omnivores in disturbed environments.
"For example, you lose tigers and specialised understory birds and gain ‘trash’ species—such as generalist rats—that can live almost anywhere.”
Ecosystem damage
Insects are important in ecosystems because they help recycle nutrients, and are a food source for other species.
The new research shows a clear link between the reduced numbers of species in palm oil plantations, and lower energy transfer and ecosystem function in these regions.
This is bad news for other species that live in the region, such as the orang-utan: if the environment is producing less energy, it will be harder to survive.
Head of the Conservation Biology department at the University of Göttingen, Germany, and one of the paper’s authors, Ulrich Brose, said there could be several reasons for the loss of insects.
“Two potential explanations are the pesticides or insecticides applied at higher levels in oil palm plantations or differences in energy (litter or nutrients) input.”
He said their data couldn’t yet disentangle these causes, however the research team at the University of Göttingen were working towards an answer.August 10, 2011
BRITAIN IS reeling after several nights of rioting in major cities across the country--the worst civil unrest in a least a generation.
What began at the end of last week as a series of protests against police brutality and racism has escalated into a major crisis of the entire social and political order, with police apparently losing control in parts of major cities.
The first wave of unrest came in response to the police murder of Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old Black man and father of four from Tottenham in North London. Duggan was riding in a taxi on Thursday, August 4, when police stopped him as part of an operation against gun crime in Black neighborhoods. During the ensuing incident, police shot Duggan twice, with some witnesses reporting that he was restrained on the ground when the shooting happened.
At first, London's Metropolitan Police tried to claim that Duggan had been armed and had shot at the arresting officers. It later emerged, however, that the only bullets fired were police-issued.
Police look on as rioters pass a blazing building in North London
Residents of Tottenham, sick of repeated police harassment and profiling of young Black men in particular, organized a peaceful protest at a local police station the next night. After riot police confronted the protesters, however, the demonstration escalated into running battles between local youth and the cops.
The murder of Duggan and the heavy-handed police response to the protests clearly touched a nerve in impoverished neighborhoods across inner-city London. Rioting spread to nearby areas on Saturday and Sunday night, with crowds of young people confronting police, attacking cars and shops, and reportedly looting local businesses.
By Monday, the unrest had spread beyond London, with similar riots taking place in Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds and Liverpool. Police were hopelessly outnumbered and out-maneuvered in London itself, with important parts of the capital city in flames and in the hands of the rioters.
The ruling class reaction to the unrest has been typically hypocritical and reactionary. Politicians, police commanders and media pundits alike have denounced the rebellion as "mindless criminality" and denied the importance of social and political causes for the violence. Boris Johnson, the Conservative Party mayor of London, denied that poverty and racism had anything to do with the unrest, saying, "It's time that people who are engaged in looting and violence stopped hearing economic and social justifications."
At the national level, the coalition government led by the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats was talking ominously about tripling the number of cops on the streets and perhaps even giving police permission to use rubber bullets on rioters--a move without precedent in British history, though very familiar in Britain's colonial possessions like Northern Ireland.
IT'S NO coincidence, of course, that these events are taking place in the poorest neighborhoods of London and other major cities. Youth in these areas have grown up in a climate of poverty and racism, facing regular police harassment, along with unemployment rates for youth that were already sky-high before the current economic crisis hit.
If things weren't already bad enough in British cities, the Tory-led government has embarked on a massive program of austerity measures designed to make poor people and the working class pay for the economic crisis. As one protester summed up conditions for working-class youth for a Reuters reporter:
This is the ghetto, this is the slums, they don't care about us. I've been stopped outside my house by the police for no reason. There's no jobs...but still they want to cut benefits. We ain't got no way to survive, and it's like no one cares about us. There's injustice, and we've had enough.
Plus, these young people have seen the bankers and politicians who wrecked the British economy get away scot-free. While the millionaires and their political representatives spend their summer holidays in Tuscany (Prime Minister David Cameron) or Beverly Hills (Chancellor George Osborne), Black youth get nothing but cuts and police harassment.
And when the tensions in people's lives--racism, increasing poverty, alienation and immiseration--reach a boiling point, those in power lecture about how "violence is wrong," without ever once acknowledging the daily violence in the lives of the poor and working-class people.
When asked by an NBC reporter if the riots had achieved anything, one young protester had an eloquent response:
Yes. You wouldn't be talking to me now if we didn't riot, would you? Two months ago, we marched to [London police HQ] Scotland Yard--more than 2,000 of us, all Blacks--and it was peaceful and calm, and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night, a bit of rioting and looting, and look around you.
Veteran socialist and author Tariq Ali put his finger on the hypocrisy of the political and media establishment in a comment this week:
They privilege the wealthy. They let it be known that judges and magistrates should set an example by giving punitive sentences to protesters found with peashooters. They never seriously question why no policeman is ever prosecuted for the 1,000-plus deaths in custody since 1990... Yes, we know violence on the streets in London is bad. Yes, we know that looting shops is wrong. But why is it happening now? Why didn't it happen last year? Because grievances build up over time. Because when the system wills the death of a young Black citizen from a deprived community, it simultaneously, if subconsciously, wills the response.
Ultimately, the unrest in Britain must be seen as another stage in the global revolt against austerity and state repression. Many of the young people on the streets of London and other cities these nights probably took part in the huge, militant student protests in London late last year. They have seen rioting, strikes, mass demonstrations and revolutions spread from Greece to Spain to the Middle East and beyond.
Symbolically, the riots in London broke out as world financial markets were in turmoil over concerns that the American economy is going back into recession and the European debt crisis is spreading to Italy and Spain. The crisis-ridden capitalist system has nothing to offer young people, and it was only a matter of time before their anger exploded into action.
These aren't the first riots of the crisis, and they won't be the last.Last August, we ranked the best (hyper-)local beer for each individual school in the ACC. Because it’s beer and college football, there were certainly complaints. But the idea behind keeping things as close to campus as possible made a lot of sense. So we’re doing that once again this year.
However, instead of being ranked by an individual beer, each ACC football team will be sorted by the best local brewery. Most of the schools in the conference have a brewery in the same city. However, some (Clemson) do not, and they suffer the consequences of that. If this reminds you of the “Drinking the NCAA Tournament” series Aaron and I have authored for the past three years, yes, it is similar.
With all of that said, we dive in:
Ranking Each ACC’s School Best Local Craft Brewery
1. Wake Forest Demon Deacons: Foothills Brewing
If you’ve been to North Carolina, you’ve certainly noticed this brewery’s widely-available options like Jade IPA, Hoppyum and People’s Porter (all great in their own right). But what puts Foothills over the top is Barrel-Aged Sexual Chocolate, its annual Russian Imperial Stout release around Valentine’s Day. I finally got to enjoy the well-balanced beer this year, and it did not disappoint (as opposed to Wake football, which...).
2. Louisville Cardinals: Against the Grain
The Cards drop just one from the top spot from last year, still proving that this is not just a bourbon city (though they’re quite good at that). Against the Grain’s located at Louisville Slugger Field and churns out some of the top beers in the state, including Bo & Luke, one of my own personal favorite brews — and an excellent Kentucky bourbon barrel-aged imperial stout. Several other darker options (and some of the hoppier stuff too) is also worth your time.
3. Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets: Orpheus Brewing
Finally, Atlanta people can’t possibly get mad at me again, right? Orpheus’s collection of IPAs and sour stylings is my type of scene, and they have darker options for those who’d rather stay away from the assaults on your palate. But if you’re willing to just dive in, hoppy options like Transmigration of Souls and Life.Death.Life.Truth are waiting for you.
4. NC State Wolfpack: Lonerider Brewing Co.
This was not an easy one to land on, with so many options in Raleigh. But a focus on doing standard styles (porters, IPAs) consistently well put Lonerider over the top for me. Magnificent 77 and Pistols at Dawn are both worth testing out, but might as well give everything a shot if you can. I’m sure the NC crowd will tell me why this is 100-percent wrong.
5. Duke Blue Devils: Fullsteam Brewery
Admittedly, I was skeptical of Summer Basil, their basil saison -- and yet, it was a very pleasant and refreshing drink. The experimentation there is not their main objective, though it does speak to their ability to nail something more complex. Other Fullsteam options include some darker fare including First Frost (winter warmer) and Working Man’s Lunch (brown ale). The barrel-aged version of the latter being a real winner.
6. Pittsburgh Panthers: East End Brewing
East End’s Gratitude barleywine release is hotly anticipated, and may be an atypical style expertise. But there’s plenty more to sample from the Pittsburgh staple, including a slew of stouts, Belgian strong ales and IPAs. No matter what you choose to keep you warm outside a largely vacant Heinz Field, East End should do the trick.
7. Virginia Cavaliers: Three Notch’d Brewing
Several breweries above have focused on the heavier (ABV, IBU) side of things, but Three Notch’d doesn’t pursue that as much — though there are some exceptions there, including milk stout Biggie S’Mores. Still, you’ll find a nice selection of options that go a bit easier on you. Not a bad thing if you’re parking at a brewery for a day.
8. North Carolina Tar Heels: Carolina Brewery
Confined just to Chapel Hill, versus the entire Research Triangle, your options are limited for UNC. Yet, Carolina Brewery is a serviceable option for dark beers, especially of the seasonal variety. Santa’s Secret is a quality winter warmer, and their more regular stouts and porters are also worth your while.
9. Miami Hurricanes: Titanic Brewing Co.
Coral Gables is more limited than the rest of South Florida, so Miami’s getting Titanic instead of a host of other options in the region. While the brewery’s menu has some hoppier options available, the highlight is probably its brown ale, Boiler Room, which admittedly seems strange for the climate.
10. Syracuse Orange: Eastwood Brewing Co.
Formerly Double Barrel, Eastwood’s one of a handful of spots in Syracuse proper. On the sweeter side, they have a Chocolate Raspberry Porter, and for hop fans there’s an appropriately named ACC IPA. Prison City’s the best brewery in the larger CNY area, but unfortunately Auburn does not qualify.
11. Florida State Seminoles: Proof Brewing Co.
The Tallahassee beer scene’s grown considerably since we started this exercise a few years back, and Proof’s success has been a key part of that. From big imperial stouts to Goses and pale ales, they’ve built a resume of both popular and complicated styles. Creatures in the Dark is a local favorite.
12. Clemson Tigers: Carolina Bauernhaus
Anderson, S.C. is as close as you’ll get to Clemson in terms of breweries — which is punishment enough, so we won’t ding the Tigers further for that. Carolina Bauernhaus largely focuses on IPAs, wild ales and Goses. And though that’s not what I would expect from a smaller outpost in S.C., they make it work in the mold of larger local options like Westbrook.
13. Boston College Eagles: Down the Road Brewery
BC, if you’d just put your college IN Boston, you’d be No. 1 on the list. Instead, we’re headed to nearby Everett to investigate Down the Road, which does IPAs and other styles reasonably well while also taking a crack at imperial stouts. If you can’t find Trillium or Tree House around, it looks like Seventh Star IPA and Undine DIPA could help you out in a pinch.
14. Virginia Tech Hokies: Rising Silo Brewery
A couple breweries have popped up in Blacksburg, but Rising Silo is the most established option right now. They’re not trying anything too crazy — blondes, IPAs, browns — but that’s not a bad thing for a younger outfit. Simpler can also be better in a college town sometimes.
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Hate where your school’s brewery was ranked? Start yelling at me in the comments.Wake Up America - Share Pat's Columns!
In November 1956, President Eisenhower, enraged he had not been forewarned of their invasion of Egypt, ordered the British, French and Israelis to get out of Suez and Sinai. They did as told.
How far we have fallen from the America of Ike and John Foster Dulles has been on painful display this March.
An Israeli leader told a joint session of Congress that President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran is stupid and dangerous and must be rejected. Congress gave him 40 ovations.
Bibi Netanyahu then went home and told the world there will be no Palestinian state, and was re-elected in a smashing victory.
“Perhaps it’s time for Americans, especially those in the White House, to recognize this new reality of Israeli politics,” says The Wall Street Journal. We should restore “Israeli confidence in U.S. support.”
Excuse me? Who is the senior partner here? Who needs whom more?
Israel is entitled to choose its own leaders, who are entitled to make their own policy. |
who believes that corporal punishment would have helped make his classes more orderly: Corporal punishment shows [kids] how they can make it in the worldit teaches them about life after school.348 Yet, there are other ways to teach children how to deal with the challenges they will face later in life; a nurturing school environment structured with positive discipline models can help deliver this self-confidence. In interviews with Human Rights Watch, students and parents repeatedly linked the use of corporal punishment in schools to slavery, characterizing hitting young African Americans as classroom discipline as a dehumanizing reminder of techniques used to control slaves on plantations.349 One fifth-grade African-American boy commented that [i]t comes from the time of slavery. They used to tie a black slave up and make another slave beat him.350 Another student, exasperated with paddlings for not wearing the school uniform, told us she felt like asking, Okay, are you still in slave mentality, Coach?351 Experienced educators also see links between corporal punishment and submissiveness, which in turn they relate to domination by whites over blacks. One superintendent observed that corporal punishment has its origins in the times of slavery when slaves were tied up and whipped as a means of control. But because you get compliance does not mean you have control.352 A school board member in a Mississippi town reflected on this issue: I see corporal punishment as a form of slavery. Beating on the slaves was how the headman got them to do something. Racism is not about hatred, its about domination were focused so much on making kids do what we want. Think about the mental capacity that this kind of treatment leaves our children with. We are telling them we dont respect them. They leave that principals office and they think, They dont consider me a human being. That young person loses self-respect.353 Particular Issues Raised by the Paddling of Girls While girls are paddled less than boys, many teachers and parents we spoke with said they had particular concerns about the sexual overtones of subjecting teenage girls to corporal punishment. In addition, as already noted, some interviewees expressed unease over the link between corporal punishment and domestic violence. These interviewees argued that it was wrong to teach children in school that it is permissible for someone in authority to strike a weaker person who cannot hit back. Case Study: Allison Guthrie Allison Guthrie, a recent high school graduate in the Dallas area, was paddled when she was 17. She was sent to detention three times in one week for being late, and was given the choice of in-school suspension or swats: The principal was male. I think he used to be the athletic director, he was maybe 300 pounds. I had to get parental consent, my mom had to sign off on the swats. She actually came up to the school to sign off on that. She decided to leave it up to me, I guess she figured I could decide for myself. My mom left, and I went into the principals office and there was a female there, like a secretary, a female witness. He gave me a chair and said hold onto the chair. The paddle had holes in it. Then he just did three swats I was hit on my buttocks. There were holes in the paddle to make it go faster. There was a bit of a pause in between each swat. The whole thing was a minute. The principal didnt say anything to me. It hurt very much. There were definitely red marks and then swelling. I remember it being red on my buttocks. Almost welt-like markings. It didnt last for more than a couple days. It was strange back then and it was even stranger when I got older. It was like, Wow, you were a 17-year-old girl and got hit? But it was not out of the ordinary then because people got swats. It left me feeling very humiliated. I think there were several levels of emotion. Physical pain, mental humiliation. One, it felt a little unjustifiedjust for being late? And being a female at that age, it was like there was this older man hitting me on the butt. Thats weird. Very strange at that age. Even at that age I knew it was inappropriate, this being a man that I dont know. It was this instinctual knowing that it was inappropriate. I have talked about it since then, but we didnt talk about it as being inappropriate then. I think it took me a while to realize why I was so ashamed by it and how inappropriate it was.354 One twelfth-grade Texas girl told us she had been paddled in eleventh grade for being tardy: It seemed normal at the time, but now it seems weird that a man was hitting a teenage girl. Well thats just what I thought was supposed to happen. Weird to look back on it, though.355 Another twelfth-grade girl echoed that sentiment: Can you believe it, I got paddled by a male teacher? It was for little stuff, like talking out loud. It was just a tap on my behind. But why does a man have to tap a girl? Thats why I think hes a pervert.356 One expert felt that because corporal punishment is now more often practiced in private (in the principals office, as opposed to in the classroom), it is more likely to have sexual overtones.357 A Mississippi teacher summarized the sense of discomfort: I know, as a 24-year-old male, I would feel very uncomfortable paddling a 14-year-old female on the butt I dont know, there are sexual connotations with paddling on the butt. Its not a storyline I want to be involved in.358 Special Education Students and Students with Disabilities While no child should ever be beaten in school, special education students359 are exceptionally vulnerable to harm from corporal punishment. OCR data show that nationwide, 41,972 special education students received corporal punishment in the 2006-2007 school year.360 In Mississippi and Texas, the states targeted in this report, special education students receive corporal punishment in large numbers. In Mississippi, 5,831 special education students were recorded as being physically punished in the 2006-2007 school year; while in Texas, the figure was 10,222.361 Special education students are beaten in disproportionate numbers when compared to the general student population, according to data from OCR. Focusing on students who qualify for special education under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA),362 IDEA students in Texas made up 18.4 percent of the total number of students who were beaten statewide.363 However, IDEA students in Texas made up only approximately 10.7 percent of the statewide student population,364 meaning that they were almost twice as likely to be beaten as might be expected.In Mississippi, IDEA students made up 15.1 percent of those beaten in the 2006-2007 school year, but only 12.2 percent of the statewide student population.365 Louise P., a former special education teacher in a Mississippi Delta high school, argued that some special education students are paddled more than other students in part because their particular needs are not being met by the school.366 Paddling and other forms of physical punishment can be particularly harsh for special education students. Johnny McPhail, the father of a girl with autism in north Mississippi, described a combination of aggressive techniques used to control his daughter: In kindergarten, theyd pop her, and put her in a closet. Its isolation. Theyd pop her on the hand first. I didnt find out until later.367 The R.s, parents of a boy with Tourette Syndrome, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), and bipolar disorder, described an early incident in which he was restrained and spanked: When he was in kindergarten, they would have meetings and decide they would have a time-out room for him. Time outthey basically just cleaned out a closet and would put him in there for hours. And even though they werent supposed to touch him, they did. They carried him in there. But these people were not trained to do any restraint holds or anything like that. He came home several times with bruises and red marks. He was spanked on his behind, with an open hand, by the teacher. It happenedthe times he told us about itat least five or six times. At least.368 The R.s reported that their son sustained serious injuries when he was punished as a fifth grader for using the wrong utensils and cursing at the assistant principal. His mother described the situation: He was eating lunch in the special ed room. They had mashed potatoes and pineapple that day. He had a fork, but he was saving it for his pineapple because he didnt want to get his fork dirty. And they told him not to eat his potatoes with his fingers The teacher grabbed his hand, and thats what started it. [The assistant principal] asked [my son] to go with her she grabbed him and started dragging him down the hallway by his arm. The assistant principal reached around and [my son] turned around, he was all mad and accidentally hit her in the stomach. So she pinned him to the floor, and he bit her because he kept telling her to get off, because she was hurting him.369 The police came and handcuffed the fifth grader. Mrs. R. reported, His wrists were so tiny that he just pulled the cuffs off. 370 Mr. R. added, he had bruises on his upper ribs, across both his arms, and down both of his legs, for at least a week.371 The experience of the R. family also illustrates how, on occasion, special education students may be punished with force for acting out behaviors connected with their disabilities. Mrs. R. noted that her sons Tourette Syndrome induces physical tics. As she explained: One of his tics was balling up his fists like this, and that was seen as aggression and he would get in trouble with it. He would be put in time out and he didnt understand why. He would try to explain that it was a tic, and he couldnt control it, but they see that as him escalating it. So now they have in him in restraints and then theyre giving him sedatives and calling for me to come pick him up. They had a closet and he would go in there and thats where he was hit.372 Incidents such as thesein which force is used to punish special education studentsmay occur because teachers lack understanding of the students condition. As Mr. R. concluded, I honestly believe that most of the teachers believe that [my son] had a behavioral problem and needed to be spanked. A couple of them have told us that, that he just needs a good spanking.373 Mrs. R., who is also a special education teacher, said she intervened when her school suggested applying corporal punishment to a student with ADHD who regularly failed to do his homework: The approach was, each day you come in and dont bring your homework, then youll get paddled. Maybe that will help you remember.374A school board member in a major Mississippi town stated, Im concerned that the teachers are not reading the childrens individual learning plans. The child with a discipline problem may not be acting out of his behavior problems but rather out of his disability.375 Corporal punishment can be particularly harmful for special education students, as it can exacerbate the students underlying condition. Johnny McPhail, the father of a Mississippi girl with autism, felt paddling was extremely detrimental: An autistic child never forgets a paddling. They have total recall, programming needs to be the same. If you hit her, shed be hitting, its hard to talk her out of it.376 Beverly Shields, the mother of an autistic boy in Mississippi, fought hard to have her son excluded from the punishment: Corporal punishment to an autistic person is just not acceptable in any fashion. He wouldnt know why they were doing it.377 Mrs. R. witnessed a student with Aspergers Syndrome and a bipolar condition receive corporal punishment, and noted the students adverse reaction: He was just crying and just broke down, a kind of helplessnessI dont know what to do.378 In addition to causing extensive physical and mental harm, corporal punishment can create further barriers to education for this already disadvantaged group of students. Louise P. felt licks were especially detrimental for her special education students: A lot of my kids had discipline problems. Theyd universally miss first period, theyd be in the office, waiting for their licks. That would harm their education. Depending on the teacher, theyd try and make up the lesson. But the same kids would be hard to get in after school [and] it was hard to get them to graduate.379Catalan is not, as some believe, a dialect of Spanish, but a language that developed independently out of the vulgar Latin spoken by the Romans who colonised the Tarragona area. It is spoken by 9 million people in Catalonia, Valencia, the Balearic Isles, Andorra and the town of Alghero in Sardinia.
Variants of Catalan are spoken in Valencia and the Balearics, which were taken back from the Moors in the 13th century. According to Professor Albert Rossich of the University of Girona (Gerona) these variants reflect the origin of the people who repopulated these areas when the Moors were driven out. Valencia was repopulated with people from Lleida and Tortosa; the Baleares with people from Barcelona and l'Empordà in the north.
Catalonia had been an autonomous province within the kingdom of Aragón but when Aragón was united with Castile with the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, Castilian – ie Spanish – became the language of court and literature, while Catalan remained the popular tongue. When in 1714 Barcelona fell to Spanish troops led by the Earl of Berwick, Catalonia lost its autonomy, the central government imposed restrictions on the use of Catalan and Spanish became the official language.
It wasn't until the 19th century and the rise of the nationalist cultural movement known as the renaixença that Catalan was revived as a literary language, Rossich says. However, this revival was short-lived. The fascist regime that emerged triumphant from the civil war in 1939 did everything in its power to stamp out the official and private use of Catalan. Harsh penalties were imposed for speaking it.
The arrival of hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Spain's impoverished south further consolidated the use of Spanish as the lingua franca of Catalonia. Most of these immigrants, or their children at least, have come to understand and or speak Catalan since democracy was restored in 1978. However, large-scale immigration from Latin America over the past 10 years means just over half the Catalan population claim Spanish as their mother tongue.
Since the early 1980s, the imposition of a system known as "immersion," with Catalan as the only vehicular language in state schools, has guaranteed everyone educated in the past 30 years has a command of it. However, thanks to the presence of Spanish in daily life and the media, virtually all Catalans are perfectly bilingual.President Obama is now comfortably into his crucial first 100 days, and perhaps just at this moment, before the arrival of those Macmillan-esque "events" which could cloud or modify our perception of him, there is little left to say about Obama the pioneer, Obama the politician, Obama the mould-breaker or Obama the icon. But maybe there is something left to notice about Obama the film critic.
In his autobiography, Dreams from My Father, Obama recounts his spell in New York in his youth, studying at Columbia University, from where he graduated in 1983. In his first summer in New York, Obama is visited by his sister Maya and his mother, Ann – famously the woman from whom the president gets the white side of his mixed-race ancestry. (She would die of cancer in 1995 at the age of 52; his father, the Kenyan governmental economist Barack Obama Sr – whom he hardly knew – died in a car crash in 1982 at the age of 46.)
Obama wryly describes his mother and sister almost immediately fussing about the studenty squalor in which he was living: "'He's so skinny,' Maya said to my mother. 'He has only two towels!' my mother shouted as she inspected the bathrooms. 'And two plates!' They both began to giggle."
Maya and Ann cheerfully spend their days doing tourist stuff and get lectured by the stern Barack in the evening on how frivolous they are. Obama writes:
"One evening, while thumbing through the Village Voice, my mother's eyes lit on an advertisement for a movie, Black Orpheus, that was showing downtown. My mother insisted we go see it that night; she said it was the first foreign film she had ever seen."
He goes on:
"'I was only sixteen then,' she told us as we entered the elevator. 'I'd just been accepted to the University of Chicago – Gramps hadn't yet told me I couldn't go – and I was there for the summer, working as an au pair. It was the first time I'd ever been really on my own. Gosh, I felt like such an adult. And when I saw this film, I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.'"
Black Orpheus is the 1959 film by Marcel Camus, recreating the Orpheus and Eurydice myth in the Rio carnival; it won the Palme d'Or at Cannes that year and also a Golden Globe and an Oscar for best foreign-langauge film a year later. I wrote a very short review of it when it was revived here in the UK in 2005 and I praised it for what I found to be its innocent charm, rather than the throbbing samba-style vitality which was found to be so compelling at its release.
But for the young Barack Obama, neither aspect was persuasive. He recalls:
"We took a cab to the revival theatre where the movie was playing. The film, a groundbreaker of sorts due to its mostly black, Brazilian cast, had been made in the fifties. The storyline was simple: the myth of the ill-fated lovers Orpheus and Eurydice set in the favelas of Rio during carnival, in Technicolor splendour, set against scenic green hills, the black and brown Brazilians sang and danced and strummed guitars like carefree birds in colourful plumage. About halfway through the movie I decided I'd seen enough, and turned to my mother to see if she might be ready to go. But her face, lit by the blue glow of the screen, was set in a wistful gaze. At that moment I felt as if I were being given a window into her heart, the unreflective heart of her youth. I suddenly realised that the depiction of the childlike blacks I was now seeing on the screen, the reverse image of Conrad's dark savages, was what my mother had carried with her to Hawaii all those years before, a reflection of the simple fantasies that had been forbidden to a white, middle-class girl from Kansas, the promise of another life: warm, sensual, exotic, different."
And this movie, and his mother's undiminished rapture at it, was to be the subject of fierce self-questioning about his relationship with her: "The emotions between the races could never be pure; even love was tarnished by the desire to find in the other some element that was missing in ourselves."
For what it's worth, I think Obama is wrong about Black Orpheus – he's too tough on it. And yet for me this passage exposed, more dramatically than anything has in a very long while, the fact that critical perceptions are governed by class, by background and by race. I saw Black Orpheus as a white man, a white liberal. Of course I did. The assumption of progressive good faith on race, and the indulgence of potential condescension or even stereotyping in an old movie is something that a white liberal can afford, and as far as the arts and culture are concerned in the prosperous west, white liberals are in the ascendant. But Barack Obama responded to the film quite differently. He responded with impatience, with scepticism and with pain; he saw no reason for black men and women to be objectified – and now, as the president of the United States, he is the subject, the most important subject in the world.
Before Barack Obama's presidency, Black Orpheus was perhaps destined to be something for film buffs only. Now, rightly or wrongly, it may become a classic text, a text about something quite other than that intended by its director, Marcel Camus: a loss of liberal innocence about racial difference.The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has approved the NFL's film division to use drone flights for "aerial videography and closed-set motion picture and television filming."
The flights were approved under a section of federal law that allows the Transportation Department to waive requirements for FAA approval for drone flights that are operated outside of restricted airspace and below 200 feet.
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"The FAA has determined that good cause exists for not publishing a summary of the petition in the Federal Register, because the requested exemption would not set a precedent, and any delay in acting on this petition would be detrimental to the petitioner," the agency said in a letter to the NFL.
The FAA has approved more than 1,500 drone flights in the process of developing regulations for allowing a rapid expansion of the use of the devices in the U.S.
The agency has faced tremendous pressure to approve an expansion of nonmilitary drone use from companies such as Amazon, which has said the technology can be used to make speedier online deliveries.
Police and other law enforcement groups were also seeking approval to use the technology, and the FAA has investigated several drone incidents that occurred in conjunction with photography at college and professional sporting events.
The section of law that allows the FAA to grant drone exemptions gives the Transportation Department the authority to drop a requirement that operators of the technology apply for a certificate of airworthiness that is normally required for flights that are formally considered an aircraft.If you thought that scene in Avengers: Age of Ultron with Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard) in the cave felt tacked on, you have a pal who agrees with you and his name is… Joss Whedon? Yep, apparently the mastermind had other masters to mind at Marvel while making the movie, which he discussed candidly with the Empire Film Podcast (via Heat Vision, The Playlist). Needless to say, spoilers ahead.
“The dreams were not an executive favorite — the dreams, the farmhouse, these were things I fought to keep,” Whedon said of the horrific visions induced by Scarlet Witch and the rural sequence with Hawkeye’s family. “With the cave, it really turned into: they pointed a gun at the farm’s head and said, ‘Give us the cave, or we’ll take out the farm,’ — in a civilized way. I respect these guys, they’re artists, but that’s when it got really, really unpleasant.”
Ironically, after the scene was shot and integrated into the film, test audiences didn’t respond well to it — as most regular audiences experienced this weekend as well — and Disney execs wanted it excised entirely, with Thor’s absence referenced verbally but not visually.
Whedon admits, “I was so beaten down at that point that I was like, ‘Sure, OK — what movie is this?’ And the editors were like, ‘No. You have to show the [events in the cave]. You can’t just say it… I do feel they threw out the baby with the pond water.”
Marvel demanded a drastically-reduced version of Thor’s cave bath included so as to allude to the Infinity Stones that will play a critical role in the franchise’s future but do not have much bearing on the events of Age of Ultron. Whedon also wanted to include Captain Marvel and Spider-Man, but studio politics prevented that from happening in time, so Captain America has to make do with a new Avengers roster that includes Black Widow, The Falcon, War Machine, The Vision and Scarlet Witch.
“I wanted all those people, but I said, ‘It would be great if we could add a few more [characters], if we could have a Captain Marvel there, now that you’ve made a deal,’ and they talked about it,” Whedon said. “And I was like, ‘And Spider-Man, we could do that too, ’cause Sony had approached us during the first movie about a little integration. So I would have put both of [those characters] in, but neither of the deals were made.”
Later in post-production Marvel told Whedon, “‘We’re making a Captain Marvel movie and we’ve got Spider-Man as a property,’ and I’m like, ‘I’ve already locked my film you f**kers! Thanks for nothing.”
Earlier this week, Whedon also made reference to a scene he shot with Tom Hiddleston as Loki walking Thor through his dream that was excised, saying, “I really wanted to have Loki in it but I understood the decision.” That language makes it sound like it was not his decision to make, which apparently it wasn’t.
“He’s so important to the mythos, and they’re like, ‘We can’t get Tom. We can’t make a deal,” Whedon recounts. “‘You can have Idris!’ I was like, ‘Oh, I love Idris! This is great!’ And then I talked to Tom and said… ‘I would never pressure you, but I really feel like it would be great if you could do this, and he was like, ‘Sure.’ And they’re like, ‘But we already have Idris!’ And again, I had no problem there. Everybody’s in! We had Loki in the second part of [Thor’s] dream and [Marvel] was like, ‘Well that doesn’t work and we don’t want to introduce Loki’ this late.’”
Whedon goes on to describe the scene fully: “We even had a little reference to the fact that he’s taken the throne, which was Tom doing his Anthony Hopkins impression when Thor says, ‘Oh, what would father say?’ Then Tom does his Hopkins impression, and Thor’s like, ‘That is uncanny!’ It’s sort of like his subconscious is telling him that Loki was imitating his father. But he would never make that connection.”
Lest you think poor, beleaguered Joss Whedon did not get his way on anything, he fought the good fight to have Quicksilver die and got his wish in the final cut, although scenes that depicted Aaron Johnson’s speedy Pietro Maximoff as a fast operator with the ladies were lost, possibly due to time constraints.
“It’s disingenuous to make, as I refer to it, a war movie and say there is no price,” Whedon stated. “In this movie we’re saying, ‘prove to me that you guys are heroes.’ And [Quicksilver] is the guy who is the least… the most arrogant, the most annoying — if you watch the DVD extras, an incredible p**sy hound — and Hawkeye genuinely hates him and that’s the guy who saves him. I knew that it would be resonant and it would make everything work and matter more. I said [to Johnson], ‘The only thing that would keep you alive is if the Disney executives say, ‘Idiot, it’s a franchise and we need all these people and you’re not allowed to kill them.’”
Preposterous as it sounds, those scenes WERE shot, though.
“We did actually shoot him in the last scene, in an outfit with his sister,” Whedon admits. “And we did shoot him waking up from his, ‘Ahh! I didn’t really die from these 47 bullet wounds!’ but the intent was always that we were going to earn this and then you have to stand by it.”
Joss also recently abandoned his Twitter account, which some speculate was due to rampant hate Tweets (and moronic death threats) from a sub-movement online of those disgruntled at Black Widow’s portrayal as a “damsel-in-distress” in the movie.
[Gallery not found]Ask users for Gender or sex
This pattern explains how to ask users about gender or sex.
When to use this pattern
You should only ask users about gender or sex if you genuinely cannot provide your service without this information.
If you do need to ask, use ‘sex’ when you need biological data (for example, if you’re providing a medical service). In all other cases, use ‘gender’.
How it works
If you have to ask about gender, you should:
list the fields in alphabetical order
do research to test that this works for your users
Avoid using pronouns
You should address the user as ‘you’ where possible and avoid using gendered pronouns like ‘he’ and ‘she’.
You may not always be able to use ‘you’. For example, if your service allows people to jointly apply for something, you might need to refer to both the user and the person they’re applying with. In these cases, use the person’s name, ‘they’ or ‘their’.
Never use titles to guess gender
You should not guess someone’s gender based on a title because:
some titles are not gendered (for example Dr, Rev, Major)
titles can be changed by deed poll to one that’s different from a person’s gender or sex
Research on this pattern
More research is needed on the best way to ask for gender. If you ask users for their gender as part of your service, get in touch to share your user research findings.Senior Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy said Tuesday he would boycott Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress next month, hours after Netanyahu tweeted his intention to go ahead with the speech.
The US confirmed that aid worker Kayla Mueller, who was held hostage by Islamic State, was killed in a Jordanian airstrike against the terror group.
A new Knesset Channel poll found Moshe Kahlon to be Israelis’ favored candidate for the Finance portfolio, winning the trust of 23% of Israelis vs. 20% for the Zionist Union’s man, Prof. Manuel Trajtenberg.
The Times of Israel followed events as they occurred.
Metzger’s bribes said to total NIS 10 million Former chief rabbi Yona Metzger is alleged to have accepted bribes totaling NIS 10 million ($2.5 million) in bribes, of which he allegedly put NIS 7 million in his pocket. Metzger is suspected of abusing his position and connections and to have committed his offenses while he served as chief rabbi.
A-G to recommend against banning Zoabi, Marzel Attorney General Weinstein is expected to oppose disqualifying MK Hanin Zoabi as well as extreme right-wing activist Baruch Marzel from running in the coming election, Channel 2 news reports. The Central Election Committee will discuss whether to disqualify the two candidates on Thursday. But Weinstein is expected to send the committee his own opinion on the matter before deliberations begin. Likud nd other right wing parties support a disqualification of Zoabui, while the Zionist Camp led by Isaac Herzog said it will follow any decision the committee might come by.
4 Qaeda suspects dead in Yemen drone strike Four suspected Al-Qaeda fighters were killed in a drone strike in Hadramawt province in southeastern Yemen, a military source says. He says the drone, which only the United States operates in the region, targeted “a gathering of Al-Qaeda fighters” between the village of Qatan and the town of Shibam, killing four and wounding several others. It was the fourth drone strike since US President Barack Obama vowed on January 25 not to let up in Washington’s campaign against jihadists in Yemen despite the country’s political turmoil. — AFP
Aharonovitch slams Shaked’s designs on ministry Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch (Yisrael Beytenu) criticizes Jewish Home MK Ayelet Shaked and her boss Naftali Bennett after the Jewish Home party announced it wants Shaked to serve as public security minister in the next government. During a visit to families of the women who died in a Negev bus crash last week, Aharonovitch also slammed recent comments of Bennett’s that some analysts interpreted as a claim that crime and car theft are more rampant in the Arab sector. “This was a very unfortunate statement by Bennett, with a populist bent,” Aharonovitch was quoted by the Kikar Hashabat news website as saying. Aharonovitch also said “police will continue to give precedence to the [Arab] sector. Those who think there will not be thieves or burglars don’t know what they are talking about. Just as there are Arab… there are Jewish burglars and you cannot brand one area or one segment of the population. It’s not right.”
UAE resumes airstrikes against IS jihadists The United Arab Emirates resumes airstrikes against the Islamic State group which it had suspended after the jihadists captured a Jordanian pilot in December, the military says. “Aircraft of the F-16 squadron based in Jordan launched raids this morning against positions of the Daesh (IS) terrorist organization, hitting their targets and returning safely to base,” the UAE armed forces command says. The fighter squadron deployed to Jordan on Sunday to boost the kingdom’s fight against IS after the jihadists brutally murdered the captured pilot. — AFP
Obama to request new war powers US President Barack Obama is expected — as early as today — to ask Congress for new war powers, sending Capitol Hill his blueprint for an updated authorization for the use of military force to fight the Islamic State group. Haggling then begins on writing a new authorization to battle the Sunni extremists, and will lead to the first war vote in Congress in 13 years — one of the most important votes faced by members of the House and Senate. To get Congress to approve his request, Obama must find a balance between lawmakers who want wide authority to fight IS and others, including members of his own party, who worry that a new authorization to use military force will lead to US entanglement in another protracted war. — AP
Amos Oz waits for day when PM labeled ‘traitor’ Israeli author Amos Oz says that “on the day they call Prime Minister Netanyahu a ‘traitor’ I will know something is finally moving around here.” Speaking at the International Book Fair in Jerusalem, the writer says many leaders who changed history for the better were called “traitors”: the biblical prophet Jeremiah, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Anwar Sadat, Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin and Ariel Sharon. Oz also criticizes the left. Regarding his book, The Gospel According to Judas, Oz was asked whether Christian anti-Semitism could be presented if the term “Jews” was not so closely related to the name “Judas.” The author replies: “It would be like hoping that if we call ourselves the Zionist Camp instead of Labor, people will like us.”
Police seize painting attributed to da Vinci A painting attributed to Leonardo da Vinci of “inestimable value” was seized in Switzerland following a police of Italian police. The financial brigade of Pesaro and the special force on theft of artworks, Ancona division, announce having retrieved the painting, a Portrait of Isabella d’Este measuring 61 cm by 46.5 cm. The painting was stored in a safe of a bank in Lugano, near the Italian border, and was “exported in a clandestine manner,” according to the statement. Investigators succeeded in locating the painting after an Italian lawyer tried to sell the painting for a sum “not lower than 95 million euros,” the statement by Pesaro police said. The painting is similar to a verified Leonardo drawing of Isabella d’Este and corresponds to his style in many respects. It is not however universally acknowledged as coming from the hand of the master and may have been drawn by an apprentice copying from the drawing. AFP contributed to this report.
Couple on trial over 271 ‘stolen’ Picassos A former electrician and his wife who kept 271 works of art by Picasso in their garage for close to 40 years go on trial in France, accused of possessing stolen goods. Pierre le Guennec, now in his 70s and retired, says the world-famous artist and his wife Jacqueline gave him the oil canvases, drawings and Cubist collages when he was doing work on the last property they lived in before Picasso died in 1973. But some of the artist’s heirs, including his son Claude, suspect otherwise and filed a complaint against the couple, who were charged in 2011. The trial in the southeastern city of Grasse, which is likely to be closely scrutinized by the art world, is expected to last three days. — AFP
‘Fierce battles near Quneitra in Syrian Golan’ The al Miadin TV network reports fierce battles on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights near Quneitra, between the Syrian military and rebel forces. According to the report the battles are centered around Deir al Ades, north of Quneitra.
No Jews on German anti-Semitism panel Leading Jewish groups slam the German government for creating a new commission on anti-Semitism without including a single Jew. Julius Schoeps from the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies on Tuesday calls it “a unique scandal” that the Interior Ministry did not include any Jewish scientists or community leaders on the commission it created to fight anti-Semitism and support Jewish life in Germany. Anetta Kahane from the Amadeu Antonio Foundation against anti-Semitism says: “Nobody would even think of creating a conference on hatred of Islam without Muslims or a round table on the discrimination of women without women.” They announce the creation of an alternative commission that will stress the Jewish perspective. Germany’s Interior Ministry had no immediate comment on the criticism. — AP
Kahlon favored for Finance Ministry in new poll Moshe Kahlon is the favored candidate for finance minister according to a new Knesset Channel election poll, winning the trust of 23% of those surveyed. Labor’s Manuel Trajtenberg wins 20% and Yair Lapid, the minister vacating the position, gets a mere 10% of support. Likud’s Yisrael Katz trails behind even Lapid with 7%. The survey gives Likud and Zionist camp 23 Knesset seats each. The poll gives both parties fewer seats than a poll conducted for the channel last week. Jewish Home |
but could not be avoided since it was supposedly such a well-known fact to the early Christians. But what I am proposing is that the baptism was not part of the original Markan gospel at all. And its subsequent insertion was not reluctant at all. It was done on purpose by a fan of John’s who was looking to bring the proto-Markan Jesus into line with John.
But if someone went to the trouble of modifying the proto-Markan Jesus in this way, wouldn’t he/she also give him Baptist things to say? That seems reasonable and this is where Q may come into play.
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Q and the Baptist
Q, of course, is the hypothetical source that many scholars think Matthew and Luke drew from, at least for the sayings which they have in common with each other but not with Mark. Although Q proponents disagree to some extent about its contents, in all proposed models John is prominent.
One of the more surprising features of Q is the amount of space devoted to John the Baptist. John’s preaching is set out in detail in Q 3:7-9 and in 3:16f, and a long section a little later in Q (7:18-35) discusses the position of John in some detail. So too John’s ministry is evidently given a significant place in the saying Q 16:16 … (I)t seems clear that there is also in Q wholehearted support for John’s teaching and a willingness to incorporate the tradition of his teaching into Q itself with no hint that John’s message had been superseded, or rendered in any way invalid, by the ministry of Jesus himself. (Christopher M. Tuckett, Q and the History of Early Christianity, pp. 108-109)
More recently Clare K. Rothschild has taken this further and written a persuasive book arguing that “current models of Q suggest that, at some early stage in its undoubtedly complex pre-history, Q existed as a source containing Baptist traditions exclusively.” By ‘Baptist’ she does not necessarily mean John himself but “unknown representatives (comparable to the also unknown NT evangelists) associating themselves with his name or movement” (Baptist Traditions and Q, p. 3)
Rothschild bases her case on the
(1) double attribution or the attribution of certain sayings to John in Q, but to Jesus elsewhere; (2) contradictions between Jesus’ sayings in and outside of Q, (e.g., fasting/feasting, afamilial/familial, itinerant/urban, didactic/charismatic, spiritual-moral/physical, traditional [stressing obedience to the Law, including purification]/iconoclastic [flouting Law on certain points, denying efficacy of purification rites, including dietary (Mk 7:1-23, 7:14)] and expectant/fulfillment eschatology), and (3) thematic continuities between Q sayings and Baptist traditions. (Baptist Traditions and Q, pp. 8-10).
Regarding the thematic continuities Rothschild points out that
Despite the paucity of evidence in the NT about John, all of the major themes of Q can be connected to his few traditions…. (1) the announcement of the coming kingdom…; (2) eschatological warnings…; (3) pronouncement of punishment on this generation and its leaders…; (4) rejection of traditional family structures…; (5) the rigors of an itinerant, wilderness lifestyle…; (6) warnings of persecution…; and (7) wisdom sayings. (Baptist Traditions and Q, p. 98)
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Q and Mark
Were insertions intended to correct particular Pauline teachings in proto-Mark?
Now although Q was first hypothesized to account for a number of sayings shared by Matthew and Luke, there have always been Q proponents who held that Mark knew and used it too. Mark, both absolutely and relative to its length, easily has the fewest teachings of Jesus. Yet interlaced among these teachings are sayings which are Mark-Q overlaps. M. Eugene Boring, in discussing this situation writes:
Within the framework of the two-source theory, this problem has usually been expressed by the question: Did Mark know Q?’, with numerous scholars standing on each side of this debate. The dilemma is clear: If Mark did not know Q, then how can we account for the several places where he seems not only to overlap Q and Q-like materials but to be excerpting from them (e.g. 6: 7 – 13?) If he knew Q, then how can we account for his using so little of it and for his selection? The chief argument, in fact, in favor of the theory that Mark did not know Q has been that he would surely have included more of it had he known it. (Sayings of the Risen Jesus, p. 197)
But the failure to use more of Q is only a problem if one assumes that the author of Mark aimed to tell us as much as he knew about Jesus and his teachings. I, of course, question that assumption. I am proposing that the saying were added by an interpolator and his aim could have simply been to bring the proto-Markan Jesus into the Baptist orbit. To accomplish that limited goal extensive use of Q would not have been needed. It would have been enough to just put a significant number of Q sayings on the lips of Jesus. Mark has about 70 sayings-units. Roughly half of those are arguably Mark-Q overlaps. So it would seem that, assuming Q is of Baptist provenance and was used to modify proto-Mark, Baptist teaching is well represented relative to the overall amount of that gospel’s sayings material.
A related question in this scenario is: Did corrective considerations guide the interpolator’s choice of which Q sayings to add? In other words, were his insertions intended to correct particular Simonian/Pauline teachings in proto-Mark? At times it does not seem so. There are passages where the connection between the sayings is very loose, seemingly tied together based on little more than catchwords. See, for instance, Mk. 9:42-50. But at other times it is easy to think that the interpolator was aiming at more than a representative sample of Baptist teaching. Thus, for example, the Q-overlap sayings in Mark 4:21-25 break up the parables around them and seem intended to correct the secretive purpose that proto-Mark attributed to the parables. Many Markan commentators eagerly latch onto the sayings “Does a lamp come in to be put under a bushel, or under a bed, and not on a lampstand? There is nothing hid, except to be revealed; nor is anything secret, except to be brought into the open” (Mk. 4:21-22). These verses are thought to bring some welcome balance to the troublesome verses about secrecy earlier in the same chapter (Mk. 4:10-12). The balance they bring allows one to think that Mark’s “secrecy or hiddenness is apparently intended to serve the purpose, not of obscurity, but of clarity and openness” (Tolbert, p. 87).
Why, by the way, does v. 21 make reference to both a bushel and a bed? Doesn’t “under a bushel” make the point clearly enough? I am wondering whether the bed was brought into this because the interpolator had in view rival Christians whose get-togethers were rumored to be promiscuous and involved some kind of formal extinguishing of lamps. Justin, in a chapter of his First Apologia devoted to Simon, Menander (Simon’s successor), and Marcion, writes: “And whether they perpetrate those fabulous and shameful deeds—the upsetting of the lamp and promiscuous intercourse, and eating human flesh—we know not…” (ch. 26, my italics)
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Another example: In Mark 6 there is preaching mission by the dense Twelve which, as already noted, seems somewhat incongruous. As part of their send-off Mark provides a few mission instructions that overlap to some extent with Q. The instructions seem innocent enough at first glance, but they do address things that were a subject of controversy between Paul and his Corinthian opponents. The Markan Jesus forbids the bringing of any food, sack, or money (Mk. 6:8). And by telling his missioners: “Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that place” (Mk. 6:10), he implies that their hosts are to provide for their needs. These do not appear to have been practices that Paul embraced. He was criticized for not living off his Corinthian hosts. So again, I am thinking that corrective intent may have here guided the selection of which mission instructions to borrow from Q.
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The eschatological discourse
The end of the discourse could be the original answer
The most substantial corrections, however, may be in Mark’s longest continuous speech, the so-called eschatological discourse located in chapter 13 of Mark. It is presented as Jesus’ response to two questions:
Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that all these things are about to be fulfilled? (Mk. 13:4)
It turns out, as we learn twenty-eight verses later, that Jesus doesn’t know when these things will happen: “Of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” (Mk. 13:32). And he appeals to his ignorance as a motive for constant vigilance: his followers must be on high alert because no one —including he himself—knows when the time in question will arrive. But why then are end-time signs given in the intervening verses, signs which cannot help but undercut the urgency of Jesus’ warning?
Long ago T. W. Manson in his The Teachings of Jesus (pp. 261ff) suggested that verses 32-37 at the end of the discourse could be the original answer to the first question in verse 4. I too am thinking that may be the case. And I am thinking that almost all of the intervening verses are a subsequent insertion/correction. I say ‘almost all’ because I am inclined to retain verse 10: “The gospel must first be preached to all nations”. This functions more as a prerequisite than as a sign, and it is usually considered an outlier. Morna Hooker, for instance, writes:
This saying is an enigma. It interrupts the argument abruptly, and without it the argument progresses smoothly from v.9 to v.11. Matthew and Luke seem to agree with this judgement, since the former moves it to the end of the section, and the latter omits it altogether. It is also missing from the parallel passage in Matt. 10.17-21. It looks very much as though Mark has inserted the saying into the tradition. (The Gospel According to Saint Mark. p. 310).
But if verse 10 looks out of place it may be because Q material has been inserted around it. The verses on both sides of it (9 and 11) are Mark-Q doublets, as also are many other verses in the vv. 5-31 signs section of the discourse. That this section has borrowings from a Jewish-Christian document — a Little Apocalypse — was first proposed by Thomas Colani in the 19th century. And that it has much in common with another Jewish-Christian apocalypse concerned with signs — the book of Revelation — has also been noted by many (see, for instance, Sayings of the Risen Jesus, by M. Eugene Boring, pp. 193-195).
Looking at this from the perspective of my Simonian/Pauline Proto-Mark hypothesis, the original end-time destruction foretold in the discourse would presumably have God as its agent, not the Romans. According to some sources, Simon expected this world would be destroyed, not transformed. The saved were destined for heaven, not a transformed world. And if Simon was Paul, I doubt he gave much shrift to supposed signs that would precede that destruction. Paul’s end-time preoccupation was to evangelize the world.
So I am thinking that the signs material may be the alien elements in Mark 13. The original discourse would have simply had Jesus foretelling that the gospel must first be preached to all nations before the end-time destruction occurs. The Father alone will determine when the gospel has been sufficiently preached to the world. In this scenario the Proto-Markan eschatological discourse would have consisted of this:
1. And as he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, teacher! What wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” 2. And Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.” 3. And as he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately, 4. “Tell us, when will these things happen?” 5. Then Jesus began to say to them: 10. “The gospel must first be preached to all nations. 32. But of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 33. Take heed, watch, for you do not know when that time will come. 34. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves his house and puts his servants in charge, giving each his task, and he commands the doorkeeper to keep watch. 35. Watch therefore — for you do not know when the master of the house will come, whether in the evening, or at midnight, or at cock-crow, or in the morning — 36. lest he should come suddenly and find you sleeping. 37. And what I say to you, I say to all: ‘Watch!”’
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False Christs
Among the signs provided by the eschatological discourse there is particular insistence on the appearance of false Christs. It is the first sign:
Then Jesus began to say to them: “Take heed that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name, saying ‘I am [he!]’ and they will lead many astray.” (Mk. 13: 5-6).
And the same idea resurfaces later in the discourse:
“And then if anyone says to you then, ‘Look—here is the Christ!’ or ‘Look, there he is!’, do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will arise and will perform signs and wonders in order to lead astray, if possible, the elect. Be take heed; I have told you everything beforehand” (Mk. 13: 21-25).
It is extraordinarily difficult to know who these imposters are, or what they are claiming.
These supposed prophecies were likely written after the events in question had taken place (vaticinia ex eventu). That makes it all the more interesting that there is so great uncertainty regarding the identity of the false Christs. Morna Hooker, for instance, writes: “It is extraordinarily difficult to know who these imposters are, or what they are claiming.” (The Gospel According to Saint Mark, p. 306). And usually the fallback solution is that they must be figures like the Judas and Theudas that Acts 5:36-37 brings forward. The problem though is that “it is not certain that any of these made messianic claims, and certainly they did not come ‘in Christ’s name’” (D. E. Nineham, The Gospel of Saint Mark, p. 345).
Moreover, the first prophecy seems to indicate that the pretenders will claim to be in some way Jesus himself. If so, it is thought we are at an impasse, for “if these men were actually claiming to be Jesus, we are dealing with a problem for which there is no evidence elsewhere…” (Hooker, p. 307). Or as Nineham puts it, we would be dealing with “pretenders, otherwise unknown to us, who actually claimed to be Jesus himself returned from on high” (Nineham, p. 345).
But are such pretenders really “otherwise unknown to us?” Is there really a total lack of evidence elsewhere? Hard evidence, yes, but there is the fact that all of the earliest proto-orthodox heresy hunters consistently name Simon of Samaria as the first and most notorious false Christ. And according to Irenaeus, Simon claimed to be “the Son who suffered in Judaea” (Against Heresies, 1.23). And after Simon’s death a disciple of his named Menander made the same claims that Simon did: “After him Menander, his disciple (likewise a magician), said the same as Simon. Whatever Simon had affirmed himself to be, this did Menander equally affirm himself to be…” (Pseudo-Tertullian, Against All Heresies, c. 1). So in my opinion these two have to be considered the likeliest candidates for the false Christs “foretold” by the eschatological discourse. True, in Mark 13:6 Jesus says that “many” will come in his name. But if this oracle was emitted after Menander had succeeded Simon, the emitter would have had reason to believe and fear that a precedent had been set, and that other successor Christs would follow. The oracle may have been worded so as to cover that eventuality.
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The Abomination
The new Jesus not only does not foreshadow Simon/Paul, he vehemently disowns him.
Between the above warnings about false Christs there is another perplexing sign, one of importance especially to those “who are in Judaea” (Mk. 13:14): the appearance of the abomination of desolation standing where he should not. The fact that Mark modifies the neuter noun ‘abomination’ with the masculine form of the participle ‘standing’ is taken by many scholars to mean that the sacrilegious figure he has in mind is some man, not some object such as a statue or altar. But, again assuming we are dealing with a vaticinium ex eventu, it is remarkable that the identity of the figure has proved so elusive.
If my identification of Paul and Simon of Samaria is correct, we would have a solution to the difficulty. The abomination of desolation would be one of the false Christs. He would be Simon/Paul. Simon claimed to be the Son of God, a claim that could be viewed as blasphemous by some. And if he was Paul he apparently entered the temple sometime around the year 60, an entry that could be viewed by some as a desecration of the temple. The blasphemous Simon/Paul was standing where he ought not.
Now one could object that Simon/Paul does not sufficiently fit the desolation oracle, for those in Judaea are told to flee Judaea for the mountains (Mk. 13:14) as soon as the desolation figure stands where he ought not. Judaea was not devastated until several years after Paul’s visit to the temple. So why the need for swift departure? But no one has ever been able to identify any event from that period where immediate departure was necessary for survival. So perhaps the bit about fleeing without delay was just a dramatic device. The oracle aimed to dramatize the magnitude and inevitability of Judaea’s sad fate which, in the prophet’s eyes, was sealed from the moment that Simon/Paul set foot in the temple. As the prophet saw it, Simon/Paul’s desecration of the temple put Judaea under a horrible curse. To a curse of that magnitude the only appropriate response was to set off at once for the hills.
If this interpretation is correct, the most biting correction to Proto-Mark was in the signs section of eschatological discourse. Proto-Mark, I have proposed, was a Simonian/Pauline allegory which featured a Jesus who foreshadowed and prepared the way for Simon/Paul. The creator of canonical Mark, after inserting the Baptist and his teaching throughout the allegory, has placed in the eschatological discourse oracles that directly albeit in veiled fashion (“Let the reader understand!”) condemn Simon/Paul and his claims. The new Jesus not only does not foreshadow Simon/Paul, he vehemently disowns him.
In regard to timeframe: when I began this series I was inclined to put the date of Proto-Mark’s composition around 100 CE. But if my breakdown of the eschatological discourse is correct, it now seems to me that the mid 60s is more plausible. I tend to think the Proto-Markan eschatological discourse would have been written differently if the writing had been done after the destruction of the temple by the Romans. For one thing, its Jesus wouldn’t confess ignorance about the time schedule. The timeframe for canonical Mark, on the other hand, could be anywhere from the early 70’s to around 130.
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Conclusion
My best guess, at least for the moment, is that there was a Simonian/Pauline Proto-Mark. And that subsequently its Jesus was forcibly hybridized by the author of canonical Mark.
Clare Rothschild, in her Baptist Traditions and Q, writes that “the abundance of Q traditions and themes duplicated in Mark suggests that the beginning of the assimilation of the Baptist and Christian traditions began, not with Q’s integration in the compositions of the First and Third Gospels, but with their Markan ‘forerunner.’ Not only did the authors of Matthew and Luke incorporate Q traditions into their accounts of Christian origins, but the author of Mark did too — this author, in fact, initiating the tradition of assimilation. Indeed once Mark had established the precedent, the authors of Matthew and Luke were emboldened to open the floodgates, incorporating as many, now written, Q traditions as they considered helpful to a persuasive, accurate and clear depiction of Christian origins. (p. 171)
I too think that Q was used in the production of canonical Mark. And while I am persuaded by Rothchild’s arguments about a Baptist origin for Q, I am not convinced that the Q traditions were brought in as part of a friendly assimilation, that the author of Mark was in effect “cutting a compromise with two groups” (Baptist Traditions and Q, p. 171). As is clear from this post, to me there are too many rough spots in Mark, too many indications of a hostile takeover. My best guess, at least for the moment, is that there was a Simonian/Pauline Proto-Mark. And that subsequently its Jesus was forcibly hybridized by the author of canonical Mark.
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Email[Important updates below – Facebook says the Daily Mail knew its story was untrue, but printed it anyway. Legal action is promised. The BBC has now picked up on Global Dashboard’s story. Journalism.co.uk has a piece as well. Guardian has followed our lead too. Mashable. Belle de Jour chips in.]
In the early hours of this morning, the Daily Mail published an astonishing attack on Facebook under the title “I posed as a 14-year-old girl on Facebook. What followed will sicken you.”
Here’s the opener:
Even after 15 years in child protection, I was shocked by what I encountered when I spent just five minutes on Facebook posing as a 14-year-old girl. Within 90 seconds, a middle-aged man wanted to perform a sex act in front of me. I was deluged by strangers asking stomach-churning questions about my sexual experience. I was pressured to meet men with whom I’d never before communicated. So I wasn’t surprised that a vulnerable teenager, Ashleigh Hall, was groomed on Facebook before being brutally raped and killed.
The article is written by Mark Williams-Thomas. Here’s his biog:
Mark is a former police detective who has far-reaching experience of working at the centre of high profile investigations. During Mark’s police service, he specialised in child protection and major crime and he is renowned throughout the UK’s police forces as well as the national media for his expertise in these areas.
It’s an odd story. Facebook isn’t really a chat site – and it’s certainly not Chatroulette, where there are plenty of men ready and waiting to jack off in front of you (sfw). Presumably Williams-Thomas set his privacy settings to zero and befriended loads of strangers. But how did those strangers find him (her) so quickly?
Fast forward twelve hours and the online version of Williams-Thomas’s article has undergone some editing. New title: I posed as a girl of 14 online. What followed will sicken you. And new text, with Facebook replaced with an unnamed ‘social networking site’.
Even after 15 years in child protection, I was shocked by what I encountered when I spent just five minutes on a social networking site posing as a 14-year-old girl. Within 90 seconds, a middle-aged man wanted to perform a sex act in front of me.
The url, though, has not been changed: I-posed-girl-14-Facebook-What-followed-sicken-you.html [This url was subsequently set to redirect to a new one – 12/03/2010]
So what gives? If it was Facebook that Williams-Thomas was using, then why turn so coy? And if it wasn’t, how on earth could the Mail have pretended it was?
Update: Via Twitter, I asked Williams-Thomas for clarification. Here’s his reply:
So why was Facebook named in the first place?
Update 2: Apparently the story – with Facebook named – was a front page splash in the print edition, and then a double page spread inside.
Update 3: Just had a call from Facebook – they’re incandescent and say that:
Williams-Thomas claims that he was 100% clear that his social network experiment had not involved Facebook.
involved Facebook. When the Mail sent him a first draft of the story with Facebook named, he asked for them to make a correction.
Even so, they went ahead and published a story their own expert had warned them was untrue.
When Facebook protested, the Mail corrected the online story, but not the printed version, which had already hit the news stands. Their online retraction failed to include any apology or explanation of their mistake.
Facebook says that legal action against the Mail is pending. What an extraordinary piece of negligence and/or malice from the paper!
Update 4: The Mail appended a fairly mealy mouthed correction last night:
In an earlier version of this article, we wrongly stated that the criminologist had conducted an experiment into social networking sites by posing as a 14-year-old girl on Facebook with the result that he quickly attracted sexually motivated messages. In fact he had used a different social networking site for this exercise. We are happy to set the record straight.
Will they be happy to pay damages to Facebook too? Another version here, which begins: “In an article by a criminologist yesterday, we wrongly stated…” – half-maintaining the fiction that Williams-Thomas actually wrote the piece…
Update 5: From last year, another great Daily Mail headline: “How using Facebook could raise your risk of cancer.”
Update 6: Instead of retreating to lick her wounds, Mail journo, Laura Topham has doubled down with another article on Internet safety – again using the Facebook killer as a hook and with the same oddly prurient image from yesterday’s story.
Before her Facebook howler, Topham’s main claim to fame was dating 100 men and writing about it, outing Belle de Jour [or not – see Belle’s comment], and running up huge amounts of debt because the government inveigled her into taking out a student loan.
Her big break in journalism came in 2005 when she shafted David Blunkett.
Update 7: PC Pro quotes Facebook’s spokeswoman as challenging the Daily Mail to name the social networking platform that is really to blame. I was given exactly the same message. Facebook think it knows which service Williams-Thomas used and is desperate for one of its competitors to get shafted.
A representative of Williams-Thomas justifies anonymity thus: “The reason he does not want to [name the service] is because he does not want there to be another opening for paedophiles to head straight for.” Hmm. Maybe.Looking for free professional resume templates download? We’ve got you covered. Scroll down. Let’s be honest, the economy is a mess and a lot of good people need jobs yesterday.
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Here are some tips on how to get through the swooping season.
1. Pay attention to nesting areas
If you see magpie nesting activity in trees in an area where you walk or cycle, it is time to plot a new route for the nesting season. Avoiding the nesting area altogether is always the best option if you are able.
2. Never harass magpies
Don’t throw things at a nest, don’t climb trees where magpie chicks are nesting and don’t provoke adult magpies. Remember – they are fiercely protective and will react if they think their chicks are threatened.
3. Cover up
Carry an umbrella or wear a solid hat if you have to walk through an area in which you know there are magpies. This can help protect you and deter birds.
4. Stay calm
If you find yourself walking or cycling through magpie swooping territory and it is too late to back out, stay calm. Walk quickly through the area but do not run. Teach children to stay calm, too.
5. Be on the lookout and make eye contact
Be careful and keep your eyes out for magpies in known nesting areas. Keep your arms up if you are worried. It can be hard to watch for magpies as they often swoop from behind, but they are much less likely to swoop if they are being watched directly. If you maintain eye contact with a magpie for as long as possible, it will be less likely to swoop.
6. Get off your bike
If you are on a bicycle, dismount. Bicycles irritate magpies and getting swooped on while riding can cause accidents. Your helmet will protect you. Walk the bike quickly out of the magpie’s territory.
7. Be understanding and considerate
Magpies are highly intelligent and family-loving, and they are trying to protect their young. You only need to be patient for a few short weeks during the nesting season.
If you are aware of problem magpie nests on Auckland Council parks and reserves, please report it to the council at 09 301 0101. Nests on Department of Conservation (DOC) land should be reported to the nearest DOC office or visitor centre.THE State of Origin hype is building for Cowboys forward Coen Hess, but Hess is adamant that a Origin debut is still not at the top of his priorities.
Queensland Origin skipper Cameron Smith is the latest to endorse Hess for Origin, saying on Monday that Hess had “pretty much” forced his way into contention for this year’s series.
Queensland coach Kevin Walters has also revealed his plans to blood the 114kg wrecking ball, although Cowboys coach Paul Green has appealed to Maroons powerbrokers to hold off playing Hess for another year.
Hess himself can’t quite believe he has already entered the Origin mix at 20 years of age.
It has been less than two years since Hess was employed on the front desk at Brothers Leagues Club while starring in the Cowboys under-20s team.
But playing Origin this year or waiting another 12 months is neither here nor there for Hess, who isn’t buying into the hype.
“I don’t look into the media at all,” Hess said.
“I’m just going to try and play consistent footy for the Cowboys and that’s my number one focus at the moment
“Obviously it’s good to get praise, but in saying that I have to keep level headed as well.
Hess has the build to flourish in Origin, but even that does not guarantee success in rugby league’s toughest arena.
Despite knocking down every on-field challenge he’s ever faced Hess is uncertain how we would handle Origin.
“I’m not too sure to be honest, obviously I’ve never been out there,” Hess said.
“I grew up watching it ever since I can remember, but I wouldn’t have a clue to be honest.
“If you went out there without confidence it would make things harder on yourself, even playing out there (1300SMILES Stadium) I have to be confident in myself.
“We’ve got a lot of Origin experience around the club which is good, which shows what we’re doing here is working.
“So there are a lot of guys here with Origin experience which is good to know.”
Hess has four games to keep pressing his Origin case and goes into Saturday’s home clash against the Knights having run 116m during his 80-minute effort against the Dragons last weekend.
He also sits inside the NRL’s top six tryscorers after seven rounds, having scored six.
“It’s not something I think about going into games, I’m just doing my job out there and if I’m lucky enough to crash over so be it,” Hess said.
“I’ll take every one I can.”
But Hess is not expecting to get a free run at adding to his tally during Saturday’s ANZAC weekend showdown against Newcastle, who like the Cowboys have been ravaged by injury.
Former Cowboys hooker Rory Kostjasyn may be forced into retirement after enduring difficulties in his recovery from a fractured larynx, and backrower Jamie Buhrer recently broke his foot.
“I’ve still got room for improvement and last week I think defensively I was a bit off, which led to a few tries down our edge,” Hess said.
“That’s something we focused on (at training) this morning... come Saturday we’ll be looking to make amends to what happened last week.”When the events first started in Syria I went to Saudi Arabia and met with King Abdullah. I did that on the instructions of his highness the prince, my father. He [Abdullah] said we are behind you. You go ahead with this plan and we will coordinate but you should be in charge. I won’t get into details but we have full documents and anything that was sent [to Syria] would go to Turkey and was in coordination with the US forces and everything was distributed via the Turks and the US forces. And us and everyone else was involved, the military people. There may have been mistakes and support was given to the wrong faction... Maybe there was a relationship with Nusra, its possible but I myself don’t know about this… we were fighting over the prey ["al-sayda"] and now the prey is gone and we are still fighting... and now Bashar is still there. You [US and Saudi Arabia] were with us in the same trench... I have no objection to one changing if he finds that he was wrong, but at least inform your partner… for example leave Bashar [al-Assad] or do this or that, but the situation that has been created now will never allow any progress in the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council], or any progress on anything if we continue to openly fight.
the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region.
A television interview of a top Qatari official confessing the truth behind the origins of the war in Syria is going viral across Arabic social media during the same week a leaked top secret NSA document was published which confirms that the armed opposition in Syria was under the direct command of foreign governments from the early years of the conflict.And according to a well-known Syria analyst and economic adviser with close contacts in the Syrian government, the explosive interview constitutes a high level "public admission to collusion and coordination between four countries to destabilize an independent state, [including] possible support for Nusra/al-Qaeda." Importantly, "this admission will help build case for what Damascus sees as an attack on its security & sovereignty. It will form basis for compensation claims."A 2013 London press conference: Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al Thani with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. A 2014 Hillary Clinton email confirmed Qatar as a state-sponsor of ISIS during that same time period.As the war in Syria continues slowly winding down, it seems new source material comes out on an almost a weekly basis in the form of testimonials of top officials involved in destabilizing Syria, and even occasional leaked emails and documents which further detail covert regime change operations against the Assad government. Though much of this content serves to confirm what has already long been known by those who have never accepted the simplistic propaganda which has dominated mainstream media, details continue to fall in place, providing future historians with a clearer picture of the true nature of the war.This process of clarity has been aided - as predicted - by the continued infighting among Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) former allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar, with each side accusing the other of funding Islamic State and al-Qaeda terrorists (ironically, both true). Increasingly, the world watches as more dirty laundry is aired and the GCC implodes after years of nearly all the gulf monarchies funding jihadist movements in places like Syria, Iraq, and Libya.The top Qatari official is no less than former Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, who oversaw Syria operations on behalf of Qatar until 2013 (also as foreign minister), and is seen below with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in this Jan. 2010 photo (as a reminder, Qatar's 2022 World Cup Committee donated $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation in 2014 ).In an interview with Qatari TV Wednesday, bin Jaber al-Thani revealed that his country, alongside Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United States, began shipping weapons to jihadists from the very moment events "first started" (in 2011).Al-Thani even likened the covert operation to "hunting prey" - the prey being President Assad and his supporters - "prey" which he admits got away (as Assad is still in power; he used a Gulf Arabic dialect word, "al |
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Gonorrhoea is becoming as incurable as it was in the 1920s, before the first drugs to treat it were discovered. More than 60% of countries surveyed around the world have reported cases that resist last-resort antibiotics, according to an announcement by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 6 July. The announcement included information about a new gonorrhoea drug in development.
Since the 1930s, several classes of antibiotics have been used to kill the bacterium that causes gonorrhoea, Neisseria gonorrhoeae. Widespread use — and misuse — of these drugs, however, has led to a rise of antibiotic-resistant strains of the bacteria. “The best time to have had gonorrhoea was the eighties, since there were many drugs to treat it with,” says Ramanan Laxminarayan, director of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy in Washington DC. Increasingly, that's no longer the case, he says.
Health agencies in the United States, Europe and Canada have in recent years flagged drug-resistant gonorrhoea as an emerging threat. If left untreated, gonorrhoea can increase a woman’s risk of developing HIV infection, infertility or ectopic pregnancy — among other effects. When the WHO partnered with the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), a non-governmental organization in Geneva, Switzerland, in May 2016 to confront antimicrobial resistance, gonorrhoea was at the top of the list.
According to a paper to be published in PLoS Medicine1 on 7 July, there is robust resistance to three common types of antibiotics prescribed for gonorrhoea. Of the countries surveyed around the world, 97% reported cases that were resistant to ciprofloxacin, the cheapest and most widely available treatment; 81% reported gonorrhoea cases resistant to azithromycin; and 66% to cephalosporins.
Treading carefully
In a quest for new treatments, DNDi “looked for drugs that had stalled in the pipeline because of a lack of commercial viability”, says Manica Balasegaram, head of the antimicrobial partnership. Policymakers are realizing that antibiotics ought to be used sparingly, and that’s not great for a drugmaker’s bottom line, he says.
The group had previously noted how slowly zoliflodacin — the first drug in a new class of antibiotics — was progressing through the approval pipeline. Entasis Therapeutics, a biotech company in Waltham, Massachusetts, that owns the drug, depended on public funding from the US National Institutes of Health to conduct a phase II trial of zoliflodacin in 2015. Although trial results showed that most patients treated with the drug were cured of gonorrhoea, Balasegaram says that a lack of investment stopped the drug from progressing further.
Now, the DNDi and Entasis have announced that they will launch a phase III trial of zoliflodacin involving about 650 individuals in South Africa, the United States and Thailand, among other countries. The team expects to start in November 2018. If the drug is approved by regulators, Entasis will permit generic manufacturers to sell the drug in most low- and middle-income nations. Entasis will retain exclusivity to the treatment in high-income countries. And the DNDi says that it will fund public-health studies to find the best means of ensuring that the drugs are not overused.
However, studies alone do not satisfy Laxminarayan. He would like the groups to roll out the new antibiotic alongside a test to make sure that people get the treatment only if they have gonorrhoea that’s resistant to existing alternatives. DNDi says they've been looking for a simple diagnostic tool like this, but haven't yet found one.
“Yes, we need a new drug,” Laxminarayan says, “but without a rapid diagnostic test, this drug will meet the same fate as the others.”Multiple media outlets are reporting that the Trump administration is likely to announce that it will withdraw from the Paris climate agreement in the very near future, perhaps as early as next week.
Two high-level closed-door meetings at the White House, which included Trump’s most senior lawyer Don McGahn, appear to hint at a shift in the consensus between Trump’s advisors. There are concerns that there will be legal ramifications for remaining in the pact, in that America’s participation will put Trump’s other plans – such as nixing Obama-era emissions-cutting programs – at risk in the courts.
Although a final agreement has not yet been reached at present, this is a deeply worrying turn of events. Trump has long promised during campaigning that he would withdraw from the pact within his first 100 days in office, something he has failed to do. Whenever pressed on the matter, White House officials tended to say that they were still undecided.
It appears that several of his advisors, including his daughter Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, as well as climate change denier Rick Perry, the (inexplicable) head of the Department of Energy, advocate staying in the agreement in order to keep American influence on the table.
Some, including Perry and the Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, wish for the pact to be renegotiated, although it’s not clear how possible that would be.
Others, including the fossil fuel-friendly head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Scott Pruitt and ex-Breitbart editor Steve Bannon, have strongly advised the president to withdraw from the agreement.
Withdrawing from the agreement would certainly energize Trump’s base of voters, who appear to be holding steady, but it risks toxifying the presidency further and lowering global opinion of the current administration.
Remaining in the pact would see Trump’s America First brand of isolationism severely damaged, and it would enrage his supporters – but environmentalists and the other 190+ signatories would be massively relieved.
Don McGahn, a senior counsel to Trump, leaves Trump Tower earlier this year. Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images
According to Politico, McGahn’s legal interpretation of the Paris agreement – that remaining in it would prevent the administration from challenging carbon-cutting measures in the courts – came as a surprise to State Department lawyers serving under Tillerson, who strongly disputed this hypothesis.
The Hill reports that at a Saturday rally, the president told supporters that the agreement was “one-sided” and would greatly cost the US economy, something that all credible sources say is completely untrue.
“The United States pays the costs and bears the burdens while other countries get the benefit and pay nothing,” he said. Apart from the fact that the flourishing clean energy sector will generate far more jobs than the coal or oil industries possibly could at this point, we’d say saving the planet from a climate change nightmare is a pretty solid benefit to the US.Episode 290: North Korea's Illegal Economy
toggle caption AFP/Getty Images
Note: This podcast was originally published in 2011. With North Korea in the news again this week, we're re-running it today.
North Korea relies on charity to feed its starving people. But the country's elites like their luxuries — imported wine, fine china, dancing shoes.
To buy those things, they need foreign currency. (North Korean currency is worthless outside of North Korea.) To get foreign currency, they need to sell things to the outside world. But North Korea's industrial base is a disaster, and the country doesn't grow enough food to feed itself.
On today's Planet Money, we look at the ways North Korea's leaders have managed to keep foreign currency flowing into the country. Their strategies include manufacturing drugs, counterfeiting U.S. dollars, and selling gigantic statues to foreign leaders.
For More: The book Nothing to Envy is an amazing look at the lives of ordinary North Koreans. And this WSJ story has more on North Korea's monument export business.
Music: Matthew Goods' "99% of Us Is Failure." Find us: Twitter/ Facebook/ Spotify/ Tumblr. Download the Planet Money iPhone App.The Charlie Hebdo's publisher, known only as Charb, looks at documents removed by firemen on November 2, 2011, in Paris, in front of his offices after they were destroyed by a petrol bomb attack overnight. ALEXANDER KLEIN/AFP/Getty Images
(CBS News) The French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo has been down this road before. In November 2011, its offices in Paris were firebombed following the front page publication of a cartoon of the Muslim prophet Mohammad saying "100 lashes if you are not dying of laughter."
At the time, the paper's then-editor-in-chief, Stephane Charbonnier, told the BBC: "This is the first time we have been physically attacked, but we won't let it get to us."
Perhaps being true to his word, the paper has planned another series of cartoons of Muhammad, including, according to Reuters, "nude caricatures." The paper is due to hit newsstands Wednesday.
The timing of the cartoons may be especially worrisome for leaders in France, home to Europe's largest Muslim population. The recent discovery of an online trailer for an anti-Muslim film produced by a Coptic Christian in America has sparked violent and occasionally deadly protests all over the world in countries with large Muslim populations. It is forbidden in Islam to produce caricatures of Mohammad, and some conservative Muslim leaders have mobilized their outrage into aggressive protests in recent years every time a Westerner does so.
French leaders have given a mixed response so far to the announcement of the new Mohammad cartoons' publication as the try to balance a desire to respect their progressive ideals with avoiding violence at home.
Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault issued a statement, which Reuters translated as saying: "In the current climate, the prime minister wishes to stress his disapproval of all excess and calls on everyone to behave responsibly."
French newspaper Le Monde reports that Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, on a visit to Cairo, condemned the cartoons, claiming to the French government is "against hostile provocations at this time."
The Interior Ministry has announced plans to beef up security around the offices of Charlie Hebdo as a precaution, according to Le Monde.
Dalil Boubakeur, the senior cleric at Paris's biggest mosque, told Agence France Presse he has appealed for France's Muslims to remain calm.
"It is with astonishment, sadness and concern that I have learned that this publication is risking increasing the current outrage across the Muslim world," he said. "I would appeal to them not to pour oil on the fire."
In 2005, a Danish paper, Jyllands-Posten, posted cartoons with Mohammad in them, including one featuring Mohammad wearing a bomb in a turban. At the start of 2006, Danish embassies around the world were attacked, several countries withdrew their ambassadors, and dozens died in rioting. In 2010, several men were arrested, accused of trying to attack and kill as many as possible at the Jyllands-Posten offices. At one point during the controversy, Charlie Hebdo republished those cartoons as an act of solidarity.How can we find trustworthy sources of information in a world of growing disinformation? In this article, we explore valuable critical thinking strategies.
How to spot fake information and how to identify reliable sources.Those who value accurate information.As subjects of the Information Age, we’re bombarded daily with half-truths, misleading statements, bias, corporate spin and out-and-out fabrications masquerading as facts. Finding what to trust in a world of growing disinformation is becoming ever more troublesome. In this article, we’ll be looking at how we can identify the BS and find trustworthy and objective sources of information.
One of the virtues we’re continuously advocating here at Capable Men is the trait of critical thinking. Forming an objective analysis of the issues around us in order to form a judgement that allows us to act decisively against the masters of spin and deception. You, me and everyone you know has been deceived at some point by political leaders, lobbying groups, news outlets and the corporate world to exploit your emotions to further better someone’s position.
Sometimes, it’s just harmless spin – Perhaps on the subject of moisturising cream or other trivial objects. Then the next time, it’s political spin, which leads you into the wrong voting booth. Arming yourself with the tools to evaluate information is key if you have any desire to navigate this world on your own terms. Far too many of us have simply given up caring about such matters and then find ourselves easily exploited by those who have the skills to do so.
This is more important today than ever before, simply due to the fact that spin now comes at us in ways that didn’t even exist a few decades ago. The Internet has enabled a new environment for information that breeds continuous falsehoods that replicate and spread like the plague. News organisations (Newspapers, online editorials and TV/Media) now all compete in an increasingly hostile news environment that competes for the user’s viewership with sensationalist headlines that prioritise speed and impact over substance and facts. We’re all navigating this deceptive environment every day, and we can no longer trust our media at face value, we must become capable in our information gathering tactics moving forward.
Firstly, we must look for the red flags of bad information, some of which are featured in a great book on this subject that I highly recommend reading – UnSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation.
Fear – Does your content contain elements of fear? Fear sells, and it’s no secret that our judgement can become deeply impaired when we become fearful of a threat. The buildup to the Iraq War in 2003 was an excellent example of fear tactics being utilised to influence the populace with misinformation. Some circumstances will certainly require such a narrative to get the point across (Like Global Warming for example) The point here is that fear will often be a deceptive cloak that hides the lack of real evidence.
Does your content contain elements of fear? Fear sells, and it’s no secret that our judgement can become deeply impaired when we become fearful of a threat. The buildup to the Iraq War in 2003 was an excellent example of fear tactics being utilised to influence the populace with misinformation. Some circumstances will certainly require such a narrative to get the point across (Like Global Warming for example) The point here is that fear will often be a deceptive cloak that hides the lack of real evidence. The Writing Style – Is the writing clear, coherent and formatted well? If the body of text is unable to adhere to the basic principles of grammar, then we’re off to a bad start.
Is the writing clear, coherent and formatted well? If the body of text is unable to adhere to the basic principles of grammar, then we’re off to a bad start. The Blame Game – The blaming of others is often a reflex, with little regard for facts. Most people have no ownership over their failures or weaknesses and will be quick to point the finger at others – potential red flag.
The blaming of others is often a reflex, with little regard for facts. Most people have no ownership over their failures or weaknesses and will be quick to point the finger at others – potential red flag. Glittering Generalities – Learn to recognise glittering generalities, blanket-terms that aim to collectivise the information into fancy adjectives that avoid facts and questions at face value.
Lack of a source – One of the best things we can do to evaluate information is to seek the original source of the story/data and analyse the content as it was originally provided. If no source is provided to a sensationalist claim or piece, then this must be seen as a potential red flag.
“Coca-Cola isn’t just carbonated water that’s been flavored and sweetened, it’s “the Real Thing.” United isn’t just an airline emerging from bankruptcy, it’s your access to “the friendly skies.” Allstate isn’t just a colossal insurance company, it’s “good hands.”
— UnSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation
The above photos formed a highly deceptive piece of content that was making the rounds on Social Media in 2015 during the European Refugee Crisis. While refugees pushed towards Europe, discomfort and debate formed across the continent. The above imagery and false commentary formed from that dissonance, serving as a visual warning of the situation coming Europe’s way.
However, the photographs employed above were incorrectly described and served as propaganda to fuel emotion. The photos were not from mid-2015; instead, the photographs were published as documenting an influx of people migrating from Albania to Italy in 1991. The facts didn’t stop the viral momentum of the content spreading across social media.
Source: Snopes – Wave of Misconstrued Migration
“The science of psychology has taught us a lot about how and why we get things wrong. As we’ll see, our minds betray us not only when it comes to politics, but in all sorts of matters, from how we see a sporting event, or even a war, to the way we process a sales pitch. Humans are not by nature the fact-driven, rational beings we like to think we are. We get the facts wrong more often than we think we do. And we do so in predictable ways: we engage in wishful thinking. We embrace information that supports our beliefs and reject evidence that challenges them.”
— UnSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation
Looking within
We’re not guilt-free in this cycle of disinformation. Cognitive bias affects us all, and if the story suits our own agenda, it often gets a free pass at the expense of facts. Taking ownership of oneself, seeking the truth and understanding that we have an inherent bias operating in our primal subconscious, will go a long way in stopping the BS from gaining momentum.
To help you understand the hidden forces of bias, we have created a comprehensive Cognitive Bias Field Manual to assist you in this endeavour. In the meantime, here are a few examples of cognitive Bias which may obstruct our critical thinking:
The ambiguity effect – Decision making is affected by a lack of information or ambiguity. The effect implies that people tend to select options for which the probability of a favourable outcome is known, over an option for which the probability of a favourable outcome is unknown.
Decision making is affected by a lack of information or ambiguity. The effect implies that people tend to select options for which the probability of a favourable outcome is known, over an option for which the probability of a favourable outcome is unknown. Belief bias – The tendency to judge the strength of arguments based on the plausibility of their conclusion rather than how strongly they support that conclusion. In other words, if people agree with a viewpoint, they are inclined to believe that the process used to obtain the results must also be correct.
– The tendency to judge the strength of arguments based on the plausibility of their conclusion rather than how strongly they support that conclusion. In other words, if people agree with a viewpoint, they are inclined to believe that the process used to obtain the results must also be correct. Authority bias – The tendency to attribute greater accuracy to the opinion of an authority figure (unrelated to its content) and be more influenced by that opinion.
The tendency to attribute greater accuracy to the opinion of an authority figure (unrelated to its content) and be more influenced by that opinion. Bandwagon effect – The bandwagon effect is a phenomenon whereby the rate of uptake of beliefs, ideas, fads and trends increases the more that they have already been adopted by others. In other words, the bandwagon effect is characterised by the probability of individual adoption increasing with respect to the proportion who have already done so. As more people come to believe in something, others also “hop on the bandwagon” regardless of the underlying evidence.
– The bandwagon effect is a phenomenon whereby the rate of uptake of beliefs, ideas, fads and trends increases the more that they have already been adopted by others. In other words, the bandwagon effect is characterised by the probability of individual adoption increasing with respect to the proportion who have already done so. As more people come to believe in something, others also “hop on the bandwagon” regardless of the underlying evidence. Moral credential effect – A bias that occurs when a person’s track record as a good egalitarian establishes in them an unconscious ethical certification, endorsement, or license that increases the likelihood of less egalitarian decisions later. This effect occurs even when the audience or moral peer group is unaware of the affected person’s previously established moral credential.
A bias that occurs when a person’s track record as a good egalitarian establishes in them an unconscious ethical certification, endorsement, or license that increases the likelihood of less egalitarian decisions later. This effect occurs even when the audience or moral peer group is unaware of the affected person’s previously established moral credential. Normalcy bias – People with a normalcy bias have difficulties reacting to something they have not experienced before. It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster and its possible effects.
Identity Politics
I wasn’t entirely sure if I was going to discuss identity politics in this piece, but after consideration, I decided to do so. Identity Politics is a big reason why different races, genders, class structures, ethnicities, nationalities and religions have produced false information to further their agenda. Such methods are often never challenged from within, due to In-group favoritism. Sam Harris has an excellent bit on this (Taken from his podcast) that I implore you all to listen to. [3min, 55sec – Youtube:]
Thinking about the data
Don’t Confuse Anecdotes with Data – One or two fascinating tales don’t prove anything. They could be far from typical. These tales could be on the fringes of the bell curve and yet, they may be used as tools to prop up a weak concept to be believed as an everyday occurrence.
One or two fascinating tales don’t prove anything. They could be far from typical. These tales could be on the fringes of the bell curve and yet, they may be used as tools to prop up a weak concept to be believed as an everyday occurrence. Seeing versus Believing – It’s completely natural to trust what we can see with our own eyes and senses, but ultimately humans are simply poor data-taking devices. Our own experience can often mislead us and it is why the eyewitness testimony in science is undoubtedly the lowest form of evidence available. But people will fight tooth and nail to defend something they have seen because they know it to be true. It’s not their observation that is likely wrong, but the person’s interpretation of the experience. I’ll never forget the video from Neil DeGrasse Tyson explaining this phenomenon when he was asked if he believed in UFOs.
“There was a police officer who was tracking a UFO that was swaying back and forth in the sky. In a squad car, chasing a UFO and the UFO is moving back and forth like this… (Moves hands) Later it turned out that the cop car was chasing Venus and he was driving on a curved road! But he was so distracted by Venus he thought Venus was the one moving!”
— Neil DeGrasse Tyson
Counterfactual Method – If a source makes claim A, consider whether or not there’s a good case for not-A. What are the questions raised? Thinking with this approach, helps you identify the flaws in an argument and leads you down a path to finding out more about the subject.
If a source makes claim A, consider whether or not there’s a good case for not-A. What are the questions raised? Thinking with this approach, helps you identify the flaws in an argument and leads you down a path to finding out more about the subject. Not All ‘Studies’ are Equal – Studies come in all shapes and sizes and often form the basis of sensationalist headline news, without the study being criticised or assessed. Often the study will involve an alarmingly small sample size with a high margin of error and yet this will often be overlooked by yellow journalism.
Who stands behind the information? Does the source have a motive? What method did the source use to obtain the information? How old is the data? What assumptions did those collecting the information make? How much guesswork was involved?Are there other places the information provided from the study can be verified? Public records? Respected scientific journals? Are other unrelated sites or news organisations talking about this? What is their input? Is there a general consensus to the facts of the story?
Summary
We have now identified spin, the warning signs that may be available, the psychological bias we inherently have towards data and the process we can use to think about data objectively. At this point, it would be suitable to discuss some reputable sources of information/data that we can all use online, but I’ve decided not to.
Developing your own pallet of respected sources of authority is something which we should all challenge ourselves to do using the various techniques above. Remember to mentally accredit the sources when they pull through with accurate data (It’s always easy to remember the falsehoods and never the facts) and dismiss those who continuously spew their BS.
Hold friends and family accountable for their words. Let it be known that their weak arguments will not be respected if they can’t be defended. This isn’t hostile, it’s intellectual accountability and the refusal to play along with senseless information which can often lead to irreversible decisions and conflict.Going to bed in your underwear could end up being responsible for a number of health problems, experts have suggested.
Going to bed in your underwear could end up being responsible for a number of health problems, experts have suggested.
Wearing constricting undergarments overnight can create the optimum environment for a host of unpleasantness particularly in women, including an increased risk of bacterial and yeast infections.
The comments come after American gynaecologist Dr Alyssa Dweck revealed that she advises her patients to ditch their knickers at night across the board.
“I tell my patients to sleep without underwear. If the area is constantly covered, especially by fabric that’s not moisture wicking or absorbent, then moisture collects, creating the perfect breeding ground for yeast.”
Dr Shirley McQuade, Medical Director of Dublin’s Well Woman Centre revealed that wearing underwear overnight can lead the way for infections such as bacteria vaginosis and thrush.
“Wearing underwear to bed can cause problems for women in that the temperature is increased and the circulation is low which can allow for bacteria and yeast to thrive causing problems.
“It isn’t just underwear either. Wearing tight lycra while working out can also be a cause of recurring infections in women and I would always advise them to wear loose clothing while at the gym and cotton underwear,” she said.
It isn’t just women who are advised to hit the hay commando either, as experts say wearing boxers to bed can impact a man’s fertility.
Dr Bart Kuczera of The Beacon Medical Group said that long term over-heating of the testicles could have damaging consequences for male fertility.
"It is a long known fact that both testicular function and sperm production are temperature dependent. This is the reason why testicles are located out of the body, in the scrotum, which together with specific blood supply act as a natural thermostat. Permanently or repeatedly increased testicular temperature is harmful for sperm production and may therefore result in poorer fertility.
"All male patients attending for fertility treatment in our clinic are advised to avoid testicular overheating through either tight underwear and trousers or warm bath tubs and saunas," he said.
The Consultant Fertility Specialist revealed that tight underwear also can cause infections in men, with can cause discomfort and irritation.
"Poorly permeable and overheating underwear or clothing change the skin environment in the groin and scrotum facilitating fungal growth replacing healthy natural bacterial flora of the area. This infection, called tinea, is quite commonly seen as reddening and itchy skin in the area and may give rise to secondary intimate skin infections," he said.
Online EditorsI feel like this was really a long time coming, but the whole “Sensei Seagal” thing is just out of control. For a while Steven Seagal was being strutted around the UFC as if he were somehow providing actual services or advice to high level fighters like Anderson Silva and Lyoto Machida and it was ridiculous. Most of us with sense knew that Seagal was not really doing anything of value, he was just a famous actor with a martial arts background who was taking in the attention that UFC fighters were getting.
In this new interview with Anderson Silva he discusses his relationship with Seagal and admits that Seagal really didn’t train with him or teach him anything, that it was, as we thought, just a PR stunt.Greetings Pioneers!
Today we have another hotfix out for you with many bug fixes and optimisations. The calculations carried out on the server have been reduced significantly, which should result in less lag overall. There have also been a lot of fixes to the Turret AI, they should behave as they should more consistently now. If you’re waiting for something new, you won’t be waiting long. We are testing the new buildable lights internally today and tomorrow, so you should see them in an update soon!
PLEASE NOTE: If you are running your own server you must update the current server build in order to avoid any conflicts with running the latest Steam Frontend.
Changelist v0.1.5
Moved structure testing into a pooled thread, now it only happens when needed.
Fixed an issue where a Turret would focus on a target that it couldn’t attack without selecting a new target.
Moved unnecessary tick calculations of hologram placement off of the server, it is now only carried out when the player confirms the placement.
Fixed an issue with the Turrets where they would sometimes jitter in Singleplayer.
Fixed it so that Turrets on opposing sides will attack each other correctly.
Fixed an issue where occasionally new Hives being spawned into the world would appear within the confines of a player’s base.
Fixed an issue with the Missile Turret where the top would sometimes flip over.
Fixed issue where the pistol began to function like an auto pistol!
Fixed an issue where while equipping/unequipping Modules or Weapons… to say the least, would go very very wrong. In some cases you could lose your Build Module and/or be unable to re-equip it. I f you still encounter this issue please let us know, as well as what you did to get it to occur if possible.
Fixed UI issue where you could open the Tab menus while the map was open, and they would overlap.
Fixed UI issue where activity popups would appear over other menus, but when closing it you’d lose mouse input and couldn’t close them.
Fixed the Deployment Screen UI not refreshing in realtime to show you if you had Eden Kits to spawn at and how many.
Fixed Eden Kit markers never disappearing on the Map/Deployment screen or Compass HUD.
Fixed Map screen remaining open while on Death Screen.
Fixed a bug where the SMG would be at the players feet in 3rd person
Tweaked Fade distance for Compass Markers on the HUD.
Changed some popups to be personal Chat message instead, as they seemed too intrusive to gameplay.
Tweaked colours of Chat, and added a separate PlayerName colour for your own prompts such as those which display when you get a message about clan activity.
Tweaked Map Markers player icon.
Many thanks to Salaluiz for the screenshot used in this weeks header image!
See you in the fray!
-Team FlixEven when Cory Joseph was helping blaze a trail for young Canadian basketball talent to follow, there was a belief that the Toronto Raptors point guard (in conjunction with his old high school teammate Tristan Thompson) represented the start of something.
That Joseph’s path – a starring role at a U.S. prep powerhouse, front-and-centre on an AAU program that went head-to-head with the best American clubs, recognition as an elite NCAA prospect and a quick jump to the NBA – wasn’t going to be a one-off, but maybe an example, and proof that all the talent north of the border just needed the opportunity to be seen.
The opportunities are coming ever faster and Canadians aren’t disappointing.
Monday night was the third annual BioSteel All-Canadian Game at the University of Toronto’s Goldring Centre for High Performance Sport, bringing together the best of a deepening pool of Canadian high school talent playing both here and in the U.S.
How quickly has the game gained traction? This year scouts from 24 NBA teams were at the Athlete Institute in Orangeville watching the 24 athletes go through five practices and a scrimmage before the game Monday night, which sold out weeks in advance.
“Just talking to the NBA guys over the weekend they are saying this is by far the deepest pool of players they’ve seen up here and the level has been exploding year after year,” says Jesse Tipping, president of the Athlete Institute and co-founder of the BioSteel game. “I knew that, but it’s nice to hear.”
It’s the capper on a remarkable week for Canadian high-school aged players.
The BioSteel Game models itself in some respects on the Nike Hoop Summit which held it’s 22nd showcase Friday night in Portland, Oregon, with a team of under-19 players from across the globe competing against an under-19 team chosen by USA Basketball.
For several years Canadians playing at the Hoop Summit were a rarity – only five through the first 15 years.
Since Joseph played in the 2010 event, however, there have been Canadians on the World Team – coached for seven years and counting by Roy Rana of Ryerson University and Canada Basketball – each year, often making significant impacts as Andrew Wiggins and Jamaal Murray were both named MVPs on their way to becoming NBA lottery picks.
But this past week was on another order of magnitude, almost literally.
Even Joseph, who is only six seasons removed from his draft year, can’t quite grasp how quickly the trail he helped cut has become a highway.
“Five? Are you [joking] me? That’s amazing man,” Joseph was saying the other day. “That goes to show you where Canadian basketball is at.”
The Raptors guard was reacting when told that five Canadians were on the roster for the World Team. It’s the most ever for any single country other than the host United States.
Over the event’s 22-year history countless NBA stars have played in it and it’s been a significant stepping stone for European teenagers to plant themselves on the league’s radar, with the likes of Dirk Nowitzki (Germany), Tony Parker (France), Bismack Biyombo (Democratic Republic of Congo) and Serge Ibaka (Republic of Congo) and Dennis Schroeder (Germany) seeing their draft stock rise after performing strongly at the event.
“Anytime you have a kid in the game, he’s a legitimate pro prospect,” says Rana whose first year coaching the Hoop Summit was 2011. “When you get four of them it speaks about the next wave of Canadians that could be entering the league. And there are other Canadians that could be in the game too.
“It’s a life-changing moment for everyone who plays in the game,” says Rana. “It’s the best evaluation they’re going to get at the NBA level in their careers, at this point. To have one week where every single NBA team has guys sitting there watching you practice and play, it’s pretty unique. There’s really nothing like it.”
It’s estimated 150 NBA front office personnel were in Portland for the week watching the teams practice in advance of the game. Toronto Raptors general manager Masai Ujiri missed Kyle Lowry’s return from wrist surgery last Wednesday to be in Oregon.
“It’s the only event of its nature,” says Jonathan Givony, founder of DraftExpress, the most widely respected resource for the NBA draft. “For [NBA teams] your options are to either go to Europe and watch European players play other European players or stay here and watch Americans against Americans and then you always have to compare in your head how they would look against each other. … It’s a rare opportunity to see these guys together on the same floor.”
The five Candians at the Hoop Summit: R.J. Barrett, 16, was the youngest player on either team and is already considered a likely NBA lottery pick in the 2019 or 2020 draft, depending on which year he decides to leave high school for college; Shane Gilgeous-Alexander, heading to the University of Kentucky; Lindell Wigginton, bound for Iowa State; Nickeil Alexander-Walker (Virginia Tech) and Luguentz Dort, who will be highly recruited as part of the |
bragging that it had never laid off an employee involuntarily since 1921.
IBM in the mainframe era is a prime example; through the 1980s the company had an explicit policy of “lifelong employment,” bragging that it had never laid off an employee involuntarily since 1921.
When “open systems” came along in the 1980s, exemplified by IBM’s PC with its Microsoft operating system and Intel microprocessor, things changed. Older employees who were skilled and versed in a company’s proprietary technologies got pushed aside in favor of younger workers with the latest open-systems skills. Old Economy companies now had to compete for talent with “New Economy” startups that used stock options to convince high-tech workers to give up secure employment with the established companies.
In the name of shareholder value, these executives could avoid the uncertain process of investing in people, the source of all innovation. At the same time, companies started doing massive stock buybacks, a practice sanctioned by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1982, in order to jack up stock prices.
In this new regime, executive pay became increasingly stock-based, rewarding top executives for the company’s stock-price performance, no matter how it was achieved. Top executives began to embrace a new and strange ideology: a company should be run not for its products and employees, but for its shareholders, even though these shareholders merely bought and sold stock and contributed nothing to the success of the company. Executives got quick boosts to company profits by laying off experienced, and more expensive, employees.
In the early 1990s, the Old-Economy icon IBM led the way in transforming from “retain-and-reinvest” to “downsize-and-distribute.” Sadly, over the past two decades, this has become the dominant resource-allocation regime among US companies, high-tech and otherwise. My detailed research at the industry and company levels shows that this financialized mode of doing business has helped to concentrate income among the top 0.1 percent, and it has led to the ongoing erosion of middle-class employment opportunities in the US.
Parramore: You’ve noted a growing consensus that America is falling behind other countries when it comes to innovation and technology. How did this happen, and how do your findings tell a different story from what is commonly believed?
A growing number of academic studies are concluding that there is an “innovation crisis” in the US.
A growing number of academic studies are concluding that there is an “innovation crisis” in the US. In the Old Economy, decades of research collaboration between government agencies and business enterprises put in place the infrastructure and knowledge base that has permitted companies like Netflix, Facebook, Uber and Airbnb to emerge as dominant players. But other nations are starting to catch up and even take the lead in developing the most advanced technologies. In 2007, researchers in France and Germany shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for the scientific discoveries that made possible the iPod and countless other digital devices.
So what is the US doing wrong? Some point to a decline in government R&D spending as a consequence of the end of the Cold War. Others view the problem as a lack of business R&D spending because of a financial-market environment that results in “short-term” thinking on the part of corporate executives. But research on investment in the high-tech knowledge base that I have done with Matt Hopkins demonstrates that the problem is not a lack of R&D spending, either by government or business. Rather we argue that, with the rise of the New Economy business model, the main problem is the failure of US high-tech corporations to invest in the “collective and cumulative careers” which you need if you want R&D spending to result in more high-tech knowledge. Government policymakers have added to this failure by not recognizing that long-term careers are key to the creation of a world-leading high-tech knowledge base, the subject of our second paper. Just throwing more R&D money at the problem won’t bring you the next breakthrough product.
As I showed in a recent Harvard Business Review article, “Profits Without Prosperity,” the business failure stems directly from the obsession of US top executives with doing massive stock buybacks with the sole purpose of giving manipulative boosts to their companies’ stock prices. This behavior cannot be understood as “short-termism.” It’s really the direct result of the economic incentives inherent in the ample stock options and stock awards that corporate boards of directors, dominated by CEOs, bestow on top executives in order to maximize shareholder value. Neoclassical economists have assured corporate executives that maximizing shareholder value results in the superior performance of their companies and the economy as a whole. In fact, as I have shown in many theoretical and empirical studies, this strategy is ruinous. It undermines innovation and results in income inequity and employment instability.
Over the decade 2004-2013, 75 companies included in 11 high-tech industry categories in the 2013 Fortune 500 list expended $1.1 trillion on stock repurchases and more than half a trillion dollars on cash dividends. The employment practices of these 75 companies are very important to the operation and performance of the US high-tech economy. Yet many if not most of these companies are operating in a “downsize-and-distribute” mode of resource allocation. For the US to remain a world technology leader, this broken business model requires a major overhaul.
Parramore: Business executives often argue that lower tax rates for companies and wealthy households are necessary for innovation and entrepreneurship. What do you say to that argument?
Lazonick: They like to repeat this line, but the facts explain why the opposite is actually true.
From 2004 to 2013 about 9,000 companies in the Compustat database wasted $6.9 trillion on stock buybacks — that’s equivalent to nearly half their profits. They also spent $7.5 trillion on dividends, the normal way of providing holders of corporate stock with income on their portfolio investments. The US companies in the S&P 500 Index, which account for over 70 percent of total US market capitalization, did half of those buybacks, represented 54 percent of their combined profits — an astonishing development.
These people are far less interested in creating value over the long run than in extracting it for themselves over the short run through stock market casino games.
In 2013, the average compensation of the 500 highest paid executives was $32.2 million, with 84 percent from stock-based compensation that incentivizes massive buybacks to manipulate the stock market. Yet these highest paid corporate executives may actually be jealous of the $1 billion pay packages of the biggest hedge-fund activists who are the chief financial cheerleaders for doing buybacks to boost stock prices. These people are far less interested in creating value over the long run than in extracting it for themselves over the short run through stock market casino games.
Hedge-fund managers, of course, have much of their income taxed at the corporate tax rate, while most corporate executives lobby for lower tax rates for themselves and their companies.
Why give tax breaks to people who actively manipulate the stock market? Why are we helping to ensure that they remain comfortably ensconced among the 0.1 percent? And why give tax breaks to companies whose profits are used for this purpose, instead of something useful? The broken tax regime is part of the problem of inequality. It incentivizes value extraction, not value creation. To give more tax breaks to the rich or to the corporations that they control would be utter folly.
Parramore: How can we change America’s business culture to get more innovation and higher standards of living?
Lazonick: First, we need to rid business of the ideology that companies should be run for the sake of “returning” value to public shareholders. You can’t “return” value created by a company’s productive assets to people who never actually invested in those assets. Taxpayers and workers, on the other hand, do play major roles in investing in the productive capabilities that create competitive products.
You, the taxpayer, do this through government funding of the knowledge base.
Employees do it through their on-the-job expenditures of effort. It is highly damaging to industrial innovation and employees’ earnings to run the corporation for the sake of those participants who matter least. Public shareholders are traders in corporate stock, not investors in corporate assets. The actual investors in corporate value creation are households as taxpayers and workers. Let’s run the corporation for them.
Parramore: If you could give one piece of advice to Apple CEO Tim Cook to position the company for success in the future, what would it be?
Lazonick: That piece of advice would be: stop the stock buybacks.
In October, I wrote a critique of Carl Icahn’s call to Tim Cook for Apple to do $100 billion in buybacks as a massive tender offer on top of the $51 billion that Apple had repurchased over the previous two years. My research shows that Apple’s buybacks have been a major misallocation of resources.
There are plenty of ways Apple could improve relations with employees and society and use its profits productively in ways that are consistent with the company’s innovative business model.
Apple could invest in the educational attainments of its employees and let performance pay do its job of incentivizing employees to invest their skills and efforts in the innovation process. Tim Cook could take the lead among corporate executives in recognizing the debt that is owed to taxpayers for Apple’s profitable products. He should advocate that profitable companies like Apple pay their fair share of taxes, and he should support the efforts of employees who can make innovative contributions to solving some of America’s greatest social ills, like discrimination, poverty, and climate change. Instead of doing massive stock buybacks, a profitable company like Apple should “think different” about innovation by deploying some of its technological capability to help our society confront the major issues of our times.
The views expressed in this post are the author’s alone, and presented here to offer a variety of perspectives to our readers.Reverse Grafitti: Creating Art by Cleaning Up
Three years ago, we wrote about an air pollution guerilla marketing tactic in Chicago where they power-washed sidewalks with stencil forms to create shapes and texts. Well, we've found what the next level of that idea looks like!
The Reverse Grafitti Project in San Francisco is creating environmental art by cleaning up dirt and grime from walls. In the video above, you can see them making a 140 feet long mural in the Broadway tunnel. It shows native species of native plants that would be living in the area of that tunnel if it wasn't currently the city's downtown (that project was a promo for Green Works).
More on the Reverse Grafitti Project
Reverse Grafitti Project
The Reverse Graffiti Project in San Francisco
Moose's Reverse GraffitiBy, Federico Simoncelli, Principal Software Engineer, Red Hat
As a software engineer working on the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV), my team and I are driven by innovation; we are always looking for cutting edge technologies to integrate into our product.
Lately there has been a growing interest in Linux containers solutions such as Docker. Docker provides an open and standardized platform for developers and sysadmins to build, ship, and run distributed applications. The application images can be safely held in your organization registry or they can be shared publicly in the docker hub portal (http://registry.hub.docker.com) for everyone to use and to contribute to.
Linux containers are a well-known technology that runs isolated Linux systems on the same host sharing the same kernel and resources as cpu time and memory. Containers are more lightweight, perform better and allow more density of instances compared to full virtualization where virtual machines run dedicated full kernels and operating systems on top of virtualized hardware. On the other hand virtual machines are still the preferred solution when it comes to running highly isolated workloads or different operating systems than the host.
As the Docker vendor ecosystem has grown richer, Red Hat announced Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic: a lightweight operating system based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and designed to run applications in Docker containers. Other vendors are focused on providing Docker orchestration tools across different hosts. One example is Kubernetes, an open source Docker manager, recently released by Google.
So how does Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization work with Docker today? oVirt (the upstream project for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization) supports running Docker containers inside virtual machines and simplifies the process by enabling the Project Atomic image to be imported into your datacenter from the public Glance repository (glance.ovirt.org). Additionally, we are working on providing a platform for the orchestration solutions to integrate with RHEV. Kubernetes, in fact, already includes an oVirt Cloud Provider that can be connected to your data centers to discover the virtual machines dedicated to run containers (minions in the Kubernetes jargon).
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization therefore is capable of providing you with an optimized stack to run containers starting from the operating system on the bare-metal up to the one inside the virtual machines and in the images, preserving at the same time the freedom and possibilities of the Docker hub. It is possible to imagine a future addition to the Kubernetes oVirt Cloud Provider to register regular RHEV hosts as minions as well, giving you the option to run containers on bare-metal with a minimum effort.
Today, deploying a private or hybrid cloud that runs virtual machines and containers, as just described, is cost prohibitive. We know that you are very much interested in maximizing the efficiency and optimizing your data centers by deploying the right tools for the right workloads. To help you in this quest, we are working on enabling Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Atomic hosts to dynamically run different types of workloads. For example RHEV virtual machines, Docker containers and Hadoop jobs. In fact under the orchestration of Mesos (a powerful scheduling framework) it is possible to maximize and balance the hosts computational power for the most important and demanding tasks at any given time.
Integrating emerging technologies such as Kubernetes, Docker and Mesos enables us to help you to meet your requirements and run efficient and reliable datacenters. Stay tuned for more blog posts that will highlight the integration of these new technologies features into Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization.If the Malaysian government believes that walking away from the search for MH370, which finished today, will make its disappearance go away, they are mistaken.
In fact if anything, the wave criticism and bizarre cover-up theories will only increase as the months go by.
Certainly, the publicity is hurting the government and its national airline but ignoring MH370 is no fix.
The Malaysian government’s performance over this tragedy has been a muddled disaster from the outset, and that has only fuelled the conspiracy theorists, who have had a field day.
Almost every utterance – mostly via social media – from the host of Malaysian officials and the military was a PR disaster.
AirlineRatings.com was the first to call for the search to be handed over to Australia and the first to say that the crash investigation run by Malaysia was the worst in aviation history.
The world’s media and others will not let this go.
MH370 will be found – just as a host of famous shipwrecks has been found.
Not helping matters is the plethora of fiction that has been written about this disaster and the search effort.
And that view is supported by noted aviation commentator and former Senior Air Safety Investigator with the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Greg Feith who says the public’s confidence in the search effort has suffered badly.
Speaking with The West Australian yesterday, Mr Feith said the “credibility of the search effort has been jeopardised.”
He says the problem is: who will carry on the search with so much negativity.
“Australia has done an admirable job [on the search]," he said.
And this view is shared by many in Canberra who say that the Australian government has waned in its enthusiasm because of the unfair criticism of the ATSB’s efforts by local media.
Mr Feith, who led the US team on the Silk Air Flight MI185 suicide crash, adds that the Malaysians were in well over their heads with MH370 and “they were lucky that Australia took over.”
In fact, the Malaysian air accident division is only 30 per cent compliant with international regulations.
Mr Feith cautions, however, that even if MH370 is found it may hold onto its secrets.
He says that at a possible depth of 6000m will make recovery extremely difficult.
And he warns that while the flight data recorder should yield information about what occurred with the plane’s systems, the cockpit voice recorder – which would tell us why – will almost certainly be blank.
Like most in the industry, Mr Feith believes that everyone on the plane had passed out through a de-pressurization event and the CVR, which overwrites itself every two hours, will be blank.
“It is likely that finding the location of MH370 will be no more than a memorial for the relatives which of course is extremely important,” he said.
Mr Feith also believes that, on the body of evidence available to him, the captain is more likely responsible.
But whomever is responsible for MH370’s disappearance, Malaysia is being irresponsible in its commitment to the international community and its own aviation industry.
Its attitude by rhetoric and deed has left the once-proud airline system in Malaysia in tatters, and it will be a long time before it recovers.
Only discount pricing is attracting passengers to fly on its airlines.
There is only one credible option for Malaysia – continue with the search.Hide Transcript Show Transcript
WEBVTT <IT WAS A PRETTY DRAMATIC SCENE UP THERE AT THE BANK. THERE WERE A LOT OF PEOPLE THAT WERE SHAKEN CONSIDERABLY BY IT.> One by one - police handcuffed each teen and took them back to the police station to be questioned. Officers caught the suspects just blocks from there where police say they robbed the Tradesmen Community Credit Union on 2nd Avenue at gun point. <THE INFORMATION THAT WE HAVE IS THAT SOME OF THESE KIDS WERE IN FACT STUDENTS HERE AT DES MOINES PUBLIC SCHOOLS SO THEY DEFINITELY SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN CLASS AND NOT OUT DOING THIS TODAY.> All 5 will be charged as adults. Police say this is part of a scary trend - more and more young teenagers committing violent crimes. <I'M WORRIED THAT DES MOINES IS TRYING TO BE LIKE CHICAGO.> Will Keeps a self proclaimed former gang member... turned musician and community activist says he's alarmed by what he's seeing. <13, 14, 15, 16 YEAR OLDS KIDS ARE DOING MOST OF THE CRIME RIGHT NOW. I GUESS THAT MUST BE THE AGE WHERE THEY ARE REALLY GETTING LOST.> That's why he and church leaders here at Zion Lutheran Church in Des Moines... bus in nearly 4-hundred under privileged and refugee kids every Wednesd night. They believe reaching these kids at a young age - is the only way to reverse this dangerous trend. <CHANGE THE WAY THEY THINK BECAUSE IF YOU DON'T - THEY ARE GOING TO BE THE NEXT KIDS OUT HERE ROBBING BANKS. THEY ARE GOING TO THINK IT'S COOL, AND IT'S NOT COOL!> Fredrick Bickham, Mark Robinson and Damarion Farris are all in the Polk County jail tonight facing first degree robbery. The two 17 year suspects will be
Advertisement Five teenagers charged in credit union robbery Des Moines police were called to a robbery at a credit union just after it opened Wednesday morning. Share Shares Copy Link Copy
Five teenagers have been charged in connection with a robbery at Tradesmen Community Credit Union. The Des Moines Police Department reports that 18-year-olds Fredrick Dewayne Bickham, Mark Dale Robinson and Damarion Ariontae Farris have been charged with first-degree robbery. Police said two 17-year-old males were also arrested and charged with first-degree robbery. The robbery was reported at the Tradesmen Community Credit Union at 1400 2nd Avenue just after 9 a.m. Wednesday. Police said several suspects entered the credit union, one armed with a handgun. The suspects left the credit union with an undisclosed amount of cash. There were no injuries to anyone at the credit union. An undercover officer in the area was quickly able to track down a vehicle matching that description and relayed information to other officers, who were able to pull the vehicle over without incident a mile and a half away at the intersection of 6th and Corning avenues. Police began questioning the teens minutes later. Sgt. Paul Parizek said some of the robbers were wearing masks and other were not, and that the robbers dropped several items inside the credit union. "Clearly not well-planned, fairly disorganized," is how Parizek described the robbery. “It was a pretty dramatic scene up there at the bank,” Des Moines police Sgt. Paul Parizek said. “There were a lot of people that were shaken considerably by it.” One by one, police handcuffed each teen and took them back to the police station to be questioned. ”The information that we have is that some of these kids were, in fact, students here at Des Moines Public Schools, so they definitely should have been in class and not out doing this today, Parizek said. All five will be charged as adults. Police said this is part of a scary trend of more and more young teenagers committing violent crimes. “I'm worried that Des Moines is trying to be like Chicago,” musician and community activist Will Keeps said. Keeps, a self-proclaimed former gang member, said he is alarmed by what he is seeing. “Thirteen, 14, 15, 16-year-old kids are doing most of the crime right now,” Keeps said. “I guess that must be the age where they are really getting lost.” Keeps, along with church leaders at Zion Lutheran Church in Des Moines, transports nearly 400 underprivileged and refugee kids to the church every Wednesday night. They believe reaching kids at a young age is the only way to reverse this dangerous trend. “Change the way they think because if you don't, they are going to be the next kids out here robbing banks,” Keeps said. “They are going to think it's cool, and it's not cool.” Bickham, Robinson and Farris will be transported to the Polk County Jail. Police said the juveniles are being held at Meyer Hall but will be waived to adult court Thursday morning.news One Year Later: How Being a G20 Detainee Changed Me
Photo by harry choi from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
The main change I’ve noticed in myself since the G20 is how much I hate cops now. Not only am I uncomfortable around them, as most people are—I hate them.
I didn’t feel this way before the G20. But now, this newfound hatred permeates every part of my existence: from walking down streets to browsing on Facebook and everywhere in between. I firmly believe that police functioned during the G20 as enemies of democracy, civil rights, and social justice, and that they function in similar ways, around the world and in Canada, every single day.
This newly altered perception of police is regrettable. It has cost me a lot—socially, politically, and psychologically. Allow me to explain.
About two months ago I went to an old friend’s wedding with my partner. The groom and I had had a small falling out in high school, but we had both long forgotten what it was over; I thought his wedding would be a good opportunity to reconnect. His parents and brother came from Alberta, and told me how much they had missed me, how glad they were to see me again as a fully fledged adult, and how happy the groom was that I was able to make it.
It all made me feel very warm and happy.
The wedding was beautiful. At the reception, the speeches were touching, but someone beside me at our table began complaining that they were too long. “I mean, I want to eat,” he said. Soon after he told us he was a Toronto police officer.
My partner and I were initially turned off far more by his occupation than by his wanting the speeches to end. We agreed not to press him about being a cop, his opinions on the G20 policing, or anything else. We were there to have a good time, not cause a scene. As the night went on, he and I had a few drinks together, and I have to admit, I really warmed up to him. Not my favourite person in the world, but nowhere near my least favourite either. Turns out, there’s more to police than the uniform: they’re still real people under there who just want to have a good time. And we all definitely had a great time.
But no matter how much I drank and how hard I tried, I couldn’t shake the questions I wasn’t asking him: “Where were you that weekend?” “Did you shove my partner’s face in the mud?” “Did you humiliate my best friend by forcing him to strip down, bend over, and lift his balls so you could fully search him, all the while recommending he stop trying to be a ‘political hero’?” “Did you help cram me into a paddywagon and accuse me of being an anarchist—as if that were a crime—before dumping me 25 kilometres from my home and telling me to make my own way back?”
I updated my Facebook status during the wedding, with something like “Wedding seating arrangements are pretty funny sometimes” and in the subsequent comments I passingly called the officer “a bit of a douchebag.” A few days later the groom messaged me, calling me out for being a douchebag myself, having openly and flagrantly insulted his wedding guests on my Facebook wall. I couldn’t disagree.
My heart instantly sank very deep. It had become so routine for me to express frustration about any interaction I had with police that I didn’t even think about how disrespectful it was in this instance. I apologized profusely, and he sent me a short email reading simply “No worries. Water under the bridge.” Still, we haven’t spoken since. My cop hatred seems to have broken what social ties he and I had rebuilt or retained. I doubt we’ll ever be good friends again.
Thinking about this makes me feel sad, and extremely socially isolated. Obviously.
One might expect that, even if cop-hating alienates me from some people, it would at least bring me closer to those people who share my politics and experiences. Somewhat ironically though, a distrust of police can actually make it harder to connect with those people in Toronto who do, in fact, share my politics and G20 experience.
Toronto hosted an academic conference on anarchism this past January, and since it was a five-minute walk from my house I went with a curious friend. Anarchist intellectuals, after all, are among the few willing to theorize about the democratic barriers presented by police repression of protests, and to speculate about how police tactics can be circumvented or mitigated in order to facilitate social progress. I wanted to hear people talk about that, about how to prevent things like Toronto’s G20 from happening again. I was excited to meet people who, like me, see the G20 summit as an unjust method of economic policy-making, amounting to little more than the open collusion of rich nations against the global labouring poor. I wanted to hear people agree that such summits were always facilitated by the police repression of a citizenry mobilized to disrupt their injustice, and that this clearly makes the police enemies of global justice. I wanted to feel welcomed and see my political views openly accepted in a group.
I wore a favourite hat along with my black and red T-shirt.
One panelist, discussing police repression, wondered aloud whether undercover police were in attendance, noting how horrible (but not implausible) it would be if the riot squad suddenly barged in and arrested everyone on conspiracy charges. At the thought of being arrested again, trapped by police in an enclosed space, I let go a kind of nervous laugh, as I often do when I’m extremely uncomfortable.
The entire room of at least 50 people immediately turned around to stare at me, wondering what I thought was so funny. My face must have instantly gone a deep shade of red. For the rest of the day, I’m sure, every single one of them thought I was a cop and I had lost any chance of being trusted—at the very least, that’s how I felt.
I attended the second day despite feeling very embarrassed and alienated. I knew very few people there, wore different clothes, and shaved what beard I had, so I doubted anyone would recognize me.
During an afternoon panel an organizer suddenly rushed in, grabbing the panelist’s microphones and recording devices. “The cops are outside,” she said, “and they brought guns.” I almost fainted. Sure enough, several police were outside, carrying loaded shotguns. Several brave individuals told the police they would not be let inside, and thankfully they didn’t force their way in. I hid in a corner.
Shortly thereafter I overheard three girls in conversation about the startling police presence. One of them mentioned “that guy from yesterday, wearing the black and red T-shirt with the hat” and how he (i.e. I) “was totally a cop.” I paused to eavesdrop, hoping I had misheard. Another agreed with the first, noting how I had laughed at the mention of a police raid, and thereby given myself away. Then they all looked at me, standing there, listening in on them. I felt they recognized me. I felt horribly embarrassed. I quickly moved on, not wanting to be confronted and accused of being a police infiltrator.
But, after a few seconds, I realized how stupid and divisive it was to run away from that rather than confront it. So, I turned around to just tell them I wasn’t a cop. Whether they believed me or not, I thought it was appropriate to at least acknowledge I had heard them.
Unfortunately, they were already gone.
As a 6-foot-tall, 220-pound middle-class white male in his late twenties who consistently wears T-shirts and jeans, it’s all too easy for a skeptical activist to perceive me as an undercover cop. I myself have had small bouts of paranoia over several new acquaintances, but this was the first time I’d overheard people discussing the “fact” that I was a cop.
I haven’t been to an activist meeting of any kind since. I just can’t deal with good people believing I’m something we both have come to hate.
This intense isolation is by far the most regrettable effect I still feel a year after Toronto’s G20. The worst part? After a year of thinking through it all, I still don’t know what to do about any of it.
The author woke up on June 27, 2010, to a Facebook message from his best friend’s mother, saying he’d been arrested at around 5 p.m. in Queen’s Park the day before. He and his partner spent the entire day on the streets, peacefully objecting to the imposed police state and demanding that his friend and all other detainees be released. The author and his partner were subject to several unlawful searches as a result, and witnessed innumerable other rights violations across the city. Walking home after vocally opposing the Queen and Spadina kettling, the pair were suddenly ambushed and arrested by a group of bike cops. His partner was quickly released, but the author was held by police for more than three hours and repeatedly told he was an “anarchist asshole” who was “going to be [there] for a while.” He was eventually driven to a police station on the outskirts of Toronto, released (still soaking wet) without charges, and told to get off police property or risk being re-arrested.
The author’s name has been withheld upon request.
For complete G20 retrospective coverage, go to One Year Later.http://gty.im/871122452
The Lions Defeated The Packers 30-17 On Monday Night Football. Here’s How It Happened.
1st Quarter
Green Bay opened the game with a long 15 play, 58 yard drive that ended with a Mason Crosby field goal attempt though. However, a bad long snap caused Crosby to kick the ball at a low trajectory, and Lions defensive tackle A’Shawn Robinson was able to block the kick.
Detroit answered with a lengthy possession of their own, going 71 yards in nine plays. The Lions were able to get the ball in the end zone though, as Matthew Stafford found receiver Marvin Jones for a 25 yard touchdown.
Score: Lions lead 7-0
2nd Quarter
Detroit had another very long drive in the second quarter, going 91 yard in 13 plays. Running back Ameer Abdullah capped it off with his second touchdown of the season from four yards out.
Green Bay was able to answer that score with a field goal drive as the half ended. Their quarterback, Brett Hundley, looked good running the no huddle offense and put them in position for their first points of the game.
Score: Lions lead 14-3
http://gty.im/871062886
3rd Quarter
The only scoring in the third quarter came on the Lions opening possession when Matt Prater kicked a 44 yard field goal.
Ameer Abdullah fumbled for the first time this season mid way through the third quarter, but the Lions defense was able to hold Green Bay to no points off of the turnover.
Score: Lions lead 17-3
4th Quarter
The Lions started out the third quarter with a field goal drive. They got down to the Packer one yard line, but were unable to get into the end zone and had to settle for a 19 yard field goal.
Green Bay answered with their best offensive drive of the night, as Hundley led them on a 78 yard possession that ended with him scoring on a quarterback keeper.
The Lions offense did not falter though, as Marvin Jones scored another touchdown reception (this time from 11 yards out) and Prater added another field goal.
On the final possession of the game, Green Bay running back Jamaal Williams scored a meaningless one yard touchdown.
Score: Lions win 30-17
Key Stats
The Lions did not punt in this game
This game was the first time in 46 years that the Lions did not punt. Detroit’s offense did a fantastic job of sustaining drives and scored points on all but two of their possessions.
The Lions outgained Green Bay 417 to 311 yards
Detroit had outgained Green Bay by more than 100 yards in this game. The Lions offense moved the ball all night, while Green Bay didn’t rack up many of these yards until the game was well out of hand.
The Lions converted 8 of 13 third downs
The Lions offense rarely left the field on Monday night, and this was a big reason why. Converting well over 50% of your third downs goes a long way towards winning in the NFL.
http://gty.im/871897636
The Lions had possession of the ball for 36:55, Green Bay just 23:05
Detroit had the ball for almost 2/3 of this game. They tired Green Bay’s defense out, while giving their own defense a lot of time to rest.
The Lions only scored two touchdowns on four trips inside the red zone
The Lions offense struggled in the red zone again, scoring only two touchdowns on four trips inside the opponent’s 20 yard line. There is blame for both the play calling and execution by the players.
The Lions only had 64 rushing yard at 1.9 yards per rushing attempt
Detroit again struggled to have any kind of reliable running game. They had an abysmal 1.9 yard per carry, and were just completely shut down on the ground on Monday night. Both the offensive line and running backs had bad games when it came to moving the ball on the ground.
Positives
Matthew Stafford played like the highest paid quarterback in the NFL
Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford played his best game of the season, and one of the best games of his career on Monday night. He completed 26 of 33 passing attempts for 361 yards and had two touchdown passes. He did not turn the ball over once. He was pinpoint accurate throughout the game and could seemingly do whatever he wanted to Green Bay’s defense.
Golden Tate and Marvin Jones both were fantastic
Detroit receivers Marvin Jones and Golden Tate each had a 100 yard receiving game against the Packers, with the former catching seven passes for 107 yards and two touchdowns and the latter making seven receptions for 113 yards. Both of these guys seemed to get open all night, and when they didn’t, they made tough, contested catches in coverage. Here are a few catches from each of them.
Marvin Jones’ first touchdown of the game was a simple go route where he out ran the Green Bay cornerback. Stafford placed the pass perfectly over Jones’ shoulder, and Detroit scored their first touchdown since week six.
https://streamable.com/hsql9
Marvin Jones’ second touchdown came on a trick play. Stafford faked the screen pass to Golden Tate, then found Marvin Jones in the end zone. Jones made a difficult leaping catch over Packer’s cornerback Damarious Randall.
https://streamable.com/thu1q
This toe-tapping catch from Golden Tate displayed featured good route running, a great catch, and a fantastic back shoulder throw from Stafford. Tate beat Damarious Randall on a wheel route, and Stafford placed the ball perfectly where Randall had no shot at it. Tate reeled in the pass, and did an incredible job to get his feet down in bounds.
https://streamable.com/0rl5o
On this play, Tate showed off his yards after the catch ability. He ran an in route and caught the pass at the Lions 40 yard line. He was able to pick up another 16 yards after the catch, bringing it up to the Green Bay 44 yard line. This is just one of very many examples of Tate’s dangerousness with the ball in his hands.
https://streamable.com/3wdzg
Jim Bob Cooter opened up the playbook
Over the last two games we have seen offensive coordinator Jim Bob Cooter gradually open up his play book more and more. After a very conservative offensive approach over the first six games of the season, we have seen much more of an emphasis on the downfield passing game against Pittsburgh last week and Green Bay earlier this week.
We have also seen more creative play calling, as rookie cornerback and punt return Jamal Agnew has seen offensive snaps in the last two games. He was on the field for three offensive plays against the Packers, carrying the ball once for four yards. Cooter also called a flea flicker play on Monday night, however, Green Bay blitzed and Stafford couldn’t get the throw off before he was sacked.
Cooter’s play calling was just generally much better against the Packers than it has been all season. On this screen pass to Theo Riddick, Cooter made the perfect play call. Up by 10 points in the fourth quarter, Cooter knew that the Packers defense had to be aggressive. He took advantage of that, and countered their blitz by calling a screen pass, which worked perfectly and went for 63 yards.
https://streamable.com/0j2vu
Negatives
The Lions run game is seriously bad
The Lions offense had a miserable game when it came to their rushing attack. They had just |
starting a relationship," Zhang added.
Meanwhile, men from southern China are more accepting of women who make the first move. Men from the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai are particularly receptive of this practice.
The survey, which polled over 85,000 single men and women from all over the country, was released on Wednesday, Nov. 11, to coincide with Singles' Day.The Right Sector set up the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps, headed by Andrei Stempitsky, in July but it has not yet been legalized as an official unit within the armed forces. The Patriot of Ukraine, a nationalist group affiliated with the Right Sector, also set up a military unit and formalized it as the Interior Ministry’s Azov battalion in May.
Yarosh wrote that a subdivision of the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps had participated in battles in the Donetsk region’s Amvrosievka district.
“Dozens of terrorists have been liquidated, one infantry fighting vehicle and a T-64 tank have been acquired,” he said. “Now we’re forming an armored unit!”
Another unit of the corps has taken part in battles for the Savur Mohyla strategic height in the south of the Donetsk region and destroyed dozens of terrorists, Yarosh said, adding that one member of the corps had been killed, and seven had been injured.
The Kyiv Post+ project offers special coverage of Russia’s war against Ukraine and the aftermath of the EuroMaidan Revolution.
A third unit of the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps is fighting in the eastern and southern outskirts of Donetsk, he said. Yarosh wrote on July 21 that the Right Sector had entered the western part of the city.
Artyom Skoropadsky, the Right Sector’s spokesman, said by phone that the corps did not need any formal documents from the authorities to fight against terrorists.
“According to the Constitution, everyone has a right to defend the country’s independence and integrity,” he said.
The Right Sector is in talks on formalizing the corps’ status as a unit subordinate to the Defense Ministry but the negotiations are proceeding slowly, Skoropadsky said.
He said, however, that the Right Sector did not want its corps to become part of the Interior Ministry because the party was at odds with its head Arsen Avakov and had demanded his resignation.
The Right Sector was set up just days before the start of EuroMaidan revolution last fall by a handful of right-wing parties and other organizations. The Russian media have mentioned the party frequently in their reports for months, calling the group one of the most radical and aggressive fighters, despite the fact that the group only joined the Anti-Terrorist Operation in July.Every day, Watch This offers staff recommendations inspired by a new movie coming out that week. This week: In honor of Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Don Jon, we’re singling out some of our favorite feature directorial debuts by actors.
What Happened Was… (1994)
There are very few movies or TV shows that can’t be immediately improved with the appearance of Tom Noonan. A veteran character actor, Noonan has perfected a particular variety of self-effacing New England rationality that places him on a continuum with the likes of John Malkovich (but without the whiff of the dandy) and the late Spalding Gray (minus the neurotic self-regard). Viewers may recognize Noonan from his regular role as Detective Huntley on Damages. He also recently made an indelible impression during a flashback episode of Louie’s first season, as a physician conducting an autopsy of Jesus Christ for young Louie’s Sunday school class.
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But Noonan is also a filmmaker. His 1994 debut film, What Happened Was…, is adapted from his own stage play, which explains some of the film’s black-box conventions. But Noonan uses theatricality and artifice to his advantage. The result is a haunting, expressionistic portrait of two lonely souls who have reached out for companionship and instead found themselves on a proving ground, where they are mercilessly denuded of their protective lies and self-deception.
In other words, it’s a date. Noonan is a paralegal; smug in the conviction that he is more intelligent than the lawyers he serves. (He claims to be writing a scathing exposé of the law office and its damning secrets.) Karen Sillas, the firm’s working-class executive secretary, exhibits both street-tough pride and intellectual self-consciousness. The two meet for dinner at her apartment. It’s not a pleasant evening.
The tragedy of What Happened Was… is that these characters genuinely like each other. Noonan is not as capable as he pretends to be, and Sillas is funny and bright. In the film’s pivotal scene, she comments to Noonan that she too is a writer, but of children’s books. She offers to share her work, and he is embarrassed for her; he feels reflexively superior, but has no way out of the situation. Even if these people are too trapped in their own fear and misery to connect, they find a way to share in that hopelessness for a single night. Noonan’s depiction of this basic frailty shows him to be a deeply humanistic film artist, one who ought to be able to make more than three feature films in nearly 20 years.
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Availability: Strangely enough, What Happened Was… is available for rental or purchase from the major digital providers, but not on DVD or Blu-ray.On 12 September 2017, an international police operation supported by Europol has resulted in 50 house searches and the arrest of 5 suspects.
The investigation, led by the German Federal Police and Criminal Investigations Department of Berlin, in close cooperation with the Portuguese Immigration and Borders Service / SEF, was initiated in October 2016 on the suspicion of facilitation of illegal immigration via marriages of convenience, so-called sham marriages.
The investigators identified a Nigerian-led criminal network which was engaged in the facilitation of these sham marriages through the provision of false information and documentation to marriage registrars, thus exploiting the asylum and immigration system. These criminal elements were gleaning huge profits by organising EU residency status for Nigerian nationals through these marriages of convenience.
Today’s action in Germany resulted in the seizure of lots of passports, and documents. A total of 7 arrest warrants were issued, alongside a freezing order by the Berlin Court of Justice of a value of EUR 530 000 out of which EUR 309.950 could have been seized already
Simultaneously, the Portuguese Immigration and Borders Service / SEF executed house searches in Lisbon, on the occasion of which fraudulent certificates, passports and EU residence permits were seized.
Europol’s Migrant Smuggling Centre was involved in this investigation from the onset, providing tailored analytical support and co-ordinating the cooperation between both EU Member States. During the action days, two Europol officers were deployed to Germany and Portugal for on-the-spot support to the national investigators, including real-time data exchange and cross-checks against Europol databases.A young woman claims she endured a “traumatic” and “sickening” 28 hours in custody after Chatham police made her remove her bra, and later appear braless before a judge. “It’s embarrassing, it really is, for me and for my family,” Tara Fice, 22, told the Star Tuesday. “They made me feel like I wasn’t a human being.”
Tara Fice holds the bra that she claims she was forced by Chatham police to remove following her arrest on charges of dangerous driving and mischief Sunday morning, ( GEOFF ROBINS / Toronto Star )
The alleged events came to light Tuesday, the same day the Chatham-Kent Police Service announced an internal review of its policy to remove brassieres from women held in custody. The review follows a separate case where a lower court judge chastised the force for directing another woman to remove her bra before taking a breathalyzer test. The move came too late for some, with civil and women’s rights advocates roundly criticizing the practice. Some police departments view underwire bras as possible ligatures that could be used for self-strangulation, or harming officers or cellmates.
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Fice, a Lambton College student who lives south of Sarnia, was arrested at her boyfriend’s home on charges of dangerous driving and mischief Sunday morning, court staff said. At the station, officers had her remove her bra and placed her in a cell, she says, where they held her until Monday morning. The Star has not been able to verify her allegations and Chatham police did not respond when asked about each of her claims. Fice alleges an officer entered her cell repeatedly in the night and told her to fully undress. “The guy came in and said that I needed to take off all my clothes and that I was on suicide watch,” she said, her voice breaking. She denies any threats of self-harm and says she was fully sober.
She says she wound up “curled in a ball” on the concrete floor, half-covered in the jumpsuit they provided — which she says she took off at the officer’s insistence — with nothing else on but shorts and underwear. On Monday, police brought her to the courthouse for her bail hearing where she says she appeared braless before a judge, clerks, lawyers, her family and community members.
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“It was sickening,” Fice said. “I thought stuff like that was only in movies, it was so traumatic.” In a statement Tuesday, Chief Gary Conn addressed an Ontario Court of Justice decision last week to dismiss an impaired driving charge against another Chatham woman due to several Charter of Rights and Freedoms violations by local police, who had demanded the mother — a school teacher — remove her bra for a breath test. “In this particular case, our primary concern was safety and the taking of clothing which could be used as ligatures for self-harm or strangulation,” Conn stated. “(A)lthough I can appreciate there being a level of anxiety associated with one being taken into custody, searched and charged with a criminal offence, I fully support the actions and professionalism taken by our officers during this particular incident.” The Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services rubberstamped the Chatham force’s procedures on prisoner care and control in a 2011 audit, though it did not explicitly endorse the policy on bra removal. A ministry guideline recommends police chiefs seize “any personal property with which a prisoner could cause harm,” specifying belts, ties and shoelaces. “It does not specify undergarments,” said spokesperson Greg Flood. The police chief told Postmedia a woman tried to strangle herself in custody in the early 1990s, triggering the policy. Fice’s mother Tammy Ross, who was in court when her daughter’s bra was returned in a sealed evidence bag along with her cellphone and hair elastic, called the ordeal “very upsetting.” Brad Dinning, Fice’s paralegal, said she’d never been in trouble with police. He said bra removals are “not a thing they should have a right to do.” Civil liberties advocates agree, viewing the practice as a violation of Section 8 Charter rights protecting against unreasonable search and seizure. “I think it’s absolutely ridiculous that a woman would be required to remove her bra for a court appearance or to take a breathalyzer test,” said Kim Pate, executive director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies. Pate called the process “degrading” and “humiliating,” and warranted only in the face of serious risk of self-injury or harm to others. Abby Deshman, director of the public safety program with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association deemed bra seizures “invasive.” “To force a woman to appear in court without her bra is a very serious violation of physical integrity and privacy,” Deschman said. “Even if a more thorough search is justified, it’s hard for me to imagine how you’d need to confiscate all bras.” The Toronto and Ottawa police departments and the Ontario Provincial Police handle searches and seizures on a “case-by-case” basis. Even with “level three” searches — involving clothing removal and “inspection of the body” to detect ligatures, weapons, tools or evidence — bras are often returned to an accused, especially by the time she appears in court, said Toronto police spokesperson Shane Branton. Vancouver police, however, ask everyone taken into custody remove clothing items including bras, shoe laces and belts for safety reasons, said spokesperson Sgt. Randy Fincham Joe Couto, Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police spokesperson, noted “anything that might be used as a ligature, anything that could be twisted or cause harm to the individual” is ripe for removal. The Star was unable to confirm whether the bra-seizure issue was raised in court. Fice’s legal counsel said they were mulling how to move forward to fight the charges. Her duty counsel could not be reached by the Star.It’s certainly been a few rough-and-tumble months, but we’re pleased to announce the release of Beta cycle for Kodi 14.0 Helix.
This release brings many updates and changes, not the least of which being the name of the software. For those of you curious, we’ve now taken the top 10 or so vote getters in the logo vote and submitted them to doghousemedia to see how they might pull the best qualities out of all of them and combine those qualities into the best possible logo for the organization. As we continue down this path, we’ll do our best to keep you updated.
With that said, let’s take a look at some of the features that come with Beta.
The Next Generation of Video Codecs
To begin, Kodi has been updated to use FFmpeg 2.4.3 For users, this means Kodi will now be capable of playing back h.265 (also known as HEVC) and VP9 video codecs. This could result in dramatically smaller video files sizes with exactly the same level of quality. A 40 GB file could be compressed to 20 GB. A 1 GB file could be compressed to 500 MB without any loss in perceivable quality. Users with particularly large libraries or interest in 4K video may be especially likely to appreciate this update. Software support for the VP9 video codec is also included.
The caveat to this update is that it is entirely software based. This means most low power systems, such as those operating Android or iOS, may struggle compared to the heftier HTPCs or Intel NUCs and ZOTAC ZBOXes that are running desktop and laptop processors.
Library Improvements
The Kodi Library is getting improvements both coming in and going out. On the input side, library scanning is receiving a massive speed boost, which should make the initial scan on Android and iOS devices quite a bit more spiritedly.
On the output side, work continues, slowly but surely, on UPnP. Kodi is now significantly more compatible with servers like PlayOn and MediaBrowser, as client-related bugs have been dealt with. Further, communication between Kodi UPnP clients and Kodi UPnP servers continues to improve with proper or additional support for categories like date added, ratings, votes, and artwork, along with sorting for those new categories. UPnP search functions are also slowly working their way into Kodi.
More User Control Over Kodi
Two new features have been introduced with Kodi that should give users even more control over how the software works. First, users can now prevent add-ons from updating without a forced update, prevent add-on update notifications, or simply continue to work with add-ons auto-updating as they do today. To change add-on update settings, visit the Add-ons folder in System Settings, if you are using Confluence, click left with your keyboard or remote to open the side panel, where a number of options exist, including the option to hide any add-ons that aren’t expected to work in your region.
Second, in the past the virtual keyboard on the screen that users of tablets and remote controls are forced to deal with has always been set to the western standard QWERTY style. It is now possible to change the layout to a variety of other language options. To do so, visit the International section of the Appearance folder in System Settings and select Keyboard layouts. (Pro-tip: If you are an English speaker living in the US, Australia, or New Zealand, you can also select a version of English that better suits your spelling style from the Language portion of the International section.)
Android, iOS, and embedded
On the Android side, hardware playback improvements continue, including more and better support for various chipsets, improved fast forward and rewind capability, as well as 4K support for the AMLogic s802 chipset. On the iOS side, Airplay, which was fairly substantially broken by the update to iOS 7, appears to be almost entirely fixed on every platform save Android, which lacks certain software support, making Airplay playback only partially fixed on that platform. Additionally, support for the Freescale i.MX6 SystemOnChip has been added.
Furthermore, for you tablet users, we’ve now replaced the ageing Touched skin with the improved Re-Touched skin, which includes a number of tweaks to bring it more in line with the features Kodi has to offer.
Windows, OSX, and Linux
All three platforms continue to see improvements in audio playback and a reduction of many audio-related bugs that have been plaguing the platforms for a long time. Windows also sees improvement in DXVA video playback.
PVR
American PVR users will be happy to learn that Kodi 14 introduces support for ATSC sub-channels. All users of PVR may be happy to learn that all PVR windows have been rebuilt to be better and more efficient.
A Few Warnings and Notices
This release marks the switch to the new name Kodi. When you install this beta, your library and add-ons will be moved to Kodi, making reverting back to 13.2 fairly difficult. As such, it is recommended that you back up your library as well as your settings before installing Kodi.
Also, as Kodi is an unsigned application on OSX, you may need to go through a slightly different process to start it the first time. After you have copied Kodi to the Applications folder, you will need to “right click” or “two finger click” Kodi from within the Applications folder and select “Open” and then accept the warning. You should only need to do this the first time you run Kodi.
Download
To download, please visit our download page. Over the next few days/weeks, we anticipate putting out additional betas fairly rapidly. As we don’t expect very many changes to features and fairly limited fixes, we will likely not put out blog posts for every beta. Instead, keep and eye on our social networks for updates, and Kodi itself will keep you updated when a new beta is ready. If fairly significant changes occur, we will write a blog post on the topic.
How to Contribute
If you use these builds, we encourage you to report problems with these builds on our forum first and after if asked submit bugs on Trac (following this guide: How to submit a bug report). Do note that we need detailed information so we can investigate the issue. We also appreciate providing support in our Forums where you can, or donate to the XBMC Foundation if you like. For a current FAQ on Kodi 14, visit our Helix FAQ. You can of course also follow or help promote Kodi on all available social networks.Judge extended his arms to swat a first-pitch fastball from the Phillies' Elniery Garcia in the fifth inning of New York's 9-4 Grapefruit League victory, wowing the announced crowd of 8,845 with a titanic clout that dented the top of a beer advertisement before falling back to the playing field.
TAMPA, Fla. -- The Yankees hit three home runs as they lifted the curtain on a refurbished George M. Steinbrenner Field complex on Friday, but it was Aaron Judge's moonshot off the left-field scoreboard that had these Baby Bombers dreaming about the future.
TAMPA, Fla. -- The Yankees hit three home runs as they lifted the curtain on a refurbished George M. Steinbrenner Field complex on Friday, but it was Aaron Judge's moonshot off the left-field scoreboard that had these Baby Bombers dreaming about the future.
Judge extended his arms to swat a first-pitch fastball from the Phillies' Elniery Garcia in the fifth inning of New York's 9-4 Grapefruit League victory, wowing the announced crowd of 8,845 with a titanic clout that dented the top of a beer advertisement before falling back to the playing field.
• Spring Training: Tickets | Schedule | Ballpark | Gear | Coverage
"I felt like I squared it up; I just kept running," Judge said. "If I'm feeling good, swinging at the right pitches, I know I'm where I need to be. I'm not too worried about results right now. It's about just feeling good and getting ready for the season."
Video: PHI@NYY: Judge discusses hitting homer in first game
Didi Gregorius and Kyle Higashioka also cleared the wall, while prospects Miguel Andujar, Clint Frazier, Dustin Fowler and Gleyber Torres were among those earning postgame praise from manager Joe Girardi, marking a convincing first act as the Yankees renew their focus on youth and athleticism.
• Yankees' Top 30 Prospects
"We've been talking about it; we believe that there's a lot of talent here, and there's more coming," Girardi said. "It's really good to see."
Video: PHI@NYY: Frazier drives in a pair on triple to right
There is inexperience -- Frazier's baserunning on an eighth-inning triple prompted Girardi to huddle with the outfielder for a teachable moment -- but so much promise. Gregorius claimed the year's first Spring Training homer by jumping on the first pitch he saw, but he refused to compare notes after witnessing Judge's display.
"No, Judge got that," said Gregorius, who hit a career-high 20 homers last year. "I've got a regular swing. Judge has got the power."
Video: PHI@NYY: Gregorius connects for a solo shot to right
This spring finds Judge -- who offered a taste of his promise in a late-season cameo, including a homer in his first plate appearance on Aug. 13 at Yankee Stadium -- working to correct the flaws that produced strikeouts in exactly half of his 84 big league at-bats.
• Judge, Gregorius bring baseball back with a flourish
"If he gets the barrel of the bat to the ball, he's going to do a lot of damage," Girardi said. "There are going to be some strikeouts, and you can live with some strikeouts, but this is a guy that could be extremely productive -- just because of the raw power that he has -- and do significant damage."
The Yankees would love to see Judge step up and grab the right field job, though they are not handing it to him. Aaron Hicks is the primary stumbling block between Judge and an Opening Day start in the Bronx, and Judge said he prepared for the competition by identifying a mechanical flaw in his swing.
"I wasn't controlling my hip last year, so I was lunging forward and swinging at bad pitches," Judge said. "If I can focus on controlling my hip and being in my legs, I feel like I've got more room for error. For me, it's about staying grounded, feeling like I'm in the ground and swinging from there."
Studying video of players like Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Josh Donaldson and Miguel Cabrera helped, according to Judge. For the Yankees, the greatest fantasy of all is that Judge discovers a way to muscle his name into that elite stratosphere.
"It's the first game," Judge said. "You never know what could happen. If I'm feeling good, swinging at the right pitches, I know I'm where I need to be."Direct
L'Elysée a annoncé ce mercredi matin par communiqué la démission de la ministre de la Justice.
Christiane Taubira, garde des Sceaux, a remis sa démission vient d'annoncer un communiqué de l'Elysée. Elle est remplacée par Jean-Jacques Urvoas.
Proche de Manuel Valls, Jean-Jacques Urvoas est l’actuel président de la commission des lois de l’Assemblée nationale. Il était à ce titre chargé d’une mission pour trouver une solution à la réforme constitutionnelle de la déchéance de nationalité, à laquelle Christiane Taubira s’était publiquement opposée à plusieurs reprises.
Suivez l'actualité autour de ce remaniement toute la journée avec Libération (si ce direct ne s'ouvre pas cliquez ici).
Photo Christiane Taubira en novembre 2015 (Marc Chaumeil pour Libération)
17:23 En selle. Christiane Taubira a quitté le ministère de la Justice à vélo. A Libé, les paris sont ouverts : 67% de la rédaction web imagine qu'Emmanuel Macron, le temps venu, quittera son ministère en Uber..@ChTaubira quitte le ministère de la Justice à vélo 27.01.16 iTELE. @itele Suivre
15:57 Avec Taubira, FN et LR perdent leur punching-ball Cible. Vont-ils s'en remettre? Euphorisés par la démission de Christiane Taubira, droite et extrême droite perdent avec elle une cible récurrente. Et presque une raison de vivre, tant la ministre de la Justice concentrait depuis 2012 des attaques d'une rare virulence, explique Dominique Albertini. (Photo AFP)
15:38 Décla. «Fidèle à Aimé Césaire, nous ne livrerons pas le monde aux assassins d'aubes», conclut Christiane Taubira, en évoquant le «péril terroriste», «grave et imprévisible» auquel il ne faut «concéder aucune victoire». Nous ne devons lui concéder aucun victoire, ni politique, ni militaire, ni symbolique. 27.01.16 Christiane Taubira. @ChTaubira Suivre
15:36 Décla. Christiane Taubira évoque les raisons de sa démission : «Je quitte le gouvernement sur un désaccord politique majeur. Je choisis d'être fidèle à moi-même, à mes engagements, à mes combats, à mon rapport aux autres, fidèle à nous tels que je nous comprends. Le péril terroriste qui nous menace est grave, imprévisible, mais nous avons appris à le traquer.»
15:34 Décla. Le budget de la Justice a «augmenté de 450 millions d'euros en trois ans», rappelle Christiane Taubira, qui souligne que les effectifs ont augmenté chez les élèves magistrats. «Nous avons accompli un travail législatif considérable», ajoute-t-elle, citant la «réforme pénale, la réforme de la justice civile, la procédure pénale.
15:31 Décla. «Ce fut pour moi un immense honneur d'être garde des Sceaux, en particulier sous l'autorité de ce président de la République, François Hollande», déclare Christiane Taubura. Elle remercie son équipe et rend hommage aux personnels judiciaires et pénitentiaires. Je dois ce bonheur à ceux qui se dévouent au service quotidien de la justice. 27.01.16 Christiane Taubira. @ChTaubira Suivre
15:30 Standing ovation pour Taubira à l'Assemblée Reconnaissance. A l'issue d'une intervention du socialiste Philippe Martin, les députés de gauche ont réservé une standing ovation à Christiane Taubira, rendant hommage à son action comme ministre de la Justice. Je voudrais saluer «la parfaite collaboration pendant quatre ans entre Christiane Taubira et le groupe socialiste», a commencé le député PS du Gers avant sa question au gouvernement, ce qui a fait se lever tous les députés présents sur les bancs de gauche pour applaudir debout. «Et la remercier pour les combats emblématiques que nous avons portés, qu'il s'agisse du mariage pour tous, de la lutte contre le terrorisme ou de la réforme de la justice», a enchaîné cet ancien ministre.
15:30 Décla. Christiane Taubira vient de prendre la parole au ministère de la Justice.
14:52 Taubira, record de longévité depuis Badinter En chiffres. En restant au ministère de la Justice pendant plus de trois ans et huit mois, Christiane Taubira a établi un record de longévité depuis Robert Badinter (1981-1986). Et en démissionnant, elle laisse le dernier portefeuille régalien qui échappait à un homme à Jean-Jacques Urvoas : on n'avait plus vu un gouvernement sans ministre régalien femme depuis 1997... Quatre chiffres pour bien comprendre les conséquences de la démission de Christiane Taubira ce matin.
14:17 Taubira et le gouvernement Valls : désaccords en cinq actes Best of. Si la démission de Christiane Taubira est retentissante, elle n'est pas particulièrement surprenante. Depuis l'arrivée de Manuel Valls à la tête du gouvernement, la désormais ex-ministre de la Justice n'a pas hésité à exprimer ses désaccords. Déchéance de nationalité, justice des mineurs, 35 heures... retour en cinq actes sur ses prises de position contraires à celles de l'exécutif. (Photo Laurent Troude pour Libération)
13:31 Transition. La passation de pouvoirs entre Christiane Taubira et Jean-Jacques Urvoas aura lieu à 16h30.
13:04 Erwann Binet : «Elle continuera à compter pour la gauche et pour les valeurs de la République» Réaction. Il a porté la loi «mariage pour tous» avec Christiane Taubira, en tant que rapporteur du texte à l'Assemblée nationale. Erwann Binet, député PS de l'Isère, lui rend hommage aujourd'hui auprès de Libération : «Elle a été la figure de proue dans de nombreux combats qui ont mobilisé la majorité et la gauche. Et j'ai eu très grand plaisir à travailler avec elle sur le mariage pour tous. Elle continuera à compter pour la gauche et pour les valeurs de la République qu'elle a fini par personnifier.Sa loyauté totale a fini par percuter son esprit libre.»
12:58 Décla. Christiane Taubira fera une déclaration à la presse à 15h15 au ministère de la Justice.
12:44 Christiane Taubira en tweets poétiques Best of. Sans surprise, Christiane Taubira a tweeté après l'annonce de sa démission. Cette fois, ce fut pour dire ceci : «Parfois, résister c'est rester, parfois résister c'est parti. Par fidélité à soi, à nous. Pour le dernier mot à l'éthique et au droit.» Mais ses tweets lyriques sont légion, et le Lab s'est fait plaisir en en compilant un best of «non exhaustif et arbitraire». Humain qui, dépouillé de tout, reste digne et assez combatif pour braver la mer. Misérables ceux qui ricanent et rêvent de sang bleu. ChT 19.06.15 Christiane Taubira. @ChTaubira Suivre
11:49 Manuel Valls : «L'Etat d'urgence s'inscrit pleinement dans le cadre de l'Etat de droit» Réforme constitutionnelle. Comme prévu, Manuel Valls s'exprime devant la Commission des lois à l'Assemblée nationale pour présenter le projet de réforme constitutionnelle qui doit notamment étendre les possibilités de déchéance de nationalité et inscrire l'état d'urgence dans la Constitution. D'une phrase, il a «salué l'action» de Christiane Taubira, qui devait défendre ce projet, avant d'expliquer que «l'état d'urgence s'inscrit pleinement dans le cadre de l'état de droit». "Il est naturel que je me retrouve devant vous aujourd'hui" dit @manuelvalls devant la #ComLois #PJLConstit #DirectAN 27.01.16 Lilian Alemagna. @lilianalemagna Suivre
11:44 Retour sur. La démission de Christiane Taubira conclut une série de désaccords entre l'ancienne Garde des Sceaux et le reste de son gouvernement. De son soutien aux frondeurs à son refus de la déchéance de nationalité, retour sur cinq de ces épisodes. (Photo Laurent Troude pour Libération)
11:30 A la TV ce soir. Samedi, Christiane Taubira enregistrait un numéro de l'émission Conversations Secrètes avec Michel Denisot. Canal+ la diffusera ce soir en prime time. Exclu: A 21H, C.Taubira se confie à M.Denisot dans un entretien itinérant (enregistré samedi) #ConversationsSecrètes 27.01.16 CANAL+. @canalplus Suivre
11:21 Démission de Taubira. Ne caricaturons pas : chez Les Républicains, tout le monde ne fait pas une danse de la joie. La deputee LR #NKM sur #Taubira : "du respect pour son éthique et la dignité de son geste" 27.01.16 alain auffray. @alainauffray Suivre
11:17 Hypocrisie. Les confrères de Buzzfeed relèvent que Christian Estrosi se moque un peu du monde quand il dit aujourd'hui que «certains dans [son] camp ont eu tort de s'en prendre directement à la personne» de Christiane Taubira... En 2013, il lançait une pétition intitulée «Stop Taubira». Rappel: @cestrosi sur @ChTaubira #Taubira 27.01.16 Vérifié. @verifie Suivre
10:58 Correction. Mea culpa : notre brève annonçant que la parité au gouvernement était respectée après le remplacement de Christiane Taubira par Jean-Jacques Urvoas était erronée. Nous l'avons corrigée en conséquence.
10:53 Le départ du «dernier symbole de l'espoir de changement exprimé en 2012» Réactions. Les sénateurs et sénatrices du groupe communiste au Sénat écrivent, dans un communiqué, que le départ de Christiane Taubira «est celui du dernier symbole de l'espoir de changement exprimé en 2012». «Même si, au-delà du courageux combat pour le mariage pour tous elle ne put porter des projets transformateurs pour la justice de notre pays, elle demeurait pour beaucoup un marqueur à gauche du gouvernement», écrivent ces élus, craignant «que ce départ et l'arrivée de M. Urvoas, proche de M. Valls, confirme et renforce un durcissement sécuritaire tout azimut dans le cadre d'un état d'urgence pérennisé.
10:28 La démission de Christiane Taubira décidée samedi dernier, selon l'Elysée Coulisses. La démission de la garde des Sceaux Christiane Taubira a été actée dès samedi, avant même le départ de François Hollande pour une visite officielle en Inde, rapporte l'AFP, citant l'entourage du chef de l'Etat. «Le président de la République, le Premier ministre et la garde des Sceaux en étaient arrivés samedi, avant le départ du chef de l'Etat pour l'Inde, à la conclusion commune et partagée que la cohérence devait conduire à son départ du gouvernement», a déclaré cette source.
10:24 Après le départ de Taubira, la parité plus respectée au gouvernement ♀♂. Avec la démission de Christiane Taubira, une femme quitte le gouvernement, remplacée par un homme, signant la fin de la parité au gouvernement, une des promesses de campagne du candidat Hollande. Elle était respectée depuis le remplacement de François Rebsamen par Myriam El Khomri en septembre dernier, avec 16 femmes (7 secrétaires d'Etat et 9 ministres) pour 16 hommes (9 secrétaires d'Etat et 7 ministres), comme le montre le site officiel du gouvernement. Il y a désormais 17 hommes pour 15 femmes, et plus aucune femme à la tête d'un ministère régalien. [edit à 10h50 : une précédente version de cette brève indiquait par erreur que la parité était encore respectée, en ne considérant que les ministères, qui comptent bien huit femmes et huit hommes.]
10:11 Ainsi parlait Christiane Taubira Pour mémoire. Ne boudons pas notre plaisir : voici un montage vidéo de cinq minutes regroupant des fous rires, des citations littéraires, des répliques de Christiane Taubira lorsque l'ex-Garde des Sceaux défendait l'ouverture du mariage aux couples homosexuels à l'Assemblée nationale.
10:06 Ivresse du bonheur. Champagne à neuf heures du matin, on comprend mieux pourquoi ils écrivent n'importe quoi chaque semaine. Démission de #T |
Amtrak train during the deadly derailment in Philly. Murphy spoke to NBC10 about what he saw immediately after the crash. (Published Wednesday, May 13, 2015)
Max Helfman, 19, of Watchung, New Jersey was on the train with his mother when the crash occurred. Helfman says they were in the last car of the train when they suddenly felt it shake. The car then flipped over.
"People were thrown to the ground," Helfman said. "Chairs inside the train became unscrewed and suitcases were falling on people. My mother flew into me and I literally had to catch her. People were bleeding from their head. It was awful."
Helfman says he saw smoke after the car flipped over.
"We were worried it may explode so we tried to get people out of the car," he said.
Helfman says he helped some of the passengers squeeze through a door that was slightly open. Responding police officers then helped them through a back door.
After getting off the train, Helfman and his mother boarded a bus that traveled to Webster Elementary.
"I'm scratched and may have a concussion," he said. "At this point it's hard to tell."
Victim Felt Train Tipping Over Before Derailment
Police and fire investigators are surveying the scene of a train derailment in Port Richmond. One victim told NBC10's Katy Zachry how he felt the train tipping. (Published Wednesday, May 13, 2015)
Jeff Kutler, a passenger traveling from Washington, D.C. to his home in New York was riding in the quiet car when he realized something was wrong.
"It started tipping to the right and after a couple seconds, maybe it was half a secong, I realized there was nothing good going to happen here, this train is tipping over," Kutler said.
U.S. Senator Tom Carper (D-Del.) was also on the train though he disembarked at the Wilmington, Delaware station about 40 miles south from where the train derailed.
"I am grateful to be home safe and sound in Wilmington, and my heart goes out to all those on the train tonight," Carper said. "I hope all of those that are injured recover quickly, and I will keep them in my thoughts and prayers."
Suspended Service
Amtrak's Northeast Corridor service between New York and Philadelphia is suspended. SEPTA regional rail service is also suspended until further notice on the Trenton Regional Rail line due to the accident. A SEPTA official said it's likely the Trenton Line will be suspended throughout the day Wednesday and possibly through the remainder of the work week.
First Alert Traffic Mass Transit Updates
Service for SEPTA's Chestnut Hill West regional rail line is restored, but the Trenton line is still suspended. (Published Wednesday, May 13, 2015)
Service was restored on the Chestnut Hill West line just after 5 a.m. SEPTA officials said passengers of that line should expect delays.
SEPTA officials said additional train cars would be added along the West Trenton line to accommodate Trenton Line passengers looking for an alternate service. Passengers are also encouraged to use the Market/Frankford line as an alternate.
Several passengers were left stranded at 30th Street Station due to the deadly derailment and the subsequent cancellations.
This story is developing. Stay with NBC10.com for updates.A Smithers, B.C., cartographer has mapped out the locations of every former residential school in Canada to create "An Atlas of Indian Residential Schools of Canada."
"It's a grim project," said Morgan Hite, an independent cartography consultant in Smithers, B.C.
"It's kind of a horrifying subject to map. But you don't want to lose the memory of where [the residential schools] were located."
Hite was contracted for the project by the Kamloops Indian Band as part of its work to receive compensation for students who attended B.C. residential schools but did not live at them.
He said when he started, he discovered existing maps were imprecise, particularly in areas where the buildings no longer stand.
No list of the schools' latitudes and longitudes could be found, so he set out to build maps from scratch, drawing on archival photographs and letters, as well as surveyor reports.
The result is a diverse set of locations across the country.
"Some schools are in the middle of nowhere. Some are stately buildings in the middle of the city. Some are just gone," he said.
"Frequently, the graveyards are still there."
Hite views the mapping project as an important part of truth and reconciliation.
"I have a friend who's a cartographer who maps the death camps of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust... it's not an exactly comparable situation [but] you really want to know where these schools were. They're part of local memory and they're part of national memory. It can easily be lost."
Hite has made the maps publicly available online, and said as he completed his work he found he wanted to visit the sites themselves and would like plaques to be created, so people know what happened, even if the buildings are gone.
"So much memory resides in the landscape, even if the building is no longer there."
Listen to an interview with Hite.Recently, I sat and watched one of my favorite movies growing up, Matilda. The story of a precocious young bookworm who’s so smart she actually develops telekinesis has aged extremely well, and I found myself enjoying it all over again. However I’m older now, and certain aspects of it stood out to me as a little surprising, primarily the fact that Matilda is basically Carrie for kids with a really strange twist at the end.
Let’s start with some background. Matilda came out in 1996, directed by Danny Devito, and based upon off an excellent book by one of my favorite authors ever, Roald “Pimp Factory” Dahl. Roald Dahl was an incredible man who flew planes during WW2 and worked for MI6 supplying intelligence to the Allies in between seducing oceans of sexy, sexy women before casually writing surprisingly dark books for kids. Then, when he got bored doing that, he took a break and authored an hilariously vulgar novel, My Uncle Oswald, about a sexual deviant and his graphic, sticky adventures around the world, which may have been vaguely inspired by his own sensual exploits during the war as a spy. Dude did what he wanted and we loved him for it. So when I say he was James Bond with an old fashioned typewriter, that’s only because it’s accurate. Luckily, Ian Fleming, the guy who wrote the Bond series, was one of his colleagues and therefore around to take notes.
You can practically feel him seducing you with his eyes
One day in the eighties, he sat down and penned a book that touched on child neglect and endangerment called Matilda. A super intelligent child is born to a family of swindlers and dunces and struggles to be herself, kind of like Lisa from The Simpsons. She goes to libraries as often as she can, eventually taking home dozens of thick books in a cute little red wagon, an image which probably won’t make any sense to kids nowadays. “Why doesn’t she just buy a Kindle?”, they’ll ask, while you stand in the corner and feel old at 22. Matilda’s parents are massively negligent and fail to appreciate how treating a kid like crap everyday breeds supervillains. So of course, one day, her powers burst out, like a gangly teen from an itchy sweater vest or Tetuso from Akira. She explodes the hell out of a television after getting annoyed at her dad for forcing her to watch it. Her parents are extremely stupid, so they don’t realize they’re living with someone with the ability to explode their faces, and so they chalk up the incident to coincidence and keep treating her like crap. In the meantime, Tetsuo-Matilda keeps getting more powerful.
That’s Matilda
The flick kicks into dark territory when this neglected, lovestarved, superpowered child is sent to school. With other children. Who can die. But to even the odds, there’s a complete monster in charge of the place, one Ms. Trunchbull, played, I might add, by the same woman who went on to play Aunt Marge in the Harry Potter films. You remember Aunt Marge, don’t you? She’s the bitch of a woman who ends up getting her comeuppance from a child with supernatural abilities.
I’m pretty sure Aunt Marge dies horribly
Well, in a strange bit of foreshadowing, Ms. Trunchbull is a bitch of a woman who ends up getting her comeuppance from a child with supernatural abilities. Seriously, she’s awful. Just an horrible, awful human being with no love or empathy for anyone but herself. And so, she decided the best thing to with her life is become a principal of a school for dozens of precocious little kids. She even says, verbatim, “My idea of a perfect school is one with no kids!” It’s baffling she keeps doing what she does for a living, especially since the movie makes it clear that she killed a man earlier and stole his fortune. As a result, she’s clearly not poor, but simply a sadist, who gets off on making kids miserable so much that she’ll happily return to school daily to toss them around and lock them in spiky Iron Maidens for unspecified amounts of time. Judging by the fact that in all the years she’s been at this job, no parent has ever been curious as to why exactly their child returned from school with tetanus, rusty iron nail wounds, and fear in their eyes, I can only imagine that every parent in the Matilda universe is just awful at caring for kids. There’s the terrifying off-chance that Mrs. Trunchbull may actually be the lesser of two evils for some of the schoolchildren.
Anyway, Tetsuo-Matilda and Trunchbull clash multiple times and eventually their conflict comes to a head. Here’s where the Carrie comparison comes. If you’ll remember, Carrie is that movie about the girl whose classmates humiliate her at the prom and so she uses her recently-developed telekinetic powers to slaughter and burn them all. There’s a remake coming next year with Chloe Moretz. The telekinesis comparison between Carrie and Matilda is fairly obvious, so here’s the twist. Matilda, at the end, features Trunchbull being humiliated and chased out of the school by Matilda, who goes on to live happily with the angelic Ms. Honey. She even writes messages on the chalkboard exposing Trunchbull for killing Ms. Honey’s father, so we can only imagine Trunchbull is on the run as well. Carrie ends with mass murder and Carrie supposedly committing suicide by literally imploding her house with her still inside it. Here’s what I’m suggesting: Carrie is Mrs. Trunchbull.
She faked her death all those years ago, assuming a new identity of Agatha Trunchbull. Her attempted suicide had drained away the rest of her psychic powers, but not her general misanthropy. Annoyed at the young people who made her prom miserable and indirectly led to her mother’s death, she devoted her life to finding some way to get revenge on generations to come. She eventually became close to one Magnus Honey, the father of Ms. Honey, who treated her like a sister, and considered her an aunt to his child. In return for his friendship and housing, she brutally murdered him, took his money, and used it to construct the school Matilda would eventually attend. So, you can imagine how fractured her mind becomes when a child manages to beat her with the very powers she used to have. What’s terrifying is that Trunchbull, in the movie or the book, never explicity dies. She just sort of drives away in a frenzy, likely plotting revenge on Matilda and children around the world before just sort of giving up and becoming Bill O’Reilly.
AdvertisementsJames Anderson and Tatiana Flowers, The Associated Press
A judge has thrown out a Denver DJ's case against Taylor Swift just before jurors hear closing arguments in dueling lawsuits over whether the radio host groped her during a photo op and whether she and her team got him fired for it.
U.S. District Judge William Martinez determined Friday that the pop star could not be held liable because David Mueller hadn't shown that she personally set out to have him fired after the backstage meet-and-greet in 2013. Mueller's identical allegations against Swift's mother and her radio liaison will go to the jury.
Mueller sued the Swifts and their radio handler, Frank Bell, seeking up to $3 million as compensation for his ruined career.
The singer-songwriter said in her countersuit that she wanted a symbolic $1 and the chance to stand up for other women.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AN EARLIER STORY FOLLOWS.
DENVER -- The judge in the groping trial between Taylor Swift and a former radio host sent jurors home Friday as he weighed whether to dismiss the DJ's claims that the singer ruined his career.
U.S. District Judge William Martinez was considering Swift's lawyer's argument that David Mueller had failed to prove the pop star got him fired and promised a ruling late Friday.
Mueller denies groping Swift during a 2013 meet-and-greet and is suing Swift, her mother and her radio liaison for up to $3 million. Swift is countersuing for a symbolic $1 and what she says is a chance to stand up for other women.
With jurors outside the courtroom Friday afternoon, attorneys on both sides argued over whether Mueller had presented enough evidence to send his full case to the jury. Those statements and the judge's questions focused on whether Swift herself had done anything to get Mueller fired.
That left open the possibility that the judge would throw out the claims against her but let Mueller press ahead with his allegations against her mother, Andrea Swift, and Frank Bell, their point man with radio stations. Swift's lawsuit alleging assault and battery by Mueller was not discussed.
Jurors are to return Monday to hear closing arguments about whichever claims remain.
Earlier Friday, Swift's former bodyguard testified that he saw Mueller reach under her skirt a moment before a photographer snapped their picture during the pre-concert meet-and-greet at Denver's Pepsi Center.
Security guard Greg Dent, who no longer works for Swift, said he was standing a few steps away but did not intervene because he generally took his cues from the pop star, and she gave him no signals during the 2013 pre-concert encounter at a Denver arena.
Seated at her legal team's table in a federal courtroom, Swift chuckled when Dent testified that, after the photo was taken, he suspected that Mueller would be at the bar of the arena -- and another guard found him there.
A day earlier, Swift spent an hour on the witness stand herself defiantly recounting what she called a "despicable and horrifying and shocking" encounter.
"He stayed attached to my bare ass-cheek as I lurched away from him," Swift testified.
"It was a definite grab. A very long grab," she added in her testimony.
Swift's testy exchange with Mueller's attorney occasionally elicited chuckles -- even from the six-woman, two-man jury. She got a laugh when she said Dent saw Mueller "lift my skirt" but someone would have had to have been underneath her to see the actual groping -- "and we didn't have anyone positioned there."
Swift testified that after the photo was taken, she tried to get as far away Mueller as she could. She said she told him and his girlfriend, who was also in the photo, "thank you for coming" in a monotone voice before they left.
She also said she was stunned and did not say anything to Mueller or halt the event after he left because she did not want to disappoint several dozen people waiting in line for photos with her.
In the image, shown to jurors during opening statements but not publicly released, Mueller's hand is behind Swift, just below her waist. Mueller's then-girlfriend, Shannon Melcher, is on the other side of Swift. All three are smiling.
Melcher testified Friday that she saw nothing happen during the brief encounter and that she and Mueller were rudely confronted and escorted out of the arena that evening.
Melcher testified Mueller was devastated by the accusation.
She said she and Mueller started out as co-workers at country station KYGO-FM and became romantically involved in February 2013, a few months before the concert. They drifted apart late in 2013, but Melcher says they remained friends.Last September, the Annals of Internal Medicine published a remarkable study on the comparative health benefits of low-fat versus low-carbohydrate diets. Conducted at Tulane University with funding from the National Institutes of Health, the study followed a racially diverse group of 148 men and women ranging in age from their early twenties to their mid-seventies. All were obese but otherwise in good health. Half were randomly assigned to follow a low-carbohydrate regimen, the other half a low-fat one, all with no calorie restrictions and no changes in activity levels. The low-fat group ate more grains, cereals, and starches and cut their total fat intake to less than 30 percent of their daily calories, in line with the federal government’s dietary guidelines. The other group raised their total fat intake to more than 40 percent of daily calories, including getting 13 percent of their calories from saturated fat, more than double the amount recommended by the American Heart Association (AHA).
The Big Fat Surprise:
Why Butter, Meat, and Cheese
Belong in a Healthy Diet
by Nina Teicholz
Simon & Schuster, 479 pp.
After a year, both groups had lost weight. But those on the high-fat diets had dropped three times as much. The higher-fat group had also lost weight in a healthier way, reducing body fat, whereas those on the low-fat diet lost mostly lean muscle mass. Finally, the high-fat, low-carb eaters did better at lowering their risk factors for heart disease. “In the end, people in the low-carbohydrate group saw markers of inflammation and triglycerides—a type of fat that circulates in the blood—plunge,” reported the New York Times, while “[t]heir HDL, the so-called good cholesterol, rose more sharply than it did for people in the low-fat group.”
These findings, needless to say, run exactly counter to the nutritional advice Americans have been given for decades—that fat, especially saturated fat, is unhealthy, a broadener of waistlines and a clogger of arteries. If it were just this one study, the findings could perhaps be dismissed. In fact, it was the latest in a long line of similar research going back years. Six months earlier, the Annals of Internal Medicine published a meta-analysis of twenty-seven clinical trials that found, according to the Boston Globe, “no difference in heart disease rates among those who had the least amount of saturated fat compared to those who consumed the most.” A meta-analysis of twenty-one other studies, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2010, found “no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease or cardiovascular disease.”
Anybody who’s been reading the papers carefully for the last decade has probably picked up on this news, which may explain the recent popularity of low-carb and “paleo” diets and the growing presence of bacon and pork belly on the menus of trendy restaurants where the educated congregate. But the news has yet to reach the average Joe. A Gallup poll last July showed that twice as many Americans are trying to avoid fats as carbs.
These folks are still following the anti-fat advice drummed into them over the years by government and medical experts, especially the AHA and the federal government’s “Dietary Guidelines for Americans,” jointly published every five years by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Yet instead of backing off the message about the dangers of saturated fat, the AHA has held fast to its position, and the USDA, in its most recent guidelines, lowered its recommended daily consumption of such fat.
These recommendations have led, in turn, to new regulations on school lunch programs. But parents and school lunchroom employees complain that the students won’t eat the new, supposedly healthier food. Most kids, for instance, skip over the skim white milk in favor of low-fat, heavily sweetened chocolate stuff. And, as researchers at the University of Virginia have found—you guessed it—kids who drink low-fat milk are much more likely to be overweight than those who stick to whole milk.
At some point soon, the majority of Americans are going to realize that they’ve been had—that the dire warnings about saturated fat they’ve been hearing from health experts and the government, which they have dutifully been trying to work into their daily eating routines, were flat-out wrong, and may have actually been doing them harm. When we reach that point, two things will happen. First, a collective cheer will go up across the land upon the news that it’s okay to eat cheeseburgers. Second, the public’s growing (if lamentable) distrust of scientific and government experts—be they climate scientists or Centers for Disease Control (CDC) officials—will kick into overdrive.
How official nutritionists and the government blew the call on fat is therefore a hugely important issue. It is also the subject of a remarkable new book, The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat, and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet, by former Gourmet magazine and National Public Radio reporter Nina Teicholz. While the title suggests a mass-market diet book, it is far more than that. Building on journalist Gary Taube’s work, Teicholz (who has also written for this magazine) spent nearly a decade combing through tens of thousands of scientific studies and documents and interviewing scores of key scientists, bureaucrats, and industry insiders, many of them in their eighties and nineties. Her attributions and bibliography alone run 115 pages.
The result is a fascinating, detailed, and highly readable investigative history of how some of America’s most trusted scientific institutions went off the rails. The tale involves a small group of ambitious and influential scientists, a credulous media, crusading politicians, a public desperate for easy answers to complex questions, and the largely hidden hand of industry. It is, in short, a very Washington story.
As early as the late nineteenth century, some researchers were beginning to wonder if animal fats, in particular the cholesterol in such fats, might be responsible for heart disease, since cholesterol is a major component of atherosclerotic plaque. The idea slowly gained ground among some researchers in the 1930s and ’40s as the rate of heart attacks among adult males grew. It had—and continues to have—a certain commonsense plausibility. Since plaque clogs arteries “like hot grease down a cold drain,” in Teicholz’s vivid phrase, and stops blood flow, triggering heart attacks, eating more of the stuff plaque is made of must increase the risk of heart disease. But this was by no means the consensus among researchers and nutritionists, most of whom were publishing and publicizing studies on how children raised on a diet rich in meat, eggs, and dairy products grew taller and stronger than those who weren’t.
About the same time, a fundamental change in the American diet was under way, one Teicholz considers especially deleterious: the increasing use of vegetable oils from corn, soybeans, rapeseed, and cottonseeds. For most of human history, vegetable oils were not used for cooking, for the simple reason that (with the exception of olive oil) they turned rancid quickly at room temperature. As recently as 1910, American housewives cooked almost exclusively with butter and animal fat. Vegetable oil was used largely to make soaps, tallow, lubricants, and resins; it was barely considered edible.
Then, in 1911, Procter & Gamble patented the process of hydrogenating vegetable oil—that is, adding hydrogen atoms to the lipid molecule, which allowed the oil to be stored at room temperature without going bad. The first big commercial application of this innovation was the creation of Crisco, which stayed firm and fresh at room temperature, just like lard or butter. As Americans would later learn, some eighty-plus years later, hydrogenated vegetable oil is full of “trans fats,” which increase the risk of heart disease by lowering HDL levels in the blood while raising those of LDL, or “bad” cholesterol. But at the time, the processed food industry successfully promoted vegetable oil as “easier to digest” and a more up-to-date, modern alternative to the meat- and dairy-based fats Grandmother used. Consumption of such products, and of processed food containing them, like cookies and pastries, soared.
Eager to promote their products’ health benefits, in 1941 big food manufacturers like Quaker Oats and the Corn Products Refining Corporation created something called the Nutrition Foundation. The new organization, writes Teicholz, “steered the course of science at its very source by developing relationships with academic researchers, funding important scientific conferences, and funneling millions of dollars into research.” In 1948, Procter & Gamble took that strategy a step further: it donated all the profits from its popular Truth or Consequences radio program to the American Heart Association, then a small, underfunded organization founded in 1924 by cardiologists seeking to understand the growing problem of heart disease. (With further contributions from other food giants, the AHA would grow into a behemoth, with a $30 million budget by 1960, making it the largest non-profit in the country at the time.)
That same year, 1948, the AHA successfully lobbied President Harry Truman to create the National Heart Institute—now the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)—within the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Truman then appointed AHA founder Paul Dudley White to run the new agency, thereby ensuring, Teicholz suggests, that the AHA and its industry backers had influence over the doling out of NIH research grants.
At around this point in Teicholz’s tale, a second villain—after the vegetable oil industry—enters the picture. He is Dr. Ancel Benjamin Keys, a pathologist with advanced degrees in biology and physiology who worked at the University of Minnesota. Brilliant and charismatic, with a crusading streak and a knack for networking, Keys had managed during World War II to get himself appointed as an adviser to the secretary of defense, a post from which he developed meals for the U.S. Army called K Rations—the “K” stood for “Keys.” By the early 1950s, Keys had become convinced that the consumption of animal-based fat was the key cause of heart disease.
Big fat break: In 1961, Time magazine put Ancel Keys on the cover, guaranteeing him international celebrity status and effectively endorsing his views on diet. In 1961, Time magazine put Ancel Keys on the cover, guaranteeing him international celebrity status and effectively endorsing his views on diet.
He introduced his thesis, later dubbed the “diet-heart hypothesis,” in a 1953 paper that purportedly showed a close correlation between fat intake and death rates from heart disease in six countries. The paper generated tremendous buzz, and Keys expected to make a big splash when he presented it at a World Health Organization conference in Geneva. He did—just not quite the way he had anticipated. Jacob Yerushalmy, professor of biostatics at the University of California, Berkeley, pointed out that Keys had chosen to study only countries that would support his thesis. He didn’t account for countries like West Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, and, of course, France—where the consumption of diets high in saturated fats did not translate to ill heart health. Keys was humiliated and furious. When Yerushalmy and a colleague presented a paper showing data from twenty-two countries that suggested other factors, such as the number of cars and cigarettes sold, or the amount of sugars and protein consumed, might have a role to play, Keys responded by “devoting several pages to attacking theories that competed with his own” without offering a rebuttal of the hypothesis under review.
While Keys’s extreme self-assurance rankled colleagues, there was a market for it at the time. In the early 1950s, America was in the grip of what looked to be an epidemic of heart disease, with alarming numbers of middle-aged men succumbing to the disease. When President Dwight Eisenhower had a heart attack in 1955, there was panic across America. The public was hungry for definitive answers, and Keys believed he had them. (That Ike’s previous four-pack-a-day smoking habit might have had something to do with his heart disease was not widely discussed.)
Keys also had connections: Paul Dudley White had by then become Ike’s personal physician and was a personal friend of Keys’s. White enjoyed nearly “boundless influence” in his field and regularly took to the airwaves to update the American public on Eisenhower’s health. When invited to write in a front-page piece in the New York Times, the only researcher White mentioned by name was Ancel Keys. (Once he recovered, the president became a fervent adherent to the low-fat way, giving up butter for margarine and eating Melba toast for breakfast every day until his death, from heart disease, in 1969.)
Even within the AHA, however, there were serious doubts about the supposed links between saturated fats and heart disease. In the late 1950s an AHA committee of nutrition experts openly criticized diet-heart advocates like Keys for taking “uncompromising stands based on evidence that does not stand up under critical examination.” Keys responded in 1961 by getting himself and an ally appointed to the AHA nutrition committee. After that, the AHA swung around, announcing to the world that “the best scientific evidence” suggested that people at risk of heart attacks and strokes cut the amount of saturated fats and cholesterol in their diets. Two weeks later, Time magazine put Keys on the cover, guaranteeing him international celebrity status and effectively endorsing his views.
To advance his hypothesis, Keys launched one of the most ambitious epidemiological studies ever done. In the “Seven Countries Study,” he examined the diets in Yugoslavia, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Japan, Finland, and the United States. The results, the first of which were published in 1970, seemed to support Keys’s views. Finnish lumberjacks, for instance, who ate a diet heavy in meat and dairy, died from heart attacks at far higher rates than Greek farmers in Crete, whose diet of grains, fruit, and fish was far lower in saturated fats.
There were many issues with the Seven Countries Study, however. In the late 1950s and early ’60s, when Keys was conducting his survey, Greece was still emerging from the deprivations of World War II and the Greek civil war. As children and young adults in the prewar years, these farmers had eaten diets heavy in lamb and other fatty foods, one of many confounding factors Keys ignored. Diving deep into the study, Teicholz also discovered an astonishing methodological weakness: one of Keys’s three surveys of Crete was conducted during Lent, when Orthodox Christians fast from all animal products.
Throughout the 1960s and ’70s, Keys’s diet-heart hypothesis gained adherents and support in the media, but had not been officially endorsed by the U.S. government. That began to change in 1977, when the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, led by Senator George McGovern of South Dakota, held hearings on the links between certain foods and heart disease.
After the hearings, it fell to a McGovern staffer named Nick Mottern to research and write a report with dietary recommendations for the public. A former labor beat reporter and a “conscientious progressive,” Mottern had a jaundiced view of corporate power, especially the National Cattlemen’s Association, whose arrogant lobbyists regularly strode through the South Dakota senator’s offices. Mottern had no background in science or nutrition, however, so he turned for guidance to a Harvard nutrition professor and devotee of Keys’s diet-heart hypothesis, Mark Hegsted (Keys had by then retired).
The report Mottern and Hegsted produced, Dietary Goals for the United States, recommended lowering overall fat calories from 40 percent to 30 percent and saturated fats to 10 percent. In Mottern’s eyes, writes Teicholz, he was fighting a battle that “pitched the virtuous, AHA-endorsed low-fat diet against the debased meat and dairy industries.” He was, by all appearances, ignorant of the fact that much of the research he relied on had been quietly paid for by the vegetable oil and processed foods industries.
There was a furious backlash to the report from the meat, egg, and dairy industries and their backers in Congress, as might have been expected. But a large number of experts still remained unpersuaded. This complicated the task of translating the Dietary Goals report into federal guidelines, a job that fell to the newly appointed nutrition division director of the USDA. That person happened to be—surprise, surprise—Mark Hegsted. So to garner greater support, Hegsted decided to let his USDA recommendations be guided by a task force set up by the esteemed American Society for Nutrition.
Unfortunately for Hegsted, the task force wound up concluding two things: that the link between fat consumption and heart disease was a tenuous one, and that “the evidence condemning saturated fat was not persuasive,” writes Teicholz. The main problem, the task force explained, was that nearly all the evidence supporting the diet-heart hypothesis had come from observational studies of populations. Such “epidemiological” studies can establish correlation but, because they don’t control for different variables, not causation. For that, clinical trials are needed. But virtually no clinical trials on the diet-heart link had yet been done.
Still, the task force did not affirmatively say that reducing dietary saturated fat would cause harm. Hegsted took that as a green light to proceed, on a tenuous “better safe than sorry” logic. Hegsted’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans formed the basis of the USDA’s subsequent “Food Pyramids.” “Despite having grown from the work of a single congressional staffer and his single academic advisor and despite the lack of endorsement from nutrition experts,” writes Teicholz, “these are now the most broadly recognized food guidelines in the United States.”
One last battle remained to be fought. In a rearguard action, the highly respected Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences reviewed all the same studies everyone else had on the diet-heart hypothesis, and concluded that the studies had “generally unimpressive results.” This should have been a devastating blow. But by then the narrative in Washington was set: saturated fat was bad for you. The New York Times editorial page in essence accused the National Academy of Sciences of being biased, a view it further highlighted with a front-page investigative story in 1980 showing that two members of the academy’s Nutrition Board had done consulting work for the meat, egg, and dairy industries. The fact that two other members of the board were employees of food-processing companies was ignored. So too was the fact that the Nutrition Board had enough integrity to issue findings that ran counter to the interests of one of its own funders, the Nutrition Foundation, which was backed by vegetable oil and other food companies. In the eyes of respectable liberal opinion, anyone who questioned the view that saturated fat was a danger was either unenlightened or a stooge of the meat lobby.
Once government put its official stamp of approval on the diet-heart hypothesis, the American public dutifully complied, cutting its intake of saturated fats and shifting to the “low-fat,” carbohydrate-rich alternatives with which the processed food industry helpfully stocked the nation’s supermarkets. At about the same time, obesity levels skyrocketed, which Teicholz sees as no coincidence. Academics who continued questioning the anti-saturated-fat consensus became professional outcasts. Their funding dried up. Invitations to conferences no longer arrived. Journals would no longer publish their work.
From square to pyramid: What nutritionists told Americans to eat before the low-fat craze began. What nutritionists told Americans to eat before the low-fat craze began.
Meanwhile, beginning in the 1980s, results from the first clinical trials on the health effects of saturated fat started coming in. One after another failed to show that lower-fat diets lead to lower levels of heart disease. Yet the anti-fat consensus held firm. Experts explained away the disappointing results as anomalous, or questioned the studies’ methodologies, or awaited the results of the next big clinical trial, which would surely prove them right.
Then, beginning in 1990, studies of a different sort started coming in. These documented the health dangers of trans fat. The vegetable oil and processed food industries spent millions trying to counter the studies, but more kept coming. Consumer advocates, who had earlier allied with the vegetable oil and processed food industries in attacking saturated fats, now turned on their former industry partners and led the charge against trans fat.
By 2006, the game was up when FDA began requiring all food labels to list trans fat amounts, effectively forcing food companies to remove trans fat from their products. But without trans fat, the companies were left without a solid fat option to use in their cookies, crackers, chips, and frozen food. They couldn’t very well go back to using more saturated fats, because the public was already in the habit of scanning food labels for them. So in recent years, the vegetable oil companies have been experimenting with oil made from a process called “interesterfication,” which, Teicholz reports, produces various triglycerides with unknown health effects. Meanwhile, fast-food restaurants have been reduced to frying with unprocessed vegetable oils that release chemicals like formaldehyde into the air.
The obvious solution, says Teicholz, is for the government to own up to its mistakes and start telling Americans that it’s safe to eat saturated fats. It is hard not to conclude that she is right. The opportunity, at least, for the government to correct the record may be at hand: the USDA/HHS new Dietary Guidelines for 2015 are currently being formulated and should be out soon.
Some of the media coverage that has greeted The Big Fat Surprise has described the book as an indictment of science. But that is not really the story Teicholz tells. Rather, as her book shows, time and again a consensus of scientists called it right, insisting that the weight of the evidence was insufficient to support the anti-saturated-fat position. What really happened is that, over the course of several decades, a relatively small network of zealous, well-connected, enterprising scientists, working with well-funded industry partners, managed to take control of key scientific institutions inside and outside of government. That gave them the power to roll the scientific consensus. The media and political leaders who went along were, for the most part, too ignorant of the underlying power dynamics to understand that they were being played. And that, unfortunately, is pretty typical of how Washington works to this day.BENGALURU (Reuters) - The sharp acceleration in Canadian home prices shows no sign |
third straight game, followed with a home run of his own, a high drive that snuck into the first row in left field.
Wang walked to the mound in the sixth armed with a 3-0 lead and a no-hitter. “I wasn’t thinking that much about it,” Wang said. “I just wanted to get the sinker going.”
Tony Campana led off, pinch-hitting for Garza. He bunted one pitch foul, then whacked two others foul, building a 2-2 count. Another sinker, and another groundball, laced to the right side of the infield. Morse took a quick step to his right and dove. The ball deflected off his mitt and trickled behind him.
Wang still sprinted to cover first, and second baseman Danny Espinosa scooped the ball off the dirt on the run. Espinosa buzzed a running throw to Wang, hitting him in stride just as he reached the base. If a hitter other than Campana had been running, Espinosa’s fabulous play would have preserved Wang’s no-hitter. Instead, Campana beat him by a step, and the Cubs had a ‘one’ in their hit column.
Wang stranded Campana on second base with three consecutive outs. He threw a sinker with his final pitch, 93 mph, and Blake DeWitt hit a groundball to second base. Wang trudged back into the dugout and grabbed a bat, ready to hit, but Johnson wanted to protect his shoulder — he said afterward he would have pulled Wang even if he still had the no-hitter. He shook Wang’s hand and told him, “Good job.”
Since the Nationals signed Wang in February 2010, they had waited for a night like this. “Light years,” McCatty said, asked how far Wang had come.
Afterward, about 75 Taiwanese fans lined up in the Wrigley Field concourse, so dense and large in number they created a surreal traffic jam as fans left the park. As he sat in the clubhouse, Wang could hear them chanting: “Chien-Ming Wang! Chien-Ming Wang!”Thursday's blast of high-profile earnings, including big tech bellwethers, could help set the stage for new stock market highs in the very near future.
There's a rush of earnings Thursday morning, including Union Pacific, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Ford, American Airlines, Comcast, Dow Chemical, Raytheon and Deutsche Bank, to name a few.
But some of the tech names that have led the market's gains report after the closing bell and could be big catalysts into Friday's trading. That includes Amazon.com, up 21 percent year to date, and Alphabet, which has risen 12 percent. Microsoft, Intel and Starbucks also report after the close.
There are risks to that scenario, including the fact that Congress still needs to pass a resolution to keep the government funded by Friday, though it is expected to happen. There are also wild cards, like the worrisome tensions with North Korea.
Another factor that markets are warily watching is the string of softening data reports. Thursday data includes March durable goods orders, weekly jobless claims and advanced economic indicators, all at 8:30 a.m. ET. Economists have been cutting forecasts for first-quarter GDP, expected Friday, but are hopeful the second quarter will bounce back. JPMorgan lowered its forecast to 0.4 percent for the first quarter on Wednesday.
Stocks slid into the close Wednesday, in a sell-the-news move after President Donald Trump's much anticipated tax plan. The proposal contained a juicy corporate tax cut but was viewed as short on details and likely to be seriously modified. Nonetheless, it is an opening round in what is expected to be months of horse trading on taxes.
"People are somewhat optimistic, but they wanted more detail," said Doron Barness, head of global equities trading at Oppenheimer. He said what the market is really focusing on are the nearby highs, like 2,400 on the S&P 500. That index closed Wednesday at 2,387, down 1 point. The Nasdaq was just under its high, set Tuesday, closing at 6,025, and the Dow was off 21 at 20,975. The Russell 2000 closed at a new all-time high of 1,419.
"We've had some soft economic data, but people are ignoring that. You have North Korea stuff going on. People are ignoring that. Those are the kind of things that could bring the market down if more economic data comes out that's weaker and there's something geopolitical. But absent that, I don't see how the market doesn't go higher. People are not going to sell this market," said Barness.Welcome to the office of Mary Blome, MD
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Alabama has flipped the nation’s No. 1 punter, Skyler DeLong, from Tennessee, the Fort Mill (S.C.) Nation Ford product tells BamaOnLine.
“I decommitted (from Tennessee) and committed to Bama,” DeLong told BOL on Thursday.
The top-rated punter fills arguably one of the Tide's biggest needs in its 2018 class with JK Scott's eligibly set to run out after the 2017-18 season.
DeLong committed to the Volunteers earlier this month before visiting Tuscaloosa for its specialist camp where he picked up the offer.
The South Carolina product is the only punter offered by the Crimson Tide in the class.
Alabama fans certainly hope this is the last change in heart DeLong has after seeing the last two specialists that committed in June (Eddy Pineiro, Brandon Ruiz) sign elsewhere in the end.
For more news and notes on Alabama sports, follow BamaOnLine on Twitter.
What's next for the Tide? Make sure you're in the loop by signing up for our FREE BamaOnLine Newsletter.We love what the Hyperkin Retron 5 brings to the table, namely compatibility with ten classic gaming system cartridges: NES, Famicom, Super NES and Famicom, Sega Master System, Genesis and Mega Drive, and Game Boy original, Color and Advance. The problem is, Hyperkin's played coy about it's price and availability... until now. It'll be available on December 10th, and it'll be on sale in both Europe (for €89.99) and in the US ($99.99). And, it turns out that the Retron 5 that'll go on sale will have a few more tricks up its sleeve than the prototype we played with back at E3. The exterior's been modified to better cool the internal components, and it'll pack a work with the Sega Power Base Converter that lets you play Sega's Master System games in the Genesis slot on top. So, now you can officially start carving out space in your entertainment center for the Retron 5 -- which shouldn't be difficult once you've cleared out all the elder consoles it replaces. Less is more, people.
Update: We mistakenly wrote previously that the Retron 5 comes with a Power Base converter, in fact, you'll need to bring your own converter to the party.Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake doesn’t quite get the illegality of tracking cellphones
Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake doesn’t quite get the illegality of tracking cellphones
Baltimore police have used cellphone trackers, commonly known as stingrays, to investigate crimes as minor as harassing phone calls, then concealed the surveillance from suspects and their lawyers. Maryland law generally requires that electronic surveillance be disclosed in court. […]
Stingrays are suitcase-sized devices that allow the police to pinpoint a cellphone’s location to within a few yards by posing as a cell tower. In the process, they also can intercept information from the phones of nearly everyone else who happens to be nearby.
At least fifty-three police departments from Miami to Los Angeles own one of the cell trackers, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. But few have revealed when or how the devices are used, in part because they signed non-disclosure agreements with the FBI.
A recent investigation by USA Today showed that police in Baltimore have been tracking cellphones during investigations but have failed to disclose the tracking to defendants and their attorneys. As a result, public defenders in Baltimore are expected to request that "a large number" of criminal convictions be thrown out.The tracking was monitored by police in Baltimore surveillance logs, which indicate that they used "stingrays to hunt everyone from killers to petty thieves, and usually did so without obtaining search warrants, and routinely sought to hide that surveillance from the people they arrested."
Despite this clear violation of the law, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake "sees no problem with keeping the surveillance secret, as long as the police are using the trackers legally."
But the mayor doesn't seem to get it. Keeping the trackers secret is illegal in itself and should result in overturned convictions. Add this to the list of examples as yet another example of misconduct and overstepping by prosecutors and law enforcement. Without overturned convictions we can expect this to continue happening left and right. Tight regulations and close oversight are necessary to ensure that the state's access to technology doesn't result in defendants rights slipping away.Paul Nehlen is just one of hundreds of candidates running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives this year, but the businessman and inventor is running as if he’s in a national race. In a way, he is.
His Republican primary opponent, after all, is House Speaker Paul Ryan. And with the election scheduled for Aug. 9, national attention is intensifying as the campaign comes down to the wire.
“It’s absolutely a national campaign,” Nehlen told WND. “Paul Ryan opposes 92 percent of the GOP electorate on immigration and seven out of 10 voters on the Muslim refugee pause. Think about that for a moment. That is monumental.
“Paul Ryan has said he will not fund a wall and he will sue Donald Trump over his comments on Muslim immigration. It would be everything Paul Ryan could do to cause Mr. Trump to be a one-term, ineffectual president.”
Nehlen never thought he would run for office, much less challenge the sitting speaker in a primary. He has spent his life in manufacturing and industry. He currently serves as senior vice president of operations for a water filtration and disinfection technologies company, and as an inventor he recently secured his fifth patent.
However, when Nehlen read Sen. Jeff Sessions’ report on what was in the new Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, he immediately dashed off a letter of protest to Ryan, who was his congressman. He also phoned Ryan’s office to see if what Sessions wrote was true, but he didn’t get an answer. He had to go to other countries’ websites to verify what he had read about the TPP was true.
“I was absolutely incensed,” Nehlen recalled.
The businessman warned anybody who would listen about the TPP. Meanwhile, Nehlen also saw Ryan save the Export-Import Bank by attaching it to a $300 billion highway bill. He dug into Ryan’s campaign financing and discovered the speaker had received big donations from Beltway insiders with vested interests in the TPP and the Export-Import Bank.
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“I cannot describe the level of betrayal that that represents,” Nehlen said. “I’ve had well over 10,000 employees in my lifetime globally, and I started out in a factory at 18 years old, and it took me 12 years to get my engineering degree. I’ve run businesses all over the globe. I just got my fifth U.S. patent a week and a half ago, and I will not stand by while Paul Ryan burns it all down.”
Nehlen had thought somebody else would challenge Ryan in his 2016 primary, but no one stepped up to the plate. So Nehlen, the lifelong businessman, took on the job himself.
Betrayal
Richard Viguerie, a longtime conservative fundraiser who chairs American Target Advertising and Conservative HQ, agreed with Nehlen that Ryan and other establishment GOP legislators have betrayed conservatives.
“It was, ‘If we get a majority in the House and Senate, we’ll revoke Obamacare, we’ll build the wall, we’ll secure the border, we’ll do all these things,'” Viguerie recalled. “And then they get a majority and Obama says in December 2014 [of the $1.1 trillion spending bill], ‘I got everything I wanted.'”
Viguerie, the author of “Takeover,” believes Nehlen is at the vanguard of a power struggle for control of the GOP.
“I think you’ll find a lot more of these establishment types being challenged,” Viguerie predicted. “And it won’t all change in the 2016 election, but the groundwork is being laid now so the Republican Party going forward will never be the same.”
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Nehlen said he drew inspiration from Dave Brat, the college professor who upset House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the 2014 GOP primary in Virginia’s 7th district.
“Dave Brat is a hero of mine,” Nehlen declared. “He is another David to a different Goliath.”
Nehlen hopes to follow in Brat’s footsteps by scoring a major upset over a member of the GOP’s congressional leadership. He pointed out he has already quadrupled Brat’s fundraising total from two years ago.
Viguerie has high hopes for Nehlen.
“I know people who are helping him at a national level, and they’re very high on him, so hopefully he will be another Dave Brat and join the Freedom Caucus,” Viguerie said.
‘Out of step’
Nehlen acknowledged Speaker Ryan may have $10 million in the bank, but he believes Ryan’s positions on trade and immigration are out of step with Wisconsinites and the American people.
He pointed to Ryan’s comment in 2013 that a lawmaker’s job is to put himself in the shoes of other people, including “the gentleman from India who’s waiting for his green card” and “the DREAMer who is waiting.”
“We want to know why he’s working on behalf of foreigners before he’s working on behalf of Americans,” Nehlen demanded. “We can’t name a time when Paul Ryan’s worked as hard for us as he has for corporations, and it’s an indictment of Paul Ryan’s lust for power and his willingness to vote on behalf of his special interests.”
Nehlen said he would not like to see any reforms to the legal immigration system, except for a reduction in the number of H-1B, H-2B, K and L visas. However, he would like the U.S. to start enforcing existing law as currently written. He said he has met legal immigrants in Wisconsin who have told him they don’t want any changes to existing immigration laws because they want all aspiring immigrants to be held to the same standards to which they were held.
Foreigners may make up less than 5 percent of Wisconsin’s population, but Nehlen insisted the immigration issue resonates in his state. He noted Wisconsin has seen tuberculosis outbreaks that originated in immigrant communities, and when an impoverished refugee contracts TB, taxpayers must pick up the costly bill for treatment.
Nehlen does not favor admitting any refugees unless they can be properly vetted, and he has doubts about the feasibility of effective vetting. He noted Ryan has so far thwarted the Resettlement Accountability National Security Act of 2015, sponsored by Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas.
Furthermore, he pointed out, the U.S. has outsourced the first stage of refugee vetting to the U.N., and the U.N. selects almost exclusively Muslim refugees to come to America. That’s because Muslim refugees persecute Christian refugees when they try to come to the refugee camps.
“Unless you can somehow vet on the front end whether or not a refugee is Shariah-compliant or not, and I don’t know how you do that, then yes, I would completely shut [the refugee admissions program] down,” Nehlen said.
“There’s over 50 Islamic countries in the world. Why are we taking them here? There are whole tent cities in Saudi Arabia. There are safe countries – UAE, Oman. Why aren’t they going there? Why are they coming to the United States? Let them fill those countries up first.”
Name the enemy
Nehlen said the U.S. needs to vet all mosques in the country and unshackle the FBI and CIA from the chains of political correctness.
“We need to be able to name and identify our enemy, and it is anybody who is Shariah-compliant,” he said. “The break point isn’t terrorism; the break point is Shariah. Shariah is absolutely in conflict with the U.S. Constitution.”
He said Congress needs to pass H.R. 3892, introduced by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., which would ask the State Department to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organization. He warned that the Department of Homeland Security’s Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) initiative will only make America less safe by embedding Muslim Brotherhood figures inside DHS as shapers of U.S. counter-terrorism policy.
“It is one of the worst pieces of documentation I’ve ever read,” Nehlen said. “H.R. 3892 needs to be passed. CVE needs to be lit on fire.”
The national security of the United States may be in dire straits, but Nehlen nevertheless seeks to bring a message of hope and encouragement to business leaders and working-class people – not just in Wisconsin’s first district, but all across America. He hopes his campaign will inspire others in the private sector to run for office to try and effect positive change.
“I’ve already inspired people in Janesville to run for city council,” Nehlen revealed. “That to me is amazing, and I think it sends a great message of hope that this country, its best days are still ahead. I firmly believe that.”LAHORE: On October 16, news channels in Pakistan reported that the family of Karachi-based Inayat Ali was denied accommodation in the hotels of the Bhendi Bazaar area of Mumbai.
The family visited 40 hotels, but none of them welcomed them because the family did not possess the draconian Form C.
The news may have sparked suitable outrage among the public, but one man decided to take a stand.
Iqbal Latif, who runs 26 franchises of international food outlet Dunkin Donut in Islamabad, Lahore and Peshawar, took a step to show how Pakistanis welcome their neighbours, which also emulates Gandhi's teachings.
In the next few hours, the food outlets had banners with an announcement offering free meals to any Indians visiting Pakistan on a short-term visa. The banner was inscribed with Indian and Pakistani flags as well. The offer went into effect from Friday last week.
“I felt bad when I saw this that family had to spend [a] part of [the] night [on a] footpath near a police station and another part at a pavement at the railway station,” shared Latif.
“It’s not a big deal, but an effort to invoke the teachings of Gandhi Ji who preached love and coexistence all his life,” Mr Latif told Dawn by phone from London.
Dunkin Donuts franchise owner Iqbal Latif believes that his goodwill gesture exemplifies Gandhi's teachings of love
The response to Latif's initiative was overwhelmingly positive.
“We served 2,432 people in Peshawar, Islamabad and Lahore. They all loved it,” Latif revealed.
Sales went up by 30 per cent since the day the offer went into effect.
On the first day of the offer, 17 meals were served to Indians in a Dunkin Donut outlet in the Diplomatic Enclave of Islamabad.
“This is the place where US State Secretary John Kerry took breakfast last year. But we feel great honour [in hosting our] Indian friends,” said Mr Latif.
Elsewhere in Lahore and Peshawar, no Indian visited to avail a free meal.
The Dunkin Donuts in the Diplomatic Enclave of Islamabad welcomed 17 Indian visitors, but branches in Lahore and Peshawar received none
“We’re waiting to treat Indians with a big heart and a big smile,” said Tehmina, who works at the Liberty Market outlet in Lahore. She shared that a couple of passersby glanced at the poster and waved a high five at the staff.
Mr Latif is elated by the response to the offer, and sees it as vital for promoting love among the people of Pakistan and India. He says he was slightly apprehensive about the reaction in Peshawar to the display of the Indian flag, but visitors and passersby waved at the staff, a sign of approval.
“Where is the hate and stone throwing of Shiv Sena? Only a degenerated mind does it. We need to tell Shiv to grow up. Love conquers all,” he added.
Though the Pakistani and Indian public are more willing to be friends, states and armies on either side don't see eye to eye and often hit the headlines for trading shells and accusations at borders and international forums.
On Saturday, intelligence reports were in the media that India intelligence RAW could target Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Jamaatud Dawa head Hafiz Saeed.
Earlier last week, former foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri was the target of threats from hardliner Shiv Sena activists on October 12 in Mumbai ahead his book launch, while the host, Sudhera Kulkarni, was painted black.
And Shiv Sena hurled threats, which resulted in the cancellation of the planned performance of Ghazal legend Ghulam Ali in Mumbai on October 8.
Vajee Vee, an Indian commentator, says it is the scar that was left by "Kasab and ISI post-Mumbai serial blasts".
Latif, however, says his pro-peace and amity initiative has not met with any interference by any Pakistani intelligence agency.
“No ISI, no intelligence came to us to ask about the display of the Indian flag,” he said. He added that some of his friends in the army even called him to appreciate his gesture.
He says Pakistan has shown its love for Indians.
“Across the border, there is no hate. We all love India. 1.4 billion people love each other. We are only marginalised by a few hate mongers on both sides. I propose such initiatives on the people-to-people level [to] help make bridges,” he said, adding that both Pakistan and India are nuclear countries that cannot afford strained relations.
“I suggest that Indian food chains put this (offer) on display in India, and see if [their] business goes up or drops.”How To Be A Good American
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Jeremy Clarkson is nothing less than a legend in the automotive world. Luckily for us, twenty-first century Jeremy treats us to his daily musings on Twitter. Below, is a three-and-a-bit-month selection of the Doncastian's finest wisdom that we're confident willIf you think that we, the general public, have anything more to learn from JC, be sure to let us know in the comments section.A basic concept in Quranic studies is the difference between its meccan surahs/chapters (revealed before the Prophet Muhammad migrated from trading city of Mecca to oasis town of Medina) and its medinan chapters (revealed after the migration).
Knowing where a chapter was revealed helps scholars derive meaning from the text, and so a great deal of effort has been expended to finding historical narrations that mention when a particular verse or chapter was revealed. However, the location where a chapter was revealed is also manifested in the linguistic characteristics of the passage. For example, meccan chapters are characterized by poetic meter, a rhetorical urgency, and an emphasis on recognizing the Oneness of God, while medinan chapters are more lengthy prose dedicated to explaining religious rituals.
This made me think that it might be possible to build a binary classifier that could use basic techniques from natural language processing to classify chapters as medinan or meccan. Here, I outline my methodology and share my results.
Methodology
Downloading the Dataset. The first step is to download all of the text of the Quran. The standard text of the Quran can be downloaded from:
http://tanzil.net/docs/download
The version without vowel marks and with verse numbers will work best for our work. We also need to know which surahs are meccan and which are medinan. Find this information at:
http://tanzil.net/docs/revelation_order
Alternatively, a link to a github repository with the.csv files (and all source code) is included at the end of this post.
Word Vectors Once we have the text of the Quran, we need to convert the text to a standardized representation that can be fed to machine learning algorithms. Usually, these representations are in the form of numeric arrays, matrices, or tensors.
There are a variety of ways to do this, but the simplest may be the bag-of-words technique, which represents a ‘text’ (in this case, we’ll use each verse as a text) as a vector, with each dimension representing the occurrence of a particular word.
As an example, let’s say the words in our body of text are:
إنا – الإنسان – لفي – خسر – أعطينا – الكوثر
Then, we could represent these two verses as follows:
Verse Bag of Words Vector إنا الانسن لفى خسر [1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0] إنا اعطينك الكوثر [1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1]
If a word repeats more than once, the vector reflects that multiplicity, so a vector can have entries more than 1 as well.
Training and Validation
Before feeding the word vectors into a classifier, we need to partition our dataset into a training and validation set. To ensure that the validation set and training set are independent, the partitioning is done on a chapter level, not a verse level. This is because some chapter include repeating refrains (e.g. Surah Al-Rahman), it is unfair to include those verses in both the validation and training sets.
The partitioning I used was: Training: 40%, Validation: 60% (I chose a larger validation set to increase the meaningfulness of results, as will be discussed later). Because the partitioning was done on a chapter level, the number of verses in the training and validation set was not exactly 40/60.
Logistic Regression
The classifier I ended up choosing was logistic regression. Logistic regression works similarly to linear regression, as it assigns linear weights to the presence of each feature in our vector. But then it introduces a non-linearity – by passing the result through the logistic function
This provides a probability between 0 and 1 that verse belongs to a particular class – in our case, the classes are meccan or medinan. We train the weights on our training set, and check how well it performs on the test set.
Results
So how did we do? The following table represents the training and validation accuracies on a typical run:
Round Accuracy Training 98.68% Validation 86.26%
The training accuracy is very high because we are over-fitting on our datasets. This not surprising because the number of parameters in our model – or the number of unique words in the Quran – is 14,870, far more than the number of verses in our training set.
However, we do pretty decently on our validation set as well. The accuracy, 86%, needs to be taken within context:
The dataset is unbalanced – there are many more meccan chapters than medinan chapters, so if our classifier was just classifying every verse as meccan, it would get an accuracy of about 74%. Depending on the specific partitioning of the training and validation, we have an accuracy around 10 percentage points higher than that.
This is on a verse-by-verse level, under the assumption that every verse in a meccan surah is meccan, and same for medinan. This assumption is definitely not true, which affects both our training and evaluation of performance.
A better indicator would be performance on a surah level. If we use a simply majority voting system (using all the verses in a chapter to “vote” for whether the surah is meccan or medinan), we get the following results:
Round Accuracy Overall surah-level 94.73%
I’ll confess, I was a bit disappointed when I saw that this wasn’t closer to 100%. Which surahs are misclassified? It turns out that there are 6 surahs that are misclassified in the validation set:
Misclassified Surah Predicted type Confidence (votes) Surah Ra’d (13) meccan 81% Surah Hajj (22) meccan 63% Surah Muhammad (47) meccan 53% Surah Rahman (55) meccan 100% Surah Insaan (76) meccan 97% Surah Zilzaal (99) meccan 100%
When I took a closer look at these chapters, I was amazed to see that there is actually scholarly disagreement about all 6 of these chapters! Based solely on word usage, our classifier suggests that a few of these, such as Surahs Rahman, Insaan, and Zilzaal might fall in the meccan camp!
Finally, I was curious to see which Arabic words are the “most meccan” and the “most medinan.” We can analyze this by looking at the weights that the model learns for each word. The top 10 meccan and medinan words are:
Top Meccan Words Top Medinan Words بعهدكم تقتلني وتقسطوا والله العالمون أكلها أولاهما وإذ لتحصنكم وبكفرهم العمى مبصرة نور زلزلة لمستقر بآية لنفد سخرناها تنزيل وجهرا
Perhaps those who have studied the Quran more can enlighten me, but these words don’t seem to follow any significant trends.
I did notice that the words in the meccan column are mostly those words that are rare, but make an appearance in at least once meccan surah. For example, لنفد is found only in Surah Al-Kahf. The words in the medinan column are sometimes also hapaxes, but in other cases, they are common words in the Quran, which are overweighted in the medinan verses, which tend to be longer than meccan verses on average. So while والله would appear in both kinds of surahs, it might appear multiple times within a medinan verse. A further confounding factor is that our simple “bag of words” technique is unable to recognize any degree of similarity between related words – والله is a separate word than الله internally – making it more difficult to build complex insights.
With a deeper look into the weights, one might be able to identify trends as to why certain words are more “meccan” and why others are more “medinan,” but the most strongly weighted words seem to result of technicalities associated with bag-of-word techniques. (Perhaps normalizing vectors before feeding them into logistic regression would lead to a more interpretable model?).
Conclusion
The basic conclusion is that we can design an extremely simple algorithm to classify meccan and medinan surahs, based on a small set of training examples! While its not clear the internal model that the algorithm builds is particularly sophisticated or enlightening, we see that it performs quite well – only incorrectly classifying 6 surahs, all of which are the subject of scholarly debate anyway!
All the source code and data files for this project can be found and cloned from this github repository.September 1, 2010
ON NOVEMBER 2, Proposition 19--the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010--will be on the ballot in California. If it passes, it will allow adults 21 years or older to possess, cultivate or transport marijuana for personal use.
The passage of Proposition 19 would strike a serious blow against the drug warriors who have been locking up marijuana smokers with impunity for decades. Arrests for small-scale possession and distribution of pot are the leading edge of the "War on Drugs": Nearly half of all drug arrests in 2008--some 750,000--were for marijuana use.
Marijuana busts are easy, a guaranteed moneymaker for the judicial system (think of the court costs and fines) and a steady supplier of prisoners for California's sprawling, for-profit prison industry. Adding a dimension of racism to the question, African Americans are three and four times more likely to be arrested and convicted of marijuana offenses.
MARIJUANA PROHBITION in the U.S. has deep roots in racism. From 1930 until 1962, Harry J. Anslinger headed the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Anslinger launched a national crusade against marijuana and used a hysteria about "reefer madness" and open racism to pressure politicians to pass a series of laws making marijuana illegal.
A medical marijuana dispensary in Valencia, Calif.
Anslinger's racist rants alleged that marijuana made Black people violent and insane, and encouraged race-mixing. He concocted deliberate lies to stoke racism: "Colored students at the University of Minnesota partying with white female students, smoking and getting their sympathy with stories of racial persecution. Result: pregnancy." He also believed: "Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men."
Anslinger's campaign against cannabis even attacked famous Black musicians and the groundbreaking new genres of music they created: "There are 100,00 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are negroes," he ranted. "Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others."
Today, Anslinger's racism reads like a sick joke, but in Jim Crow America of the 1930s, his ideas got a wide hearing.
Fast forward to "post-racial" America: A new report released by the Drug Policy Alliance titled "Targeting Blacks for Marijuana: Possession Arrests of African Americans in California, 2004-08," shows the racism of Harry Anslinger is still alive and kicking in the disproportionate enforcement of drug laws against African Americans. Among the findings:
-- In every one of the 25 largest counties in California, Blacks are arrested for marijuana possession at higher rates than whites, typically at double, triple or even quadruple the rate of whites, yet government studies consistently find that young blacks use marijuana at lower rates than young whites. In Los Angeles County, with nearly 10 million residents and over a quarter of California's population, Blacks are arrested at over triple the rate of whites. Blacks are less than 10 percent of LA County's population, but are 30 percent of the people arrested for marijuana possession. Criminal records for marijuana possession severely limit the life chances of the poor, young, and especially of young Blacks and Latinos.
The report confirms what African Americans have known for decades--the War on Drugs is a war on them. It is directly responsible for the explosion in the number of Black people incarcerated. The legalization of marijuana is an issue of racial justice.
The politically connected and well-funded law enforcement authorities--which have fought tooth and nail to deny medical marijuana to sick and dying patients and continue to raid medical marijuana dispensaries--oppose Proposition 19. They've partnered with conservative organizations and churches to create a campaign of fear and hysteria based on outright lies and distortions about the effects of marijuana.
Among the most dishonest assertions are that marijuana use causes permanent mental illness, is highly addictive and is a "gateway" drug. The gateway theory claims smoking marijuana leads to the use of "harder drugs" like crack cocaine and heroin, but the fact is that the vast majority of marijuana users never use any other illegal drugs |
Play Store for Android Wear 2.0 will let smartwatch owners browse and download apps and watchfaces directly to their watches, without having to install them on their phones. It’s a big part of Google’s pitch to make Android Wear 2.0 less dependent on phones and more of an independent platform. It also will allow iOS users to install third-party watchfaces and apps on an Android Wear watch, which was previously limited to Android only. (The Play Store on Android Wear with iOS is not yet supported in this version, Google says that will come in a later developer preview.)
Android Wear 2.0’s Play Store will work when the watch is connected to a phone over Bluetooth or when it’s connected to a Wi-Fi or cellular network (on devices with cellular connectivity). Purchases for paid apps will need to be authenticated on the phone with this version, though Google says it plans to eliminate that requirement with future versions.
In addition to the Play Store, this developer preview, which can be installed on the Huawei Watch and the LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition LTE, adds voice assistant functionality (was missing from earlier builds); better user interface elements for round displays; improvements to complications and permissions; inline actions for notifications; and Google’s Smart Reply feature. Smart Reply is part of Google’s larger Assistant platform and provides contextual replies for incoming messages. Google says that Allo and Hangouts are already using it and developers will be able to enable it in their apps with this build.
Google says that the delay for the launch of Android Wear 2.0 is so that the company can hit the quality requirements it has for the platform when it is publicly launched and not because of specific hardware delays. Though major Android Wear partners such as Motorola, Huawei, and LG have said they won’t be launching any more Wear smartwatches this year, Google points to recent devices from Asus, Fossil, Michael Kors, Polar, and Nixon as evidence of the vibrancy of the platform. Google says that all of the devices launching this fall will support Android Wear 2.0 when the final version is available next year.
Still, with the delay of Android Wear 2.0 and the absence of new devices from the tech companies Google’s worked with in the past, Google is ceding the lucrative holiday season to Apple and Samsung, which already have a sizable lead over Android Wear in the smartwatch market.
Android Wear 2.0 is the biggest update to Google’s smartwatch platform since its original launch in 2014 and it promises to be really interesting and potentially useful. But in order to do that, it has to first arrive.Salmon-A-Rama was a huge hit in 2017, With over 4137 individual registered contesants plus 23 Charter boat tickets sold all competing for the total cash payouts of over $85,000.00, Steve Wakefield from Sheboygan, WI was the big $25,000.00 Cash winner with a 33.46lb Chinook. All divisions shuffled on a regular basis causing for many contestants to have sleepless nights. The total number of fish weighed was 4,984 and this number also was a welcome site as our fishery still shows signs of some great days to be had by anglers. The festival entertainment was a hit as new name bands were brought in, and provided for a great meeting place to tell stories while enjoying a beverage. The food was again hot and ready no matter what time you visited with many raffles, games, and family oriented projects to invite anglers and there families for a day of fun. The Salmon-A-Rama committee would like to thank all of those who participated again this year to help make this one of the greatest tournaments on the Great Lakes. Participation was up in every category except the Kayak category which was on track with last year. This shows we are moving in the right direction building this event back to where it once was. This event is an event that takes a full year to organize, so please feel free to attend a meeting with suggestions on changes you would like to see or ways to improve for future years. I also encourage anglers to thank the committee as there is a very small group that puts this event on, and remember the proceeds are used locally to better the community as a whole.TEMECULA, Calif. – Fedor Emelianenko may be coming back to MMA, but one of the sport’s two biggest players may not be where he settles in upon his return.
Given Emelianenko’s history with the now-defunct Strikeforce and its then-President Scott Coker, many thought it a natural fit for the Russian legend to head to Bellator, where Coker now is president, if he made a comeback. After all, Emelianenko has made several promotional appearances for Bellator in the past and appears to have a good relationship with Coker.
The UFC, on the other hand, has a bit of a combative history with Emelianenko, at least in the media. But the UFC may have the inside track to signing him ahead of Bellator – which may be taking itself out of the running … at least for now.
“We’ve had conversations, but not about fighting,” Coker told MMAjunkie on Thursday in Temecula, Calif., ahead of tonight’s Bellator 141. “I just felt Fedor is a great legend. He’s on the Mount Rushmore of MMA. We had a great time doing the fights together with Fedor (in Strikeforce) … I felt like we’ve done it already with Fedor.”
That doesn’t mean, of course, that Bellator is completely out of the picture, especially not in a sport in which nothing is a sure thing until the ink is dry on the contract, and even then things can change.
But Coker said down the road, Emelianenko might be a better fit with Bellator.
“We’ve got a great roster and a great thing going,” he said. “When he comes back into the market, I feel like he’s going to come back for three or four years. He’s not going to come back for one fight. And he is coming back – for sure. … But I’m not sure where he’s going – if he’s close to signing with the UFC, I hear rumors of this and that. I haven’t asked him.
“Let’s let him come back and see how it works out for him, and then maybe we’ll have him fight a couple years down the line, or next year, or whatever. The door is open, but I felt like at this point, Bellator is kind of on a little bit of a roll here. Would he add a lot of value? Yes. But we’re just going to sit back and see what happens.”
A little more than three years ago, the heavyweight legend hung up his gloves. Nearly a year ago, the Russian nixed any talk of a comeback, telling Michael Schiavello on “The Voice vs. Fedor” on AXS TV that he was through.
“I already fought my share,” Emelianenko told Schiavello in the interview. “God gave me a rich and eventful career. I gave God everything. I’m done fighting. Only God’s will (can bring me back).”
But earlier this summer, news broke, first with a report from Russian MMA news outlet Union MMA, that God is willing 38-year-old back into fighting.
“For every athlete it is very important to be able to engage in their favorite thing: give all the best in training, performing in competitions, defending the honor of the motherland,” Emelianenko told the site. “… But now I feel that it is time to return to the ring. I was able to recover and heal old wounds. The last three years I have maintained the physical form, but this level is not enough to go into battle.
“Therefore recently I started intensive training. We have assembled a team of versatile coaches and athletes who will help me in the training process. … Negotiations are underway with (promotions). Once agreements are reached, there will be information on the date of the fight and (opponent).”
Emelianenko (34-4) most recently fought in June 2012 under the M-1 Global banner and knocked out Pedro Rizzo. He retired after the fight on a three-fight winning streak, which reversed a three-fight skid for Strikeforce.
After going more than 10 years without a loss, he suffered a submission loss to Fabricio Werdum in June 2010 for his first defeat in 30 fights. In 2011, he then suffered back-to-back losses to Antonio Silva and Dan Henderson.
His three-fight winning streak to close his career came against Jeff Monson, Satoshi Ishii and Rizzo.
But what Emelianenko is perhaps remembered for as much as anything is something he didn’t do, and that’s fight in the UFC. The two infamously negotiated, but never could come to an agreement.
Two and a half years ago, UFC President Dana White said the promotion was close to signing him for a fight at Cowboys Stadium in Dallas against Brock Lesnar. But that never came to fruition.
More recently, Emelianenko has been making appearances with Bellator doing fan autograph signings and meet-and-greets.
For more on the Bellator and UFC schedules, stay tuned to the MMA Rumors section of the site.As tension between India and Pakistan in the backdrop of the mutilation of Indian soldiers remains at an all-time high, at least 250 prominent citizens from both countries have called for an end to "proxy wars", an "un-interruptible" dialogue process and more people-to-people contact between the two nations.
In a resolution "for peaceful relations between India and Pakistan", the signatories said they are "deeply concerned at the current rise in animosity and antagonism between India and Pakistan" and urged the governments in both the countries to "take all steps possible towards improving relations".
Condemning all "forms of violence regardless of its objectives", the resolution notes that those who suffer most due to the conflict between the two South Asian rivals are "ordinary people denied visas and those in the conflict zones, especially women and children as well as fishermen who get routinely rounded up and arrested for violating the maritime boundary".
The resolution also calls "to uphold the principles of impartial reporting" and urges the media in both India and Pakistan "to prevent the growing militarisation of debate". "We must act responsibly and stop broadcasting hate speech and creating public hysteria aimed at the other country and/or vulnerable communities," it says.
The seven demands made in the resolution are:
1. Develop an institutionalised framework to ensure that continuous and uninterrupted talks between India and Pakistan take place regularly no matter what. Make dialogue un-interrupted and un-interruptible.
2. Ensure that political leaders, diplomats and civil servants from both countries conduct talks on the side-lines of all international and multilateral forums.
3. Recognise that the Kashmir dispute above all concerns the lives and aspirations of the Kashmiri people, and work to resolve it through uninterrupted dialogue between all concerned parties.
4. Implement the 2003 ceasefire agreement between India and Pakistan.
5. Renounce all forms of proxy wars, state-sponsored terrorism, human rights violations, cross-border terrorism, and subversive activities against each other including through non-state actors or support of separatist movements in each other's state.
6. Support and encourage all forms of people to people contact, and remove visa restrictions and discrimination faced by citizens of both countries. This must be further taken forward to allow visa-free travel between India and Pakistan.
7. Increase trade and economic linkages and cultural exchanges between India and Pakistan.
The signatories to the statement from India include former Congress MP Mani Shankar Aiyer, activists Harsh Mander, Salman Anees Soz, Tapan Bose, Shabnam Hashmi, Kamla Bhasin, and Anuradha Bhasin, filmmakers Mahesh Bhatt, Saba Dewan and Rahul Rao, and academics Meenakshi Chabbra and KN Panikkar.
Retired Indian army officers, including Air-Vice Marshal Kapil Kak, Admiral L Ramdas and General Tej Kaul, have also supported the statement.
From the Pakistan side, the signatories are politician Afrasiab Khattak, advocate Asma Jahangir, academics Adil Najam and Ayesha Siddiqa, and historian Ayesha Jalal.
Also read: Forced to marry Pakistani man at gunpoint, Indian woman to return home
Also read: Pakistani farmers say India not complying with Indus Water Treaty, want UN, US to interveneBy David Cay Johnston. The opinions expressed are his own.
Readers, I apologize. The premise of my debut column for Reuters, on News Corp’s taxes, was wrong, 100 percent dead wrong.
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp did not get a $4.8 billion tax refund for the past four years, as I reported. Instead, it paid that much in cash for corporate income taxes for the years 2007 through 2010 while earning pre-tax profits of $10.4 billion.
For the first time in my 45-year-old career I am writing a skinback. That is what journalists call a retraction of the premise of a piece, as in peeling back your skin and feeling the pain. I will do all I can to make sure everyone who has read or heard secondary reports based on my column also learns the facts and would appreciate the help of readers in that cause.
No excuses. But I will explain how I made such a bonehead error.
The other facts I reported remain:
* Among the 100 largest companies in the United States, News Corp has the third largest number of subsidiaries in tax havens, a Government Accountability Office study found in 2009.
* On an accounting basis, which measures taxes incurred but often not actually paid for years, News Corp had a tax rate of under 20 percent, little more than half the 35 percent statutory rate, its disclosures show.
* Murdoch has bought companies with tax losses and fought to be able to use them, which reduces his company’s costs.
* News Corp lawyers and accountants are experts at making use of tax deferrals, though the company’s net tax assets have shrunken from $5.7 billion in 2007 to $3.3 billion last year as the benefits were either used or expired.
CHECKING THE RECORDS
Tax is my beat, and I was simply looking for what the record showed since Mr. Murdoch is much in the news these days. Some of his British journalists hacked into voicemails, paid off cops and interfered in a murder investigation. Having a long career writing not just about tax, but also about journalistic misconduct, I wondered if there was anything of interest in News Corp’s annual disclosure reports, known as 10-K forms. I examined them back to 2004, the year that it switched from an Australian to an American company.
What I found was four years of big negative numbers in the “cash paid for taxes” line in the footnotes to the consolidated statements of cash flows.
The most common convention is to report tax payments as positive numbers and to use negative numbers to report net refunds from government to a company.
Professor Ed Outslay, who teaches graduate accounting at Michigan State University and is an authority on extracting tax information from disclosure statements, teaches his students “normally ‘parens’ mean a tax benefit, not an expense.”
While that is the norm, it is not universal and I knew that. Some big companies report “cash paid for taxes” with payments in parentheses and refunds as a positive number. This reversal makes sense from a company’s point of view, though few companies do it that way.
I saw that over the seven years that News Corp has been a U.S. company it reported “cash paid for taxes” as positive numbers in 2004 through 2006 and then as (negative) numbers for 2007 through 2010.
ERROR ALERT
The first suggestion I had erred came in the middle of the night when a post at taxprofblog (I teach at Syracuse University College of Law) said I had made an error. I checked the disclosures and then wrote back that the poster was in error. Still, the note troubled me and before dawn I was reviewing every document. As I was rechecking my work, Robert S. McIntyre of Citizens for Tax Justice, who is respected across the political spectrum for the care he takes with numbers, sent me a note saying I had it wrong. News Corp, he said, was using negative numbers to report outflows, rather than tax inflows, starting in 2007.
Here is how the same number, in millions of dollars, for “cash paid for income taxes” for its 2006 fiscal year was reported in News Corp’s 2006 annual disclosure report and then in the 2007 report: $558 $(558)
Add up the negative “cash paid for taxes” number for the years 2007 through 2010 and you get the negative $4.8 billion number I reported as tax dollars flowing to News Corp instead of to governments, as they actually did.
How did I miss the switch in convention for reporting positive and negative numbers? The company disclosed in its 2007 annual report that it was changing the way it reported some numbers. Here is the entire disclosure, from Note 2 on Page 87:
Certain fiscal 2006 and fiscal 2005 amounts have been reclassified to conform to the fiscal 2007 presentation.
COMPLEX STATEMENTS
I do not recall if I read that line, but even if I had I would not have connected it to the switch from positive to negative numbers in the “cash paid for taxes” line. In its profit and loss statement News Corp uses almost all positive numbers, even for costs. It lists revenues, for example, and operating expenses as positive numbers even though expenses, like cash paid for taxes, flow out of the company.
But in the “cash paid for taxes” and some other lines in the same document, I know now, it follows a different convention and that it switched conventions four years ago. Indeed, another journalist pointed out to me that within one of the tables in its latest disclosure News Corp made inconsistent use of positive and negative numbers.
Disclosures are complex statements, but they also are intended to inform investors and regulators, not confuse as can happen when mixing and matching positive and negative numbers. Here is a question for the SEC: Should companies be allowed to use inconsistent conventions on positive and negative numbers in the same document?
Before even writing my column I called News Corp. Neither of the News Corp spokespeople so much as coughed when I said my first column would be about News Corp making $4.8 billion from the tax system in the previous four years. I also instantly emailed my spreadsheet, at News Corp’s request, though the company says it did not get it. The company did not get back to me — they were, after all, besieged with other calls from journalists — and I did not check back again, though I should have.
SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT
As a further check, when I enter numbers in spreadsheets I use a yellow background to remind me that at least a second check needs to be done before publication. When I later examined the spreadsheet against the source document the numbers matched so I changed the background to white to indicate to myself that I had double-checked the numbers.
To keep my column as simple as possible I limited the graphic I roughed out to the four years starting in 2007. When the 2005, 2006 and 2007 numbers from the 2007 disclosure statement matched what was in my spreadsheet I clicked to the white background. I should have checked the earlier years where what was negative had been reported as positive.
When more than a day after the column was posted, a News Corp publicist called me, I had already discovered the mistake and told her it was being withdrawn and a correct column written. She also helped me tie down some crucial details, like finding that 2007 disclosure.
I often write tart notes at the Romenesko blog for journalists, the Columbia Journalism Review, Nieman Reports and elsewhere about what I consider flawed reporting by others. I lecture to young reporters around the world on the duty of care they need to take with facts and teach how to check and cross check. Until now I have never made a big mistake, but this is a painful reminder that we all put our pants on one leg at a time. The measure of character, I say in my posts and lectures, is whether when an error is found you forthrightly and promptly correct.
So I hope readers will trust that while I made a whopper of a mistake, it has been corrected forthrightly and promptly.This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to a new film called Wounds of Waziristan. It’s by Pakistani-American journalist Madiha Tahir. Madiha traveled to Northwest Pakistan to interview people affected by the U.S. drone war. Today we air the film in a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: There’s a wide gap between U.S. assessments of such casualties and non-governmental reports. Nevertheless, it is a hard fact that U.S. strikes have resulted in civilian casualties, a risk that exists in every war. And for the families of those civilians, no words or legal construct can justify their loss. For me and those in my chain of command, those deaths will haunt us as long as we live.
MADIHA TAHIR: What does it mean to be haunted by loss?
[translated] How is your brother’s condition?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] When he’s alone, he doesn’t do well. He’s OK when he is with someone. He remembers his baby girl a lot. She was his love.
MADIHA TAHIR: So the story isn’t so much about the dead. It’s the way they haunt the living, the way they linger, the way they hang on.
The U.S. began bombing Pakistan in 2004. Now it’s nine years later, and the American conversation on drone attacks is only just beginning.
I’ve lived most of my life moving between America and Pakistan. One sees itself as the center of the world, and the other is on the margins. But Waziristan, where most of the drones attack, is at the margins of that margin. Like so many Americans and Pakistanis, I knew very little about the place.
Waziristan is part of what’s called the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA. It’s in Pakistan, and it borders Afghanistan. And it has been bombed before, nearly a hundred years ago by the British when they occupied India. The British used the tribal areas as a buffer zone. They bombed it to suppress rebellion. They called it “air policing.” They said there was no law here, so force was necessary.
Waziristan is only a day’s drive from the capital, but checkpoints dot the border. No one can go there independently. Pakistan’s security forces have killed many people here. The insurgents have, too. And now the American drones are doing the killing.
When it comes to language, nobody describes the insurgents—or the Pakistani military’s tactics—as precise. But that very word, “precise,” is often thrown around in discussions about the American drone program. These attacks are described as “neat,” “surgical” tactics in precision-based warfare. They seem to suggest that killing can be like surgery. You can take out the bad without disturbing the good. No consequences for anyone. No sorrow. No loss. They promise a death that isn’t a death at all. And that’s why drones are becoming acceptable among Americans as a way to kill in Yemen, in Somalia and in Pakistan.
And Waziristan? Waziristan is made to seem a world away.
So how could I be haunted by what I didn’t know? Ghosts can only haunt if we feel their presence. And the dead can only persist if the living can recall them.
Karim first made that world real to me. I met him in 2011. Here’s me playing a radio story I had done about him.
… Pakistan since 2004. They’re controlled by the CIA, and they’re supposed to be secret. The U.S. doesn’t confirm or deny the strikes, and it generally doesn’t release information on who’s been killed. But the local and international media do report on the attacks.
KARIM KHAN: [translated] In 2009, my home was attacked by a drone. My brother and son were martyred. My son’s name was Hafiz Zaenullah. My brother’s name was Asif Iqbal. There was a third person who was a stone mason. He was a Pakistani. His name was Khaliq Dad.
Their coffins were lying next to each other in the house. Their bodies were covered with wounds. Later, I found some of their fingers in the rubble.
As you know, my son had memorized the Qur’an. He was a security guard at the girls’ school, and he was studying for grade 10. My brother had a master’s degree in English. He was a government employee. He loved to debate, but he was so short, he didn’t reach the dais, so they wouldn’t give him many chances to make speeches.
MADIHA TAHIR: I met Saddam a couple of years later. He’s a school-going teenager with a shy smile and a quiet, apologetic demeanor.
SADDAM HUSSEIN: Yaar, sorry.
MADIHA TAHIR: It’s OK.
The attack just missed him. He was sleeping next door.
But when he talks about the attack, he’s completely serious.
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] It happened at 9:00 p.m. On my home.
MADIHA TAHIR: [translated] On your home?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] Yes.
MADIHA TAHIR: Who died?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] My sister-in-law and my niece were martyred. When the attack happened, my mother told me to get my sister-in-law. I told her, “OK, you go. I’ll get her.” I already knew she was martyred, but I didn’t want to tell my mother, because she would cry.
After the attack, my brother came home. He asked about his baby daughter. I told him she was alive. But he found out. He went into shock. We took him to the hospital. They gave him an IV. After some days, we sent him to a hospital in Peshawar. The doctor there prescribed some medication. That helped him a little.
MADIHA TAHIR: This is Pakistan. And this is America. What if someone brought death to your hometown? That’s Waziristan. And that’s New Jersey. It’s where I grew up. We moved there after a military dictator began destroying Pakistani society. The events that would force my family out would also wound Waziristan.
GEN. MUHAMMAD ZIA-UL-HAQ: [translated] The government of Mr. Bhutto has ceased to exist. The whole country is under martial law. National and provincial assemblies have been dissolved.
MADIHA TAHIR: That man was General Zia-ul-Haq. Those were the 1980s. Pakistan’s tribal areas were being used as a staging ground for the American war against the Soviet Union.
PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: We have with us six of the Afghanistan freedom fighters. There’s a man here whose wife was killed in front of their two children. Another one has lost his brother in the tunnel.
MADIHA TAHIR: They’re still losing brothers. Waziristan is only half the size of New Jersey. How would it feel if bombs rained over New Jersey for nine years? Would you be frightened? If they killed your son, your cousin or your husband, and got away with it, would you be angry? You probably couldn’t forget about it if you tried. You’d be haunted.
The British thought you were all savages. Now the Americans think you’re all militants.
AMY GOODMAN: Chris Woods, can you talk more about the redefinition of “civilians” outlined in The New York Times piece, President Obama embracing this disputed measure of counting civilian casualties, in effect counting all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants?
CHRIS WOODS: This revelation really is extraordinary, that any adult male killed in effectively a defined kill zone is a terrorist, unless posthumously proven otherwise.
ALYONA MINKOVSKI: U.S. drone strike that’s killed eight alleged militants along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
LI DONGNING: A U.S. drone strike on suspected Islamist militants in Northwest Pakistan has killed at least 10 people there.
ERIN BURNETT: Five al-Qaeda militants were killed in a U.S. drone attack.
NIC ROBERTSON: Three U.S. drone strikes have killed five suspected al-Qaeda militants.
ZAKKA JACOB: At least 45 suspected militants have been killed by missiles launched by U.S. drone aircraft.
BILL O’REILLY: Now they’re looking around like this.
KEVIN OWEN: An airstrike on Sunday killed five alleged militants.
BILL O’REILLY: What we do now is we find out someone having a Big Mac in Islamabad, they’re out of here.
UNIDENTIFIED: These reports of these alleged deaths of children and innocent civilian casualties, in general, are complete rubbish.
MADIHA TAHIR: That’s Javeria’s [phon.] funeral photo. She was less than a year old. The photos of many of the people living in the tribal areas don’t exist, so local journalists began to take photos to document their deaths. Their deaths would have to stand in for their lives.
NOOR BEHRAM: [translated] Around seven children were martyred in this attack. It also struck a home. Twenty-one people were killed in this attack—seven women and three children. When I arrived, there were bodies everywhere. This child was killed in that attack, too. There were one or two other kids, as well.
MADIHA TAHIR: This is Shahzad Akbar. He’s Karim’s lawyer. They’ve filed a case against drone attacks in Pakistani courts. He told me why it’s difficult to narrate his clients’ lives for the court and the media.
SHAHZAD AKBAR: For example, you know, when I have a client and we want—OK, this was a person who was killed, so we’d like to construct his life on photographs. You know, you have family photos and—of when he was young, when he was in school, when he was in teens and when he grew up—in all those photos. They’re missing. They’re not there, because, you know, you don’t have the culture of taking pictures for that matter.
NOOR BEHRAM: [translated] This attack was in South Waziristan. When I got there, I saw body parts—hands, feet. When a drone attack happens, the media claims to know how many terrorists were killed. Actually, you only find body parts on the scene, so people can’t tell how many have died. That’s why the media reports it incorrectly.
KARIM KHAN: [translated] Our Pakistani government thinks of itself as a front line in this war. They only visit after an attack to check if they’ve destroyed us completely and to see if the body is in pieces or intact. That’s all.
MADIHA TAHIR: I asked Saifullah Khan Mehsud to explain the Pakistani government’s relationship to the tribal areas. Saifullah Khan is a researcher at the FATA Research Center. He’s from South Waziristan himself.
SAIFULLAH KHAN MEHSUD: FATA is like Federally Administered Tribal Areas. I mean, it’s governed by an archaic law that was introduced by British in that area, known as the Frontier Crime Regulation Act. So it’s still that system whereby, you know, the president—the governor, on behalf of the president, appoints a political, you know, agent in that area. The office of the political agent basically has all the judicial and legislative—legislative, the executive and the judicial power, you know, in his hands, in the hands of the political agent. So, you know, there is absolutely no accountability. If a political agent, you know, kind of comes up and makes a decision, a judicial decision or any kind of decision, there is no other authority, no body there available which can actually hold him accountable.
MADIHA TAHIR: People in the tribal areas call this colonial-era system “the black laws.” Under these laws, people living in the tribal areas didn’t even get the right to vote 'til 1996. So the “tribal areas” are a political category, a place haunted by its past. It just means a place where colonial laws still exist, and the Pakistani constitution doesn't apply, a place with at least four different kinds of security forces, from militias to the army. The Pakistani state still claims there is no law here, so force is necessary. It means a place that’s kept invisible.
And that’s been to the advantage of the U.S. and the Pakistani army. America has paid billions to the Pakistani security forces. Together, they have used Pakistan, and especially Waziristan. During the Cold War, it was to battle communism and to fund and train the mujahideen.
REPORTER: … entering Afghanistan, this is the source which is potentially the most damaging. This is a training camp for Afghan guerrillas, or mujahideen. These camps aren’t supposed to exist on Pakistan’s soil, a contradiction which is circumvented, not very neatly, by the technical point that they are in an area only partly controlled by Pakistan—the tribal areas near the border with Afghanistan.
MADIHA TAHIR: Now, it’s to support the U.S. as it occupies Afghanistan. So, America, the Pakistani security forces and the insurgents they’ve created, they’re linked. And for decades they’ve been destroying Waziristan together. And now America is just blowing the place up. The reason? They say there’s no law here, and force is necessary.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: So neither conventional military action nor waiting for attacks to occur offers moral safe harbor, and neither does a sole reliance on law enforcement in territories that have no functioning police or security services, and indeed have no functioning law.
KARIM KHAN: [translated] You asked me a question about terrorism. Can I ask you one? What is the definition of “terrorism” or “terrorist”?
MADIHA TAHIR: [translated] I don’t know. What do you think it is?
KARIM KHAN: [translated] I think there is no bigger terrorist than Obama or Bush, those who have weaponry like drones, who drop bombs on us while we are in our homes. There are no greater terrorists than them.
MADIHA TAHIR: [translated] Did you play with her?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] Yes. She had just learned to say “Dad.” She used to say, “Dad, Dad.” But now she’s been martyred.
They circle overhead, seven or eight of them.
MADIHA TAHIR: [translated] You mean in a week?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] No, no! I mean daily. They fly very low at night. It’s very stressful. A lot of people lose their minds. They go to Peshawar for treatment. When they come near, I go into my room and close the door to shut out the noise. I don’t like the sound at all.
MADIHA TAHIR: Noor Behram had showed me the photos of the dead. But I wanted to understand how they come to haunt the living. I spoke with Dr. Javed Akhtar. He’s a psychiatrist. Lots of people who suffer from the violence in Waziristan come to him. He didn’t want to appear on camera, but he told me about how the bombing impacts people.
DR. JAVED AKHTAR: [translated] The suddenness of a drone attack and its impact—the things that are happening here now, and especially the drone attacks—they happen completely out of the blue. Within a second your world is turned upside down. You can’t hug a body that’s been blown apart. You can’t hold him and cry. So the neighbor or brother or sister or wife of the dead, she doesn’t know what to do. Whom can she hold near? She doesn’t get closure.
MADIHA TAHIR: So what does it mean to be haunted by loss?
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Just as we are haunted by the civilian casualties that have occurred throughout conventional fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, but as commander-in-chief, I must weigh these heartbreaking tragedies against the alternatives.
MADIHA TAHIR: There is no escape for the haunted. There are no alternatives for the haunted. The loss lingers. The sorrow persists. In a haunted land, the dead do not exist among the living. The living exist among the dead.
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] I feel guilty about being alive. My sister-in-law is dead. Why am I alive? I should be dead, too. That would be good. I wish I had also been martyred that day. Death would have been better than this kind of life.
MADIHA TAHIR: [translated] Why do you say that?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] I say it because I’m sick of drone attacks. I’m tired of innocent people being martyred. That’s why I don’t like my life anymore. I study, but I’m not really interested in it anymore. When I hear a drone has attacked, I feel ill all day.
KARIM KHAN: [translated] Even if we are afraid, what can we do? Run away and leave our homes and land? No, that can’t happen.
AMY GOODMAN: The new film, Wounds of Waziristan, directed and narrated by Pakistani-American journalist Madiha Tahir. Democracy Now! media fellow Messiah Rhodes co-produced and edited the film. This has been a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive. You can watch the film online at democracynow.org, tell your friends, share on Facebook and Twitter. You can also watch our interview with a Pakistani family whose grandmother was killed in a U.S. drone strike. Her two grandchildren, eight-year-old Nabila and 12-year-old Zubair—at the time, those were their ages—were wounded in the attack. They joined us in our studio last Thursday after becoming the first drone victims to testify before Congress. You can tune into Democracy Now! on Tuesday, when we’ll be joined by three-time Academy Award-winning director and screenwriter, Oliver Stone, joins |
50s, was rushed to a nearby trauma centre with serious injuries. His condition has since been upgraded to non-life-threatening, police said.
The driving examiner sustained minor injuries as a result and was taken to hospital for treatment.
Witnesses at the scene told CTV News Toronto that several people ran over to help the man pinned by the vehicle.
“There were about eight or nine people. We lifted the car up… we pulled the guy out of the car. He was completely underneath the car,” one witness, who did not provide his name, said.
Police took the driver away in a cruiser though did not indicate whether charges have been laid.Advertisement
Hidden away in the Suffolk countryside, this abandoned concrete structure with a rusty metal hatch may not look like much.
However descend 14-feet down the narrow ladder shaft and it gives a fascinating insight into life inside a Cold War bunker.
The scene inside the bunker has barely changed since it was left in 1991 and there are still instructions on the wall explaining what to do in the event of a nuclear attack.
This abandoned Cold War bunker in the Suffolk countryside, built in 1958, has been overgrown by vegetation
A 14ft ladder shaft descends into the Cold War bunker that has remained largely untouched since it was closed down in 1991
Inside the bunker there are two grubby mattresses propped against the wall, as well as a canvas chair in the corner
This note details the instructions the volunteers had to carry out during the 'transition to war' stage
The reports from hundreds of these tiny bunkers would be communicated back to headquarters, who'd create a picture of the country, deciding which areas were safe and which were not
During the Cold War there were 1,563 bunkers built across the country - at a distance of about 15 miles apart - in case the simmering tensions between Russia and the USA descended into a nuclear war.
They were manned by volunteers from the Royal Observer Corps who were charged with finding out how many nuclear bombs were falling, where they might land and to monitor the subsequent radiation as it drifted across the country.
Underground, there was a bomb power indicator to measure the blast wave a meter to detect radiation levels, both of which were connected to the outside world by pipes.
In the event of a nuclear attack, volunteers were expected to continue to operate as the missiles fell and exploded for up to three weeks.
Using sirens, they could also warn the public of an imminent air or missile attack.
Between 1956 and 1965, the UK government ordered the construction of 1,563 monitoring posts
Volunteers would carry out their task from each bunker, using a range of equipment crammed into the tiny room
There are only two rooms inside the bunker - the main observation area and a toilet (pictured)
A box of toilet paper left inside the bunker that has remained largely untouched since it was closed down in 1991
The bunker was built in 1958 and abandoned in 1991 after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Pictures from the depths of the bunker reveal how little it has changed since then.
An A4 piece of paper, pinned to the wall, informs volunteers of what to do during 'transition to war', which involved preparation of the monitoring devices.
During the attack stage, volunteers were instructed to'report explosions and maintain diary'.
The three-man team inside the bunker were to monitor the progress of a nuclear attack by measuring radioactive fallout
A flash light (left) and polish (right) that are still inside the bunker that has lain abandoned since 1991
Petrol cans left in the bunker that is 14-feet underground in the Suffolk countryside
A kettle inside the bunker - the volunteers who worked there were cut off from the outside world
Medical supplies in the Cold War bunker that was closed down following the break-up of the Communist Bloc
A newspaper cutting left inside the bunker - about the Lord Lieutenant of Suffolk Sir Joshua Rowley's Awards
Elsewhere in the bunker mattresses are propped up against the wall and a canvas chair is gathering dust.
A series of maps, notices, tools and the spilled contents of a First Aid kit are splayed out on the floor.
One recent visitor commented on the 'claustrophobic sensation' inside the bunker.
He said: 'Accessing the bunker takes a bit of bravery as you're not quite sure what to expect when you go down there.
'It was really cramped going down the ladder to get in - I can only imagine how hard it would have been for volunteers with their kit.
'I was blown away by all the Cold War paraphanalia which is still in place.
'It's as though time has stood still whilst the rest of the world has moved on.'
The bunker was used during nuclear exercises by the Royal Observer Corps at the height of the Cold War tensions
Entry was via a metal hatch which revealed a narrow shaft and a steel ladder descending into this underground bunker
The subterranean explorer also praised the volunteers for their bravery at the post.
'I only spent half-an-hour down in the room and soon felt quite claustrophobic - fair play to the volunteers who spent many hours and even days down in these things at a time when people really did think there was a chance of nuclear war.
'It's amazing to think this bunker is just hidden here in the Suffolk countryside. Most people would not even know of its existence.'After market close today, Tesla announced that it closed two deals last week with Deutsche Bank to increase two credit lines by $200 million and $300 million respectively – for a total of $500 million more in available financing. The deals come as Tesla is expected to increase its capital expenditure to prepare for production expansions at its vehicle factory in Fremont and battery factory in Nevada ahead of the Model 3 introduction next year.
The first deal was between Tesla, its Netherlands-based subsidiary ‘Tesla B.V’, and Deutsche Bank. The company wrote in a SEC filing:
On December 15, 2016, Tesla Motors, Inc. (the “ Company ”) and its subsidiary Tesla Motors Netherlands B.V. (“Tesla B.V.” and together with the Company, collectively, the “Borrowers”), entered into the Fifth Amendment (the “Credit Agreement Amendment”) to the ABL Credit Agreement, dated as of June 10, 2015 (as amended, modified or supplemented, the “Credit Agreement”), among the Borrowers, the lenders party thereto, and Deutsche Bank AG New York Branch, as administrative agent and collateral agent, and the other agents party thereto. The Credit Agreement Amendment increased the revolving commitments under the Credit Agreement by $200.0 million, thereby increasing the total revolving commitments from $1.0 billion to $1.2 billion, and amended the Credit Agreement to permit the Borrowers to obtain up to $50.0 million of additional commitments pursuant to the terms of the Credit Agreement.
That’s $200 million with potentially $50 million more that Tesla can borrow toward its operations and expenditures.
The second deal was between ‘Tesla Finance’, Tesla’s financial unit under which the automaker operates its leasing program, and Deutsche Bank again:
On December 15, 2016, Tesla Finance LLC (“ TFL ”) and Tesla 2014 Warehouse SPV LLC (the “Borrower”), each a wholly-owned direct or indirect subsidiary of the Company, entered into Amendment No. 2 (the “Warehouse Agreement Amendment”) to the Loan and Security Agreement, dated as of August 31, 2016 (as amended, modified or supplemented, the “Warehouse Agreement”), among TFL, the Borrower, the lenders and group agents party thereto, and Deutsche Bank AG, New York Branch, as administrative agent (the “Warehouse Administrative Agent”). Among other things, the Warehouse Agreement Amendment increased the maximum facility limit under the Warehouse Agreement by $300.0 million, thereby increasing the total facility limit from $300.0 million to $600.0 million, and modified certain terms to facilitate the joinder of certain types of additional lenders, including those in the Citi Lending Group (as defined below).
Tesla has updated its language about financing over the past few months to say that they won’t “need” to raise money until the “first half of 2017,” but they also always kept the door open in case it made sense.
At the end of last quarter, Tesla had just over $3 billion in cash, but the company’s capital expenditures are also expected to increase significantly in the next few months to prepare for the launch of the Model 3 and will be accompanied by a more aggressive than usual production ramp up to satisfy the more than 400,000 people who placed a reservation for the vehicle, which is expected in the second half of 2017.The group's singers rotated, with Wells record vocals for "Shambala" and the No. 1 hit "Mama Told Me (Not to Come)."
Wells — born Emil Lewandowski on Feb. 2, 1941 in Buffalo — joined the Air Force directly out of high school. He formed a band while in the service and went on to play with other groups in his hometown after leaving the military.
He met Hutton — then a solo artist — after both were invited to tour with Sonny and Cher. Three Dog Night — named after a story about Australian aborigines in the cold outback seeking warmth — was formed after that tour.
Various iterations of the group have stayed on the road performing for 40 years.
The band said that in addition to music, Wells was passionate about fishing — filming several episodes of "The American Sportsman" and participating in charity fishing tournaments around the country.
News of Wells' death prompted tributes from the world of music and far beyond.
Sen. Chuck Schumer called his music "part of the fabric of American," while Motley Crue’s Vince Neil called Wells a “man with inspiration.”
Wells is survived by his wife, two daughters and five grandchildren.
His death comes just over six months after the band's original keyboard player, Jimmy Greenspoon, died from cancer."When I was a kid, I had an imaginary friend."The final piece in the the first part of a series of Doctor Who character quotes. This one may be particularly hard to read, I blame the word "imaginary." It doesn't seem to play well with others. I'm usually the first to point out that "A"s should not be touching the word circle, but almost all the "A"s here were so close to other words, it was the only way I could make it clear where they belonged. "An" kinda looks like the "N" should be first, but if you look at what part of the word circle the letters are closest to as where in the word it is, then it's right. And "Kid" almost looks out of place, the extra sentence circle bubbles throw perception for a loop, but otherwise the middle would be completely blank, and that just doesn't work for me.Written in Circular Gallifreyan, fan made alphabet by BlackHatGuy. Quote by character "Amy Pond" of Doctor Who (©BBC), episode "The Big Bang" written by Steven Moffat.All proceeds will be donated to "CirclesForMeForYou."With less than a month until opening tip-off between the Boston Celtics and the Cleveland Cavaliers, there has been plenty of open debate about a key member of the Cavs’ roster. This last week, Sports Illustrated and ESPN both have released their top NBA players for the 2017-18 season and with little to no surprise, LeBron James once again ranked first on the lists. But, the question that has been rumbling throughout the NBA is that how much longer will King James be the cream of the crop throughout the Association?
In all honesty, at 32 years old, with multiple MVP awards, NBA championships and tons of accolades throughout his career, James is without a doubt one of the greatest players of all-time joining the upper echelon of greats like Bill Russell, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan. With the 2017-18 regular season, James’ 15th season in the league, there are still no signs of his game slowing down and the title as best in the league along with it. But, there are a few factors that could eventually slow down James within the next few seasons.
1) Tons of mileage on his body
As mentioned before, James is entering his 15th season in the league with the start of the 2017-18 regular season and he has played a ton of minutes with 50,399 minutes played in both the regular season and the playoffs. While thankfully James has had no serious injury concerns and keeps his body in tip-top shape, as seen in these Instagram videos that leave anyone who is not James exhausted just watching it:
There is still cause for concern with both James’ age and the fact that he has so much mileage on his body. It is no secret that father time does catch up to you eventually. Just look at former Green Bay Packers great Brett Favre, who was the National Football League’s ironman for the longest time but when he reached 40 years old, his age finally caught up with him with his last season in the league being one of the worst of his career. Granted, Favre was crushed by Corey Wootton on the last play of his career and basketball is nowhere near as physical as American football but one small injury flare-up or all the minutes on his body can and will slow down James eventually.
2) The Warriors’ dominance from 2017 ’til infinity
Another problem, that has been nipping at the heels of James and the Cavaliers the last three seasons is the fact that the Golden State Warriors have assembled one of, if not the greatest team of all-time. Not only have they assembled the team but they are locked in for the foreseeable future with their key players of Draymond Green, Steph Curry and Kevin Durant all soon entering the prime of their careers. The Cavs were steamrolled by Golden State last season during the 2017 NBA Finals, losing the series 4-1 and with Durant, Finals MVP and 2nd best player in the league, and Stephen Curry, 3rd best player in the Association, torching the Cavaliers along the way. When the series ended, James’ long-time rival Paul Pierce had this to say:
Woah. While it was in the heat of the moment with James’ Cavaliers losing for a second time to their rival, there is some truth to what The Truth is saying. If the Warriors continue their dominance of the NBA over the next few seasons, being considered perennial locks to win the title every season, if Kevin Durant and Steph Curry are at the front of the dominance it might become easier to say that they currently rank above LeBron; especially if his Cavaliers continue to come up short to Oakland in the NBA Finals.
3) Where James plays beyond the 2017-18 season
Finally, it is no secret that James has always been at odds with Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert throughout his career. With Gilbert’s heavy hands running the show during James’ first stint with the Cavaliers, the team only made the NBA Finals once in 2007 and were taken behind the woodshed by the San Antonio Spurs. That 2007 Cavaliers team and many of the teams that played with James during his early years in Cleveland were never that great to make it past the Boston Celtics and ultimately teams like the Los Angeles Lakers or Spurs. This made James’ decision to “take his talents to South Beach” to team up with Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade with the Miami Heat much easier.
At the end of the 2017-18 season, with James again at odds with Gilbert over the handling of the David Griffin situation and plenty of other things, James could again leave Cleveland and this time head out west. Earlier in the summer The Ringer‘s Kevin O’Connor first planted the seeds that James could be headed out of Cleveland to join a team like the Los Angeles Lakers or the L.A. Clippers to play alongside some of his best friends like Chris Paul, Carmelo Anthony and again Dwyane Wade. The media then took this narrative and ran with it and numerous signs point to James wearing a different uniform at the start of the 2018-19 NBA season.
While personally many people in Cleveland believe James will be wearing wine and gold for the rest of his career, as James seemed to express in his Sports Illustrated article that announced his return, the reality of him leaving largely hinges on how the 2017-18 season unfolds. If the Cavaliers, after surrounding James with more talent in Isaiah Thomas, Jae Crowder, and Derrick Rose, were able to knock off the vaunted Warriors in the NBA Finals it would make it hard for James to want to leave the franchise. But if the Cavs fail, there is a good chance James will leave and the Cavaliers will again begin to rebuild in the wake of LeBron’s absence.
The implication of LeBron leaving the Cavs will have an impact on his career and will also leave an impact on his status as the best player in the NBA. As mentioned before, the Warriors are in prime position to dominate the NBA for the foreseeable future and if James heads to the Western Conference he is resigning to the fact that he cannot get past them in the NBA Finals or in the West as well. The only realistic shot James has to knock off the Warriors if he heads West is if he joined the San Antonio Spurs and that does not seem likely due to the fact that he again wants to play with his friends on the same team.
While the future is definitely uncertain for LeBron James’ status as the best player in the NBA for the time being, he still is the King of the NBA for the 2017-18 regular season and one of the greatest players of all time. If the Cleveland Cavaliers, led by James, were able to secure another NBA title in his possible last season with Cleveland it would only further cement his status as the greatest. Beyond that, his status as the league’s best could be up in the air as he enters the twilight of his career and inches closer and closer towards retirement and hopefully being the owner of the Cavaliers some day.THERE is no doubt that good columnists (and, to a greater extent, real leaders) must formulate, rather than follow, public opinion by taking positions which aim at making them popular and likeable. Unfortunately, going against the current requires courage and determination, which are attributes that one rarely comes across. Thus, I am certain to upset some Greek Cypriots with the assertion that the goal of the political union of Cyprus with Greece is obsolete and outdated.
The beginning of the Greek national movement dates back to the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. Then, under the influence of the political and ideological messages transmitted by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, the call for the formation of a modern, properly governed, Greek national state, entailing the unification of all the territories inhabited by Greeks (Greek-speaking Christians) was born.
Admittedly, an equally important factor that contributed to the process leading to the Greek Revolution of 1821 was the support given to the idea by Tsarist Russia, which, since the time of Peter the Great, conceived the vision of a joint struggle of Orthodox Christians against the Turks, under Russia’s leadership. These plans, which included Greece, led to the establishment in 1814 in Odessa of the Filiki Eteria, an undercover organisation committed to working for Greek independence.
The process of establishing a modern Greek state, which commenced at the beginning of the 19th century, lasted many years with failures (such as the disappearance of the thriving Greek-speaking communities in Asia Minor), but also with successes (such as the transfer, in 1947, of the sovereignty over the Dodecanese – then under British command – to Greece).
The last steps of this long process were Cyprus and Northern Epirus (Greek-speaking southern Albania). Thus, we reached the 1950 Cyprus Referendum, which overwhelmingly supported the union of Cyprus with Greece and, shortly thereafter, led to the establishment of EOKA (Greek acronym for the “National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters”), modelled after the Filiki Eteria. Possibly, because of sheer momentum, but also with some help from the British (who wanted to keep Cyprus under their control for securing their own interests in the region), we were led into a clash with Turkish Cypriots. It is ironic that the effort to achieve the political union of Cyprus with Greece not only failed but, in fact, it led to arrangements that explicitly precluded such a possibility (the Zurich and London Treaties).
Many believe that the idea of the “national state”, which dominated the European scene in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, provoked the two world wars. The magnitude of the pain and the losses sustained in the course of these wars gave birth, shortly after World War II, to the idea of a politically united Europe.
Unfortunately, the leaders of Cyprus failed to assess correctly the developments, which were taking place on the political scene of Europe, and, as a result of the momentum they had combined with their lack of foresight, they were entrapped into remaining loyal to the vision of creating a united Greek national state. This miscalculation led Cyprus into an inevitable conflict with Turkey but also Britain, whose empire was already at the stage of dissolution and would have led – sooner or later – to the self-determination of Cyprus, as it happened with all the remaining colonies of the crown.
It is true that leaders such as George Vassiliou and Glafcos Clerides and, in Greece, Costas Simitis and Nicos Kranidiotis recognised the importance of these political developments and correctly sought and achieved Cyprus’ accession to the European Union, despite the fact that the condition previously set of the Cyprus Problem being solved prior to entry had not been satisfied. In return, a “promise” was given on the part of Greek Cypriots that the problem would be solved shortly thereafter.
At that stage, the leaders of the Greek Cypriots committed a second tragic mistake. They assumed that Cyprus’ accession to the European Union and the absolute control over the Republic of Cyprus, which they thus secured, would have enabled them to force Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots to accept arrangements “favourable” to the Greek Cypriot side. This assumption has proved wrong by subsequent developments.
Today, the leaders of the Greek Cypriots are committing a third tragic mistake as a result of not having the political maturity to recognise that the union of Cyprus with Greece is obsolete and outdated and, as such, the idea should be abandoned and should be clearly declared as abandoned.
The key recipients of the message (which could be accompanied by the message that “political union” is one thing while “cultural affinity” is something different) should be the Turkish Cypriots.
Somehow, we need to convince them that we respect them and we like them and we would be happy to live along with them. Merely saying so is not enough.
Christos Panayiotides is a regular columnist for the Cyprus Mail and AlithiaAngie's List is an American home services website. Founded in 1995, it is an online directory that allows users to read and publish crowd-sourced reviews of local businesses and contractors. Prior to July 2016, Angie's List was a subscription-only service, but is now free to all home owners.
For the quarter ending on June 30, 2016, Angie's List reported total revenue of US$83,000,000 and a net income of US$4,797,000.[5] On May 1, 2017, The Wall Street Journal reported that IAC planned to buy Angie's List. By September 2017 the new publicly traded company was called ANGI Homeservices Inc.[6] Shares started trading in early October, 2017.[7]
History [ edit ]
William S. Oesterle and Angie Hicks founded Angie's List in 1995. The idea resulted from Hicks's search for a reliable construction contractor in suburban Columbus, Ohio, on behalf of Oesterle, a venture capitalist who was Hicks's boss. Hicks moved to Columbus to join Oesterle in creating Columbus Neighbors, a call-in service and publication with reviews of local home and lawn care services. The name and concept were based on Unified Neighbors in Indianapolis, Indiana. Hicks went door-to-door, signing up consumers as members and collecting ratings of local contractors.
After Hicks recruited over 1,000 members in Columbus within one year, she turned to Oesterle to raise money from investors to develop the business.[8] In 1996, the company bought Unified Neighbors from its creator and moved the company's headquarters to Indianapolis.
By 1999, the database of local services and reviews was moved to the Internet. In the following years, the customer base and business relationships grew throughout the United States, while expanding coverage to include additional services, such as health care and auto care.
In 2017, the company announced in a press release that they had 2 million subscribers in the year 2013.[9] In August 2015, it reported 3.2 million paid members.[10]
In July 2016, Angie's List was made a freemium service; the basic membership tier, which includes access to more than 10 million reviews, was made free, alongside subscription tiers offering additional functionality.[11][12]
Ratings methodology [ edit ]
Angie's List members grade companies using a report-card-style scale, which ranges from A to F; these ratings are based on the following criteria: price, quality, responsiveness, punctuality and professionalism.[13] Each company has its own page, which is composed of a description of its business along with the customer reviews. The aggregate grade is drawn from the combined reviews and grades given to the businesses from the consumers.
Criticism and Controversies [ edit ]
Angie's List states they don't have paid advertisements but also states that contractors can pay to offer a discount to Angie’s List members and those show up at the top of search pages.[14] "Angie’s List makes a big point to say they’re consumer-driven, when in fact 70% of their revenue comes from advertising. It’s not advertising Coca Cola, it’s advertising from the companies they rate,” explained Jeff Blyskal, a senior editor for Consumer Reports.[15]
It was found out that Many Local 'Angie’s List Certified' Contractors Are Unlicensed to Do Work[16]
David Segal found that when subscribers post a negative review of a company to Angie's List, a staff member discusses it with the subscriber in an attempt to rectify the situation. After they "fix the problem" they will remove the complaint. [17]
Litigation [ edit ]
According to The Washington Post, in March 2007 SCS Contracting Group sued Angie's List and two members for libel because of negative reviews of the company. One of the sued members remarked, "if [contractors are] able to sue, then the value of Angie's List depreciates.... People aren't going to be willing to submit reviews if they could be threatened with a lawsuit."[18] On October 7, 2008, the plaintiffs dismissed the complaint against the two members. Summary judgment was later granted in favor of all defendants.[19]
In 2014, Angie's List Inc. paid $2.8 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that it automatically renewed members at a higher rate than they were led to believe.[20]
In August 2016, Angie’s List has agreed to settle three lawsuits for a payment of $1,400,000. The class action lawsuits focused on Angie’s List’s acceptance of advertising payments from service providers, and whether those payments affect service providers’ letter-grade ratings, reviews, and place in search-result rankings. Angie’s List denies plaintiffs’ claims, but disclosed that revenue from service providers can affect the order of search-result rankings of the service provider under certain settings. Moore vs. AngiesList.[21]
Financial information [ edit ]
In 2010, Angie's List raised a total of $25 million in capital from investors. In September 2010, Wasatch Funds and Battery Ventures invested $22 million.[22] In November 2010, Saints Capital led an additional funding of $2.5 million.[23]
On November 17, 2011, Angie's List began trading on the NASDAQ exchange under the ticker symbol ANGI. It priced 8.8M shares at $13 and opened for trading at $18, a 33% premium.[24]
Shares have remained below $13 since March 2014.[25] Before 2015, the company had been dependent on capital infusions from investors to stay afloat. Angie's List had its first profitable year since founding in 1995 in 2015.[26]
In 2013, investors worried that the company had been in business for more than 18 years, yet never had shown an annual profit, and that valuations of the company were unrealistic based on the actual revenue the company produces.[27] But by 2015 growth estimates indicate a significant earnings-per-share growth, with a long-term growth rate at 19%. Combine this with stock estimates rising in 2015 by 13.3%, some Securities research firms such as Zacks Investment Research indicated ANGI is well-positioned for future earnings growth.[28]
On May 2, 2017, IAC/InterActiveCorp, owner of HomeAdvisor, announced that it had agreed to acquire Angie's List for $8.50 per-share (valuing the company at over $500 million). IAC plans to merge Angie's List and HomeAdvisor into a new publicly traded subsidiary known as ANGI Homeservices.[11]Robert Mugabe has long claimed that Britain wanted to overthrow him, using this to smear his political opponents as Western stooges and shore up support for his kleptocratic regime in Zimbabwe. He has warned over the years of looming invasion, of hit squads sent to kill key aides and gunboats despatched from London.
These claims have been dismissed mostly as the paranoid ravings of a deluded despot. But now they have been given force by Thabo Mbeki, the former South African President, who claims that Tony Blair suggested their two nations invade Zimbabwe to topple Mugabe.
It is hard to imagine British armed forces fighting their way into Harare to oust a man who, for all his many faults, was an elected leader and liberation hero to his people. But given subsequent events, it is worth asking – if only in the interests of counter-factual history – whether it would really have been such a bad idea.
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This may sound an absurd question. But consider the facts. Mbeki said the former British Prime Minister urged him to join a “regime-change scheme” involving military force shortly after the turn of the century, a period when Zimbabwe was slumping into one of the most catastrophic collapses in modern times.
Mugabe had already been in power for two decades by this time, inheriting the richest nation in Africa and wrecking it with his corrupt cronies. Britain, like other Western powers, had ignored the slaughter of 20,000 rival supporters in Matabeleland and indulged him as an ally in the Cold War while he tightened the noose on his nation.
But by the start of this millennium Zimbabwe was in a mess and Mugabe’s misrule could no longer be overlooked. The economy was in freefall, aided by a disastrous intervention in the Congo war, while rivals were eliminated, journalists silenced and dissidents tortured. Meanwhile, the HIV/Aids pandemic had started to rip through the population just as state services were crumbling and donor support was drying up.
To distract attention, the campaign of white farm seizures was unleashed, a brutal and short-sighted solution to necessary land reform. It was around this time that Blair – once dismissed as “a boy in short trousers” by Mugabe, who loathed New Labour – was allegedly discussing intervention.
Nothing happened, of course. But over the next few years Zimbabwe endured the world’s fastest-shrinking economy as the second-worst hyperinflation in history –peaking eventually at 231 million per cent, with prices doubling almost every day – ravaged the country. People would go to the bank to get blocks of money that was so worthless it would not cover the bus trip home. Prices in stores soared even as shoppers queued to check out.
Families spent weekends traipsing across borders to buy basic provisions in neighbouring countries; the Beit Bridge over the Limpopo heaved with heavily laden buses, cars and pedestrians taking food back to a fertile nation once known as “the breadbasket of Africa”. As the government handed once-thriving farms to supporters, shops were shutting and millions of Zimbabweans were starving. Hospitals were chained closed and medicines unavailable, leaving women to die in childbirth for lack of the most simple treatment.
Life expectancy crashed to the world’s lowest – just 34 years for women and 37 for men at one stage. Little wonder that an estimated three million people – one-quarter of the population – fled the country, while unemployment rose to about 90 per cent for those that remained.
Mugabe prided himself on Zimbabwe having the highest literacy rates in sub-Saharan Africa. But many of those fleeing were the educated elites frustrated by his regime, and he was content to see potential opponents leave. This was the backdrop to the 2008 election when a weary country voted for Morgan Tsvangirai, only for Mugabe’s allies to refuse to quit, unleashing horrific political violence in response. Eventually, the warring parties were forced into uneasy coalition by diplomats led by Mbeki, who secretly threatened senior figures with the International Criminal Court.
The introduction of the US dollar stabilised the economy and life expectancy has risen – although it remains eight years lower than when Mugabe took power and repression remains routine. Most Zimbabweans are still unemployed, poverty is endemic and public services struggle. Even in the prosperous suburbs people rarely have running water. I joked with one man about the green water in his pool when I was there in July; he replied that it was his main supply for bathing and laundry. He washes from a bucket each day.
Meanwhile, a gangster government in cahoots with China preaches communism while creaming off vast sums from the nation’s mineral wealth, especially the world’s biggest diamond mines in Marange. An official source told me that in one year these should have delivered more than £1bn to the state, but only £23m was handed over.
After another dubious election victory this year, delivered on the back of anti-British rhetoric, the 89-year-old dictator is pressing ahead with fresh indigenisation policies. Rather than wreck the economy again, however, he is focusing on bakers and beauticians rather than bankers and mine operators – let alone the white business people who aid his regime.
These claims of Blair’s desire for intervention will fuel the ruling party’s paranoia, especially at a time of palpable tensions between two camps fighting to succeed “the old man”. Blair rapidly denied Mbeki’s allegation – perhaps mindful of how his prime ministership was so disfigured by the foolish invasion of another foreign country a decade ago. But it is worth remembering not all his overseas interventions were so disastrous. In May 2000, as the Zimbabwean meltdown intensified, he sent a small force of British troops to Sierra Leone to shore up successfully a government threatened by vicious militias.
It is ludicrous, of course, to contemplate Britain leading an invasion of Zimbabwe just 20 years after it won independence. As Mbeki said, it is not our responsibility to decide who leads the people of an African nation. Equally, it is impossible to determine whether the whisky-drinking President’s recollection is accurate given the emphatic denial by Blair – not that the former Labour leader has always proved the most reliable witness in history.
Yet, at the same time, it is impossible not to wonder what would have happened if the South Africans had agreed to lead a military assault to remove the revolting regime that corrodes their neighbouring nation. They called him “the crazy old man”, after all, according to one leaked diplomatic cable. For if they had sent in troops to that shattered state 13 years ago, would Zimbabwe have endured a far less traumatic time and been in a much better place today?
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 nowNHL President Clarence Campbell said the League wanted a club in St. Louis because of its geographical location but needed a suitable owner to step up with $2 million to secure the team before April 5, 1966.
On that day, insurance executives Sid Salomon Jr. and his son, Sid Salomon III, stepped up in a big way. After putting up the initial $2 million fee to the League, the Salomons immediately purchased the St. Louis Arena for $4 million from Chicago businessman Bill Wirtz and spent $2.5 million more to renovate and expand the 14,200-seat facility on Oakland Avenue to accommodate 18,000 fans.
Bob Plager, Barclay Plager, Al Arbour and Glenn Hall were the among the names that led the franchise in its early seasons. After being introduced to the Blues in 1967, the city supported the team in droves, packing The Arena to capacity in seven consecutive seasons.
It didn't hurt that the Blues reached the Stanley Cup Finals in each of its first three seasons.
"It was the place to be," Bob Plager said of hockey's beginning in St. Louis. "People dressed up in suits. For people in St. Louis, this was their team. It was a family. The fans were there every game, you waved at them, they sang - and when you lost a game, it was 'we' lost the game and if you won the game, it was 'we' won the game. The Salomons made it a family."
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the franchise being awarded to St. Louis, the Blues will hold a ceremonial puck drop before tonight's game vs. Winnipeg featuring Bob Plager and an original season ticket holder from the 1967-68 inaugural season.
The Blues will celebrate the 50th anniversary season in 2016-17 with Opening Night festivities that honor the players and fans that made the inaugural season special, along with special moments throughout the season that pay homage to the growth and history of the franchise.Updated For 2019
Going backpacking in Thailand? Bangkok is always a popular spot, but with so many places to stay in the city, its hard to choose the right hostel. And it is an important decision because where you stay can make or break your experience. So to make it easier, we’ve made a list of the best hostels in Bangkok for |
though, that it is not applicable to any British vehicle built after the discontinuing of bullet connectors, so you Range Rover types are still on your own...
This Genuine Factory Authorized kit contains enough smoke to recharge the entire window circuit on a 420 Jaguar, and my dear friend and advisor George Wolf of British Auto Specialty assures me that he can replace ALL the smoke in a W&F Barrett All-Weather Invalid Car(147 CC) with enough left over to test a whole box of Wind-Tone horns for escaped smoke. How much more of an endorsement do you need?
More, you say? Well, I once let the smoke out of the overdrive wiring on my friend Roger Hankey's TR3B, and was able to drive over 200 miles home from The Roadster Factory Summer Party by carefully introducing smoke into the failed circuit WITHOUT even properly repairing the leak. Another friend, Richard Stephenson, was able to repair the cooling fan circuit of his Series 1 E-type by merely replacing a fuse and injecting a small quantity of smoke back into the wires. So there!
So, if you're troubled by lost smoke, bid early and bid often! Thanks for looking!
=====
Questions & Answers
Q: I have a fourteen year old son named Lucas who I have caught several times in the back of the garage smoking. Can this item help him to respect a little firm parental intervention and aid him in smoking less...or even stopping altogether?
A: Part of the problem may be the fact that you named your son after the Prince Of Darkness. Mayhap you should be happy that all you have caught him doing in the back of the garage is smoking! My suggestion is: since you already have spoiled him for life with his moniker, you search the 'Bay for a proper Little British Car to restore as a father-and-son project. That way, he'll have a way to fill the idle hours he'd have spent chasing girls had he been named Rocky or something more suitable. Plus, he'll learn first-handed how disgusting smoke can be. Alas, though, not with this unit, because whilst trying to photograph it for a spread in "Popular Ether Technology", it was unfortunately broken. Therefore, the auction must be terminated early. Thanks for the heartwarming interest!
Q: Once I have re-introduced smoke into my TR-2, do you warranty that it's system will resume operating at the speed of dark?
A: If you reintroduce the smoke through a microwave oven, you may even go back in time!
Q: I have been very diligent over the years and have maintained the smoke in my Sunbeam's wires perfectly. The problem is that that special Lucas perfume has disappeared from the dash, carpets and seats. In fact, at the last Concours d'Elegance I lost out to a frogeye with period odors. Is the smoke in your kit fresh enough to bring back the OEM smells of burning plastic and bakelite and are you including an adapter to replace same.
A: No adapter needed, but have you tried just STARTING that over-restored trailer queen? It might bring back the aroma by itself.
Q: This has been a most informative thread which set me off thinking about wider global environmental changes that have happened since the mid 70's. Could it be that the copious release of smoke from Lucas wiring looms around that time has significantly contributed to the holes in the ozone layer and the onset of global warming? Could it be that, had your excellent device been more available at that time, we could have saved the planet for future generations instead of fighting a rear guard action? Hindsight is such a wonderful thing isn't it.
A: Hey- This is a serious site- we're not discussing "junk science" like Global Climate Change!
Q: I have a questions. For some time. My object is to restore a the few pre-Chrysler Rootes Sunbeam Tigers to original factory condition, with ALL the LAT racing options. So far, I have been quite successful, but unaware of your Lucas Smoke Kit. I am perplexed as to it's satisfactory application to this original British Classic that Mr. Carroll Shelby has enhanced with a lot of Ford (USA) parts. This includes a large portion, but not all, of the electrics. It is very easy to differentiate between the Lucas Parts and the Ford Parts, as the Ford Parts still work. While we can admire Mr. Lucas for the development of the intermittent windshield wiper, the self-dimming lighting system, and the colorful turn signal spark generator, it is unclear whether your offering will work satisfactorily with so much of the electrics originating in the US. Is this device compatible, as the US parts do not show signs of leaking smoke?
A: The Lucas smoke may cause failure of the connecting interstices, but the, so will everything else.
Q: Maybe you can help me. I have an old generator that I have suspected of having a metaphysical ozone leak for several years. It’s one of those things I feel I know to be true but cannot prove. Anyway, through an ingenious marriage of a Sharper Image Ionic Breeze air purifier and a breast milk pump, (by the way, both were obtained on ebay) I have devised a way to recharge the ozone that I can smell leaking from the generator. But, you guessed it, when I disconnect the wiring to introduce the replacement ozone I invariably cause a smoke leak. Do you think there is a way to mate our two machines in such a way that I could “kill two birds with a single stone” – if you will.
A: That's just wrong.
Q: Can I use this device to replace the smoke in my Alfa Spider? Is Brit smoke the same as Italian smoke?
A: Only if it's pre-Bosch.
Q: Will this kit put back ALL the smoke in a 1975 Midget wire harness? Some time ago while driving our 75 Midget smoke began pouring from under the hood, after pulling over, smoke was immediately followed by flames. A HUGE amount of smoke was lost from the wire harness (10 minutes worth before the fire department showed up). Your jar appears to be too small to contain the volume of smoke produced by the Midget on that day. Please specify quantity of smoke. PS - Would you know where can get bulk replacement glue on insulation, there is none left on any part of the wire harness under the hood. The harness appears to be intact but is lacking smoke holding insulation. I'm planning on rerouting the main power buss from over top of the fuel line. This way next time I will have smoke, red hot wires without melting thru the fuel line. Thanks in advance.
A: You'll need bulk smoke, but I'd try your last suggestion before ordering any. Good luck!
Q: Is this setup on the "metric system" or can it be used universally? I have a MB 380SL but have replaced some of the wirings with U.S. products. Will your product make the transition? Also, are there any EPA limitations on shipping?
A: This setup is Whitworth only. sorry.
Q: As you may or may not know, the Japanese 'borrowed' heavily from British designs back in the 50's and 60's. In fact, the Skinner Union carbs on my beloved Datsun 1600 roadster were actually built by Hitachi under license. Also, most of the electrical devises in early Datsuns were copied from Lucas. That said, do you know if an adapter is available to use the Lucas Kit you offer on a Datsun 1600 or do I need to keep searching for the Hitachi/Mitsubshi version? Thanks, Paul
A: It sort of worked in my Datsun 410 Station Wagon, but the lights all shined in instead of out. It was quite disturbing...
Q: Does this unit contain new or re-cycled smoke and will if my 1966 Triumph Bonneville motorcycle?
A: This is new, previously un-leaked smoke, as originally installed on your T-120. Have at it!
Q: Would this product fix the Miller dynamo on my motorbike? The smoke got out of it years ago and I am in despair. Having to run a total loss electrical system now. Please, no smart-alec comments about nothing to lose. I have been desperate for a cure for years and will jump at anything. I get so depressed. But I really liked your answers to all the questions. I learned so much. You must be smart. What are some good upgrades for my bike? Should I get a Boyer electronic ignition?
A: Probably.
Q: It looks like a self contained, auto smoking, environmentally enclosed, smoke recirculation, multi-smoker bong I created in the late 60s. The only thing missing is the air manifold (from a fish tank set-up) to hook up the individual smoking tubes. Are you sure you didn’t get this idea from me, when we were smoking that wacky tobacco one time? ; > )
A: Could be. I can't remember.
Q: I have the identical part but needs the smoke refill cartage, i was told to ring 84433 3-33888444555 or speed dial 666 is that you?
A: No, that's that shop in Michigan.
Q: Do you have any idea if the kit will work on Alfa Romeos? My 1963 Giulia has bullet connectors, a Lucas windshield wiper motor, and a variety of other Lucas components. Earlier Alfas had lots more Lucas stuff, such as starter motor and generator, so I imagine it's more suited to them. On a different note, did Alfa's change from Lucas to Bosch signify the end of the of the 'Italian masochistic' era?
A: This will work with the Lucas portions. The Bosch change was a misbegotten effort to work around the simultaneous Italian/British Stevedore Strikes of the early 70s.
Q: HI, JUST HAPPENED ACROSS YOU AUCTION. GREAT ITEM BUT I AM CURIOUS. I DO ARCADE GAME REPAIRS ON THE OLD UPRIGHT ARCADE GAMES. YOU KNOW, PACMAN, DEFENDER, DIGDUG? THE X-Y MONITOR TYPE GAMES SUCH AS BATTLEZONE, STARWARS OR TEMPEST ARE FAMOUSLY KNOWN FOR RELEASING THE X-Y SMOKE FROM THEIR MONITORS. WOULD THIS TOOL BE SUITABLE TO REINTRODUCTION OF MONITOR SMOKE. YOU SEE THE SMOKE IS READILY AVAILABLE ON EBAY BUT THE RECHARGE TOOL IS NOT AS ATARI QUIT OFFERING THEM YEARS AGO. THESE MONITORS ARE QUITE EXPENSIVE TO REPAIR WHEN YOU DONT HAVE THE PROPER SERVICE TOOLS. PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF THIS WOULD WORK OR WOULD I NEED AN ADAPTOR SUCH AS P/N 2FUB-1269-AR. THANKS.....FRED
A: Got me. I got my VIC-20 to run one game of "Hangman" with just a spritz, though.
Q: Enough, enough already! I cannot allow you to perpetuate this lowbrow fraud any longer! Anyone with any knowledge of Lucas products should recognize that the Lucas label art on the jar is wrong for this early version of the smoke kit. And of course, the lid should be black with the valve oriented 180º to the label. The smoke color itself is not original to the early cloth insulated wiring and perhaps even for the early plastic insulation. Bidders beware, this is most certainly a replica, and a poor one at that — possibly from Taiwan. Additionally, the smoke replacement kit was meant to be used only by highly qualified personnel. The dangers of misuse are indescribable - certainly I can't…, but the phrase "gone up in smoke" was born of this process.
A: Oh, yeah? well, in the interest of openness, I'm going to place your tirade on the site. That doesn't mean I like it, though.
Q: I wonder if you would do an exchange (with a cash adjustment in my favour). I have some bottles of 'bottom air' that was supplied by Dunlop many years ago. The advantage is that it takes up very little space as of course when you get a flat the top air in the tyre remains perfectly serviceable, it's only the bottom air that needs replacing. I will wait your reply. All the best from the UK.
A: If this is the proper bottom air for a set of 4.00X 10 Gold Seals, we may be able to work a deal. We have a '68 Moke in the shop with original rubber, and the domestic bottom air keeps migrating out. It evidently doesn't have enough atmospheric British ambient smoke to fill the pores in the tyres.
Q: My brother Joe is currently (well last 8 years) working on a mini and he's never managed to get ANY smoke out of it yet. Would it be possible to use this kit to make some come out of other parts of the car - not just the wiring loom. I was thinking mainly about the exhaust...
A: No.
Q: Geez, I wish I had seen this auction before I bought some "off-shore" smoke. I didn't realize there was some OEM stuff left. To make matters worse, I switched to synthetic smoke (yeah, I know) but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Unfortunately for my 72 Range Rover, I have not yet been able to fashion an effective bypass for the optional Fairey smoke pump which has recently failed. If only you could have made this item available earlier!
A: Hook you battery charger up with the leads reversed, preferably at the starting motor, and turn it to "high". This should purge the wires of all the synthetic smoke, enabling a refill with the proper stuff.
Q: Are you sure that offering to ship smoke overseas by air mail is allowed under the Patriot Act and that smoke is not a prohibited substance that could easily fall into the hands of terrorists and British Car Owners?
A: We spirit it out in a diplomatic pouch.
Q: HELP!! I have a 1960 Porsche 356 and a Lotus 7. The 356 is leaking various fluids front and rear. While non of the fluid in question is coolant, the gear oil is very clearly trying to attack the Lotus. My question is "Does the smoke have any defensive properties for the British car to repel this assault?" Thanks for the help. David
A: Gear oil won't hurt a Lotus 7. Try to calm yourself! No, this won't help.
Q: On a recent, rather spirited, off road competition I noticed several sources of smoke emanating from my Ford Escort GT based kit car. Copious darkish oil smoke from out of the hole in the bonnet that the carburetor sticks through, profuse blue/white smoke from the sidepipe aimed at the spectators, wispy brown turning to black smoke from the bellhousing apertures, white smoke from both rear tyres, but alas, nothing at all from the electrical system. Is this a common fault with Fords that can be easily rectified (no pun intended) by fitting your product? As I'm only English could you tell me if the present bid of $2,025 is more or less than a quid? Camilla sends her love, TTFN, Charles.
A: Aside from the lack of electrical smoke, my experience with Escort Gts at American racing venues would indicate all is normal- no fettling called for at all. You asking in old Pounds or new? My love to Camilla.
Q: I note that you are also selling genuine Lucas wiring on another site. Are the wires intact or has the smoke already been depleted? If they are still unmolested, it would seem that they would provide a most convenient source for instant replenishment of the Lucas smoke cannister. As well, it has also been my observation that a variant of Lucas smoke may be obtained by marinating discarded Dunlop Bias (not radial and not steel-belted) tires in tar top battery acid, placing the tires in a large sealed zinc-plated container together with the now-depleted tar-top batteries. The container, placed on a platform, may be set alight from underside. Insertion of a spiral copper tube into the top of the container will result in the production of a very high density liquid condensate of smoke which I understand has an unlimited shelf life if sealed properly. Under no conditions should this condensate be ingested.
A: I learned at the Mitty this year that the heating process can be expedited by setting alight a VW Beetle (early) magnesium engine block.
Q: Where would I mount the Smoke Kit in my Mini? There's certainly no room under the bonnet, and the boot is filled with a large tool kit, spare tire, extra spark plugs, points & condensers, spare coil, baling wire, duct tape, 5 quarts of 20w-50 Castrol, tow strap, jumper cables, one gallon jug of 50/50 antifreeze, spare fuses, wire stripper, 20 foot roll of 16 ga. wire, electrical connectors, large roll of electrical tape, a Haynes Manual, and a Book of Common Prayer.
A: You need the half-pint (Imperial) model. By the way, carrying all that kit of spares is just asking for trouble.
Q: Will this fit my zetec mondeo.
A: Only if you use it as a donor car for a Lotus 7 copy.
Q: Sir! I have recently stumbled upon your forum to which I think I can put your mind at ease concerning the rarity of this item. I live in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains here in East Tennessee. The early settlers of this area were primarily English and really never left this area. Hence the hain't and yall's and pokes that people still speak in everyday language is just old English! Well, to my point. They also drove many British cars over the years and one still can find many of these old relics all over the landscape languishing in fields with their rotting harnesses leaking away, yes that is correct, the Smoky Mountains actually got their name from the LBC's. I would be happy to climb up to Clingman's dome and hold an empty moonshine jar up in the air and "capture" some genuine, well preserved smoke for anyone that will pay the cost of the moonshine (not many empty jars lying about you know) and the cost of shipping to their destination. And yes, I will ship worldwide.
A: This is a hoax! We have the same smoke, from the same Scots-Irish roots, in WV. It is being represented by Scottish separatists that this smoke will directly replace the genuine Lucas smoke. It will, instead, reverse your earthing and burn out the dynamo, hence rendering every military vehicle in the UK stationary, enabling Sean Connery to finally rule the British Isles. Beware!
Q: My cousin is restoring a Riley and he had heard that Lucas (the inventors of convergent technology) had worked on a variant that recycled the smoke through the casework as a woodworm/termite/borer deterrent. Are you aware of this application and if so what modifications can be made to the item for sale?
A: My friend Super Dave Bondon has used the method for years to keep a Morgan/Lotus race car in sound condition. Merely replace the fuse-box adapter with BMC tool 18G187 (radiator reverse-flush adapter) and you are ready to go.
Q: While I can see your unit would be suitable for early model Land Rovers, I was wondering if it would also suit my Defender. I am becoming increasingly worried about my Defender which has yet to emanate any smoke and, as per the oil leak situation, I am beginning to wonder if perhaps the system has run out of smoke? Perhaps you can steer me in the right direction on this one.
A: Your temperament would obviously be better suited by a Series I Land Rover. As your Defender has no bullet connectors, this unit is incompatible. Thanks for the query.
Q: It is necessary to sound a note of caution here for potential users of this device who wish to recharge their Lucas screen-wiper circuits. The screen wiper motor (part numbers SW53098A through SW53089K) normally has an attached pair of smoke dispersant arms which can cause the unit to dispense far larger volumes of smoke than other units, so an extra large reservoir may be needed when using the kit. It was rumored that the dispersant arms were originally intended to clear water from glass, but rigorous scientific tests have proved that this was not possible.
A: Thanks for bringing it up. An added note of caution- The replacement plastic dispersant arms moving across glass can generate offsetting (static) smoke which will back up into the wiring causing great havoc. Please use proper (Tex or similar) arms at all times.
Q: I'm a little skeptical about this being a genuine Lucas product...If it were real, wouldn't it be leaking?
A: See the discussion of the Nuffield Paradox belong. This ground has been covered already.
Q: Is it possible that this Smoke Kit will work for Lucas refrigerators? I had always heard that one of these refrigerators would keep my Guinness at the perfect (room) temperature. But mine seems to be faulty and the beer is cold. Will more smoke help to rectify this situation?
A: Try using a Series II E-Type AC unit. I've found that the vent temperature is ideal for most Irish stouts. Your Lucas refrigerator is probably hopelessly beyond repair.
Q: This is not really a question but a desperate plea for help. I recently completed a patent search for a replacement smoke generator that would make this product obsolete. However during a recent vacation to area 51 in Arizona some little green men abducted my 1964 Hillman from the parking garage at the Indian Casino. Although they returned the car - - my original papers were missing. I would appreciate it if you would all keep an eye out for these nefarious creatures. It will be easy to recognize them -- as I said -- they are little and green -- about the color of British Racing Green. Thank you for giving me a forum to enlist aid. Good luck with he NOS Lucas item -- if I locate these characters I will put my invention on e-bay for sale. Any information leading to their capture will be rewarded with a free unit.
A: Glad to help, but those were probably not aliens. Lifeforms with the technology for intergalactic travel would surely have kept a Hillman to take back and study.
Q: Is this the type of smoke one would use to blow up someone's ass? If so I'll bid. I'm running low.
A: It seems the British motor trade did that for decades, so this must be the same stuff.
Q: I'm afraid you've become trapped in a classic Joseph Heller conundrum. You assert that this is an authentic Lucas part and offer substantial testimony that it works and is effective in many applications. It would seem impossible that it could work and also be a genuine Lucas product.
A: This is known as the Nuffield Paradox. It can't be helped. It is the reason BL finally adopted a clenching sphincter as their corporate logo.
Q: Great piece! Tobad there are not a hundred bidders. Perhaps the initial price was too high. I have adapted mine by wrapping wire around the muffler and just letting the smoke fill the entire interior and engine bay and trunk -- no electric problems what so ever. Course there is nothing Lucas left in the system. Happy TR6 racer!
A: This is a crude but effective technique first pioneered by the Triumph works teams at LeMans in 1961. I'm glad to see it is still in use. I understand the TRF TR-S is similarly equipped.
Q: I'm amazed that you have one of these kits in your possession. It was my understanding that they were produced under license from Lucas at the Lockheed/Girling factory in Swindon which burned to the ground in the late seventies, taking with it all of the SSB775 brake master cylinder kits for the dual-circuit master cylinders fitted to BL vehicles of the period. I note the lack of of the proper pump and pressure gauge needed to ensure priming of the system at a minimum of 1.5-2.0 bar. Of course this can also be accomplished by momentarily grounding the "A" terminal of the voltage regulator (both words being totally misleading) whilst hopping up and down on one foot. Alternatively one can attach the special Churchill adaptor hose (L.184A-2A)to the spare tire valve. This technique was later adapted by Volkswagen for windshield washer operation. Thanks.
A: I'm always open to a tech tip from a master. Thank you!
Q: I always thought that the volume "Smoke and Mirrors" (Luddite Press, 1947) was the Lucas Master Catalog. I also always thought that the smoke is stored in the battery(s). From my experience, the smoke stops being released when I disconnect the battery, and comes back immediately once I reconnect it. Also, once the smoke stops even with the battery attached, then you know it's time to replace the battery. Would this kit refill the battery, and is this smoke the same used to cloud the Lucas mirrors?
A: Actually, "Smoke and Mirrors" (Luddite Press, 1947) was Dr. Heads expose of the failed Lucas/ Raydyot merger of 1946. The battery is actually the "electrical" part of the smoke system. It apparently, according to the latest theories, energizes nanosolenoids in the wiring harness that allow the smoke molecules to flow through the wires. That is why a modern "smokeless" sealed battery will still work in our cars.
Q: Can you get hold of any Clutch Plate smoke? I lost all the smoke from my 1955 Alvis clutch on a steep hill in Yorkshire yesterday and now it wont accelerate properly. I know its a long shot, but you could have contacts.
A: You might check with Aaron Couper at Couper's Classic Cars in West Pawlet, Vermont. He stocks Alvis clutch smoke, or so I've heard.
Q: I've upgraded quite a bit of the wiring in my MGB to newer wires, modern sealed connectors, blade type fuses, and modern switches but I still have quite a lot of the original wiring in place as well. Will the newer wiring interfere with the proper retention of the original Lucas smoke and operation of the original circuits? I'm worried that it might block the smoke.
A: Technically, you now own an MGB/Miata hybrid, but the elimination of Lucas connectors and switches, artfully done, will usually just speed the flow of the smoke to its ultimate destination- the atmosphere.
Q: Will you ship to the UK? As you can imagine, the amount of Lucas smoke that has inadvertently escaped over the years is far too great to be replaced - it forms a constant gray blanket in the sky that some people mistake for clouds and generally bland weather - but this could be just the ticket to prevent further loss.
Jun-08-05
A: Perhaps I should leak-test my unit. That could explain what passes for summer around here, as well. Thanks for the insight!
Q: If you could mass produce this valuable addition to any British car, you could change the world! I own three of them and carry spare "smoke filled wires" to replace defective ones, but this would eliminate that! Is there anyway to use this to refill the smoke in the bar coolers and fridge's in the UK? Do you think that we could actually get them to start drinking cold beer??? Thanks very much! Joe A
A: It's been tried. It seems that the Smiths kegs won't dispense anything at a desired temperature, and the Lucas Bakelite tap handles become brittle below 49 degrees F, breaking and causing a workplace hazard for the serving wenches.
Q: Sir, My 55 TF1500 has been converted to negative earth by DPO. When using the 530433, should all electrics be set to "dim" "flicker" or "off"?..or as all settings seem to work the same, does it make a difference? For a successful transfer, can you tell the the concours acceptable temp. for an OSH during this to ensure proper torque and seating? (assuming all proper cork & copper gaskets are in place) David
A: Hi, David- You have obviously answered your first question through careful reasoning. As for your second, 50 degrees F. and 100% humidity, with a dew point of 49 degrees, seems to be the accepted nominal condition.
Q: 1) When the Brits took over the aircooled VW plant after WW2 did they use Lucas smoke? I own an old triumph and the smoke emitted from my '62 bug smells quite familiar! 2 if so, I assume this thing will work with old bugs too?
A: That is more likely the smell from your overheated wet carpet, but it's worth a try!
Q: Sorry to keep asking questions, but the general run of questions and answers has been so informative and enlightening, that this has become a fascinating forum on Lucas and British cars in general. Much better than the Austin Marina enthusiasts chat group I belong to. Anyway, I see mention of the Lucas Bullet Connector in your listing and I've always wondered something about them. I know they were designed by the famous Lucas engineer and auto-eroticist, Richard Head, and his commitment to the latter is evident both in appearance and assembly, but I'm unclear about some aspects of their function. Specifically, can you tell me if they were intended to function as a structural fastener to connect bits of the harness together, or are they also used to occasionally pass current and smoke? My experience leaves this very unclear, what are your thoughts?
A: As Mr. Head relates in his seminal work "Smoke and Mirrors" (Luddite Press, 1947), the connectors were originally designed as a mere structural member, but as, when new, the were very effective at this function, the management at Lucas was uninterested. However, when it became apparent that they would also function as a smoke-relief valve for overtaxed circuits, a deal was struck and an industry was born. Thanks for your question.
Q: I have had on occasion an apparent "dam" on my LBC, in which the smoke will not pass. Will this genuine smoke leap this dam and get my LBC going again? Thanks, Paul
A: The usual course for the smoke is to move to an adjacent wire, bypassing the "dam" and returning directly to earth, thus opening a fresh channel for smoke release. Although a sharp rap with a knock-on mallet may temporarily rectify the impediment. Good luck!
Q: Not so much a question as a possible marketing tool. This would make a tremendous addition to some products offered by the Blimey Group. I have used their Leaks-A-Lot and Rattle-B-Gone with great (see: limited) success. Another item I found to be useful in emergencies is Dr. Scholl's English Vehicle Brake Back-up Sole. I think 3 a.m. tv is chomping at the bit for a package like this.
A: Your suggestions have been passed on to our R&D Department in Roswell, GA. Thanks so very much!
Q: I have a "friend" who owns a BMW MINI. Since these are Minis in name only would induction of some real Lucas smoke make his car more acceptable among his classic mini owner friends? Would there be a chrylser/bmw adapter that allows the use of Lucas smoke? He has already taken to squirting drops of oil on the ground and only parks next to large SUV type vehicles to help with the illusion.Thanks.
A: Gee, this is a tough one. I think he's already doing all that can be done. Since none of the Lucas smoke would ever leak out, he'd only be impressing himself (same as now!).
Q: Hi, I have full set of Chrysler K car manuals, post-Rootes, pre-Benz, I would like to trade for this pre-Ford Lucas device. Can we strike a match, or will you be blowing smoke?
A: K-Cars drove me to British in the first place, but if you throw in a set of manuals for a first-generation Lean-Burn analyzer, we MIGHT talk.
Q: I live in California, long and widely ballyhooed as the land of the fruit and the nut, where it's illegal to smoke indoors almost everywhere. Will this kit cause me to be arrested and my Jaguar impounded for smoking in indoor parking garages?
A: One must first ensure that the wiring harness has been repaired, so the smoke stays on the INSIDE. CARB is probably watching your car anyway. Since you own a Jag, preliminary testing should probably be done in a nearby Red state.
Q: I see that you have already had one negative feedback. Could this be the result of your misrepresenting an auction item? How can we be sure that this is THE authentic Lucas smoke kit and not something you've quickly assembled from spare parts and is not likely to be up to specification. Come to think of it, most Lucas items were not up to specification, so maybe this is, and therefore is an imitation. I'm confused, please let me know your answer before my smoke escapes.
A: I imagine the proof would be in the pudding. If, when hooked up, it doesn't function properly, it must be the real thing! Your logic is impeccable!
Q: THIS IS GREAT....YOU PUT THIS OUT FOR AUCTION JUST AS I AM ABOUT TO GIVE UP AND SELL MY POOR LBC. LET ME SEE HOW HIGH THE BIDDING GETS AND MAYBE I CAN GET IT FOR THE NEXT LUCKY OWNER OF MY CAR. I BET IF I OFFER AS SPARES IT MIGHT HELP CLOSE THE DEAL, THANKS FOR LISTING. PS THIS IS CORRECT FOR THE EARLY TRIUMPHS, RIGHT..???
A: More correct for early TRs than for almost anything else, short of Chrysler-built "Sunbeams".
Q: Please can you tell me if this smoke will work on an old English (British) built land rover? They type with a single fuse. Only the smoke keeps escaping out of mine and as you say the non-genuine parts simply don't last.
A: This is the proper smoke for your Land Rover, but must be metered VERY carefully or the wiring insulation will swell, resulting in even more leaks. 'Tis a tedious process, best tempered with frequent applications of Guinness.
Q: Being a series Land Rover owner I tend to go "wading" on occasion. I have been told that Lucas smoke is not water proof. Is this true? Or can Lucas additives be added to Lucas smoke?
A: Wrong Lucas, but I've heard that mixing the smoke with Waxoyl prior to introduction to the circuit is effective.
Q: I am in favour of your smoke device but have heard through the grapevine that marijuana smoke is more effective. Could this be true?
A: This is an urban myth, but it also explains why so many Yankee college students abandoned their little British cars in Elkins, WV in the late 60s and early 70s.
Q: Will the unit work in smoky/smoggy environments? If not is there a dry nitrogen purge kit to give low smoke offsets at an additional price?
A: This unit has always performed as advertised in my British Car Restoration Shop, so it goes without saying that it will work in a smoky environment. It is recommended, however, that the technician perform a regular purge of himself with a good quality dry gin. Thanks for your interest.
Q: Man, this is so cool! Is there a water pipe adapter for filtering the smoke? Oh yea, and do you really need a car?
A: The question is, more likely: does one really NEED a BRITISH car?
Q: Seems to me being grounded was important when "recharging" with smoke. In your opinion, is this a positive or negative thing?
A: This unit is presently set up for Negative Earth. It can be repolarized by inverting a diode, connecting a jumper wire, and flashing the whole shebang off the "A" terminal of the voltage regulator (dynamo control box) however. Thanks for the astute question!
Q: Is it possible to permanently mount the kit under the hood and leave it connected all the time? I have a 1962 Jag 3.8 E 2+2. Could also use a smoke generator and/or smoke recapture kit to keep up with the release of new smoke. Thanks
A: While never released as an actual service bulletin, I understand it was common practice at Jaguar dealerships right up until the Ford buy-out (buy-in?) to install a unit in the boot, away from prying eyes, and use a Trico electric screen-jet pump as a booster. This installation, naturally, requires the use of Lucas smoke pellets, of which there is apparently only one surviving supplier (see below). Thanks for your interest!
Q: I happen to own a WWII-era British smokemobile which was used for training village constabulary and civil defense personnel. It produced the smoke by introduction of hydrocarbons or tablets into a special smoke generating chamber. I recognize that the hydrocarbon smoke is a no-go, but as I recall, the tablets were manufactured by Lucas as a part of the war effort and the smoke the tablets produced was especially acrid. Do you suppose there is any market for this vehicle and my remaining Lucas NOS tablets?
A: I'm certain that if you were to bring both the vehicle and the remaining tablets to the larger all-British meets and set up a service stand to merely replenish the smoke lost whilst demonstrating the cars for the concours judges, surely you'd be the most popular chap in all the land!
Q: Will this smoke kit also stop oil leaks on British cars?
A: No, nor will it bring about Middle east Peace. Some things just ain't going to happen, my friend.
Q: Do you have any kits that enable the conversion of the smoke for electrical wiring to fluid for brake or clutch applications? I'm sure the quality of the smoke would be sufficient to achive DOT 3 at least if processed with the appropriate converter.
A: I'm not aware of any such adaptors presently available. I know that in the late 60s such a process was being explored in a joint Lucas/girling effort, but it seems that the only suitable use for the resulting smoke was as a replacement for the vegetable-based hydraulic fluid used by Citroen.
Q: My and my Jaguar's salvation might be found in your genuine Lucas Replacement Wiring Harness Smoke Kit. Please tell me whether I have deduced correctly, from your description, that this genuine smoke will pass concour d'elegance standards. I have been attempting to have a 100 point car in national competition and |
I think he changed to a Fender Jazzmaster — and he also had the Woolworths Top Twenty guitar that he'd used on the first album. You didn't want to lean on that thing too heavily.
"It really was the drum sound that largely defined the album's sonic direction," continues Hedges, whose assistant Mike Dutton was credited as co-engineer. "The C-ducer contact mic had just arrived on the scene at that time, and after testing it in another studio I decided to mic the entire drum kit with C-ducers. I had initially tested the mic on other instruments, not drums, but then when I briefly tested it on drums I thought 'God, they sound fantastic like that.' There's absolutely no spill between the different drums when you use a C-ducer — each drum is completely separate. Every part of the kit was therefore miked with C-ducers — kick, snare, hi-hat, three or four Rototoms and two crash cymbals — and this gave us a very, very contained drum sound with no space at all. Everything is right up close, there's no ambience whatsoever, and we then used reverbs and delays to give us the shapes and the sizes. I think the fact that the drums had such little ambience and were so sterile and cold really set up the mood we loved.
"Having recorded the cymbals this way, we also did cymbal overdubs because we wanted a very, very heavily compressed sound that had total sustain. You can hear that on a couple of songs, including 'Play For Today' — when the cymbals crash there's a click followed by a long, long sustaining cymbal, which is three 1176 compressors in a row. It hisses for about 20 seconds."
Mike Hedges doesn't recall hearing any demos for Seventeen Seconds — having already routined and possibly played it live, the band would just run through a number in the studio and then dive straight in. Still, although the original plan was to lay down all the backing tracks before recording overdubs, this wasn't strictly adhered to: once a backing track was deemed satisfactory, there was a tendency to take it a little further and do some overdubs.
"I remember the guitar parts being very easy," Hedges says. "Robert had most of them worked out and the overdubs were simple — they were double-tracks, guitars with more effects or embellishments here and there. However, there were very few over-overdubs. They were mainly just single overdubs, and there was very, very little comping on that album. In terms of the vocals, which Robert performed into a Neumann FET 47, we'd do just one track and if it wasn't right we'd redo it, and if it still wasn't right we'd maybe drop in one or two bits, but generally there was very little comping. We didn't really have the time. There might have been two guitar tracks comped into one and there might have been two vocal tracks comped into one, but generally everything was as played or as sung.
"The backing tracks weren't easy to record. To actually get the bass and drums very tight with each other was difficult, but again this was down to time. We were spending something like an hour on each backing track, not much more, and the time pressure didn't help. Saying, 'Right, this is it, we have to get the track down now,' obviously doesn't make for a relaxed session, and recording some of those backing tracks was like death by mid-tempo. There's nothing worse than doing a mid-tempo track that's got a lot of space in it. To get the feel right is really difficult to do."
Whereas Simon Gallup's bass was hooked up to an Ampeg SVT, Robert Smith's guitar went through a Roland JC120, close-miked with a Shure SM57 while a Neumann U47 was positioned about three feet away. Matthieu Hartley played a DI'd synth.
"He had single-note parts, and this became a bone of contention during recording," Hedges recalls. "Robert was very keen — and I was totally happy to back him up on this — for the keyboard parts to be single-note lines and not chords. Occasionally there were two-note chords, but these were a rarity, because the single-note approach was a rule to keep it simple. Well, Matthieu put up with this, but he eventually became less and less enamoured with it, especially once the band embarked on its first world tour following the album's release. I mean, standing on stage and using one finger to play the keyboard lines had to be frustrating. He had another nine fingers to play with! And it also didn't help that he only had a cheap little Roland analogue keyboard." In light of all this, it's probably not surprising that Hartley quit the band following the Australian leg of the tour, after which the Cure continued without him.
"I got heavily into choruses and flangers on the album," continues Mike Hedges. "I basically collected every single flanger and chorus I could find anywhere in the studio and borrowed them from people with new units, and for 'A Forest' I think we had as many as seven flangers running on 'envelope', flanging on the shape of the sound coming in rather than as a constant. Aside from bass and guitars, you can particularly hear it on the cymbal crashes, which dive away immediately following the hits. You see, Robert was heavily into choruses — he had a JC120, and so if you had a U47 on one speaker of the amp and a 57 on the other, you then had a stereo chorus, which was great. We loved the chorus, and because of that I originally started playing flangers to do choruses until I realised that flangers were fantastic as well, at which point we actually started using the flangers as flangers. These made the overall sound slightly warped — nothing was quite natural, adding to the underlying atmosphere."
Then there was the tape delay, and plenty of it. "Oh, we were really into that," Hedges agrees. "With the machine you'd go into the left, out of the left, and out of the left into the right. The left would then go to the desk and the right would go to the desk, so you'd have two different delays on a stereo machine, and obviously when you spun it you could either have one delay working or both delays or fade between the two. That gave you the effect of it going jang-jang, jang-jang-jang-jang-jang-jang-jang — you could actually have a half-speed delay and then the double-speed one would come through it as you switched the other fader on. I also remember us experimenting with sound on sound on tape delays. There'd be a big rush, a big build-up of sound on top of itself, getting really messy, and that was great, kind of like a reggae thing. Reggae used that quite a lot.
"There were very few effects at the time. You did have things like Harmonizers just coming in, flangers were quite unusual and there were all the old analogue tape delays, but they all did pretty much the same thing. Chorus, delays, reverbs, flangers — there wasn't very much else. These days, since it's very easy to get unusual sounds, you have to be a bit more selective with what you actually use. There was less in the drawer when you opened it back then, whereas now it's completely full of stuff and you have to decide 'Well, I want this,' or 'I want that.' Also, because it was all analogue, there'd be very unusual sounds that you wouldn't expect, whereas a lot of digital effects these days tend to be surprisingly ordinary for what they do. In the old days we'd use delays on delays, tap the tape delays that went through so that it did wow and flutter to get really unusual sounds happening, and also use lots of backwards reverb and other backwards things on the tape machine.
"When you record on a tape machine you have the sync [record] head and the safe head [ie. the playback head in safe mode, where recording was disabled]. You record in sync and turn back to safe for slightly higher quality when mixing, but while Mike Dutton was switching through them he left the hi-hat track in sync, so it was earlier than everything else. I can't remember which track we used that on, but I know it sounded fantastic."
Looping The Loop Tape loops played an instrinsic role during the Seventeen Seconds sessions, the bass and drums being played into a one-inch, eight-track Studer before some very long loops were created — not one- or two-bar loops, oh no, but 16- or 32-bar loops, which meant recording onto the tape, cutting said tape as a loop and then running it all the way around the studio. "We'd run it off the tape heads, through the pinch rollers, about 10 feet away to a pencil taped onto a mic stand, then another 10 feet to another pencil and mic stand, and so on, all the way around the room," Hedges remembers. "You have to remember, we were running the tape at 15 inches per second, so when you have a 16-bar loop at 120 beats per minute it's going to be 30 or 40 feet long. A couple of the songs were recorded as a loop, and we then had these running as a loop, recorded them onto the 24-track and then overdubbed onto them using the 24-track. "When you're playing with these very long loops you have to get the tension just right, because otherwise the tape flips and you'll get wow and flutter. The funny thing is, the barrels of Chinagraph pencils are coated with a slightly slippery paint, and that's actually better than using the metal of a mic stand. At the same time, up-and-down tape slippage wasn't much of a problem using this technique. We used to attach those little round plastic editing-tape boxes underneath, and the tape would rest on them and, so long as the pencils were at the right height, not really want to slide up and down too much. Also, the tension was quite high, so there was very little droop in the tape. It was fairly taut."
It should be taken into account that, thanks to budgetary constraints, the entire Seventeen Seconds album took a total of seven days to record and mix, which, although about 40 percent longer than the time accorded the preceding Three Imaginary Boys, still speaks volumes for the ingenuity, craft and rapid-fire innovation of the musicians and technicians.
"When you're taught to do a job in a specific way, it's not necessarily frowned upon if you do it differently, but it's also not technically correct, so it was kind of exciting to push the envelope back then," Mike Hedges remarks. "These days, with all the equipment we have, it's far more difficult to do something unusual. In fact, the strange thing is, during the last 25 years people have got safer and safer in a funny sort of way. Given the way we've come through the different styles of music, songs have to sound a certain way to fit in with the genre. It seems like a particular rock band has to have a certain snare sound while a particular R&B band has to have a certain stripped-out bass drum, and it's quite odd how people seem to have to fit in more and more with a niche. They angle everything towards that and they don't really experiment — they experiment within that niche but not really outside it. That's just the way the music business has gone, whereas during the late '70s and early '80s the niches weren't there. We weren't trying to make the Cure's sound fit in with anything else. We were just making the sound of the band. This was them, this was how they sounded and it didn't matter what anyone else sounded like. It was their own individual thing."
Among the last songs to be recorded for the album was 'A Forest' which, according to Hedges, he and Smith knew was going to be the most difficult. "We wanted it to be quite ornate," he says, "and it ended up being the most produced track on the album. To me it always sounded like a single. We all thought it was an amazing song — I loved the guitar line — but we also figured it would take a bit more work than the others. The other songs immediately sounded more complete, whereas 'A Forest' sounded like it did need several overdubs."
After the backing track had been recorded live, individual parts were replaced as necessary, Robert Smith laid down his vocal, and then it was on to the mix. "Practically the whole album was mixed on the second-to-last day, and then the mix for 'A Forest' took up a good part of the final day," Hedges recalls. "All things considered, that was very, very extravagant."
The track would, in fact, be subjected to several subsequent remixes, although not until much later, not with Mike Hedges' involvement and not even from the original recording. "For some reason the original multitracks of that particular song were stored for a while in the Fiction Records offices and at some point they were lost," he states. "The band therefore had to re-record the song."
So much for all the effort. Still, among Hedges' abiding memories of the Seventeen Seconds sessions was "a lot of drinking by all apart from the engineer/co-producer. I learned very, very early on in my career that I can't drink alcohol or take any recreational drugs while I'm working," he comments. "I'm just not physically or mentally able to hold everything together."
So, what was it like to be the only sober guy at the party? "It was actually quite good," comes the reply. "Robert knew his limit and he stuck to it, and it was within his limit to be able to work and actually do a really good job of it. The others, meanwhile, would finish their parts and get so off their faces that they'd sort of fade out of the way because they couldn't stand up. Once they were told 'You've finished your bits for today,' they'd really, really go for it, and if their drinking ever encroached on the recording itself we'd just stop that particular part and carry on the next day. You see, they were virtually living in the studio — they slept on the floor of the studio — because with such a limited time we'd be working 16 or 17 hours a day.
"Things are very different now. They're so strict. If the band or producer mess up these days it could spell the end of the band's career, so people don't take risks any more. It's like a military exercise. Obviously, you want to have as much fun in the studio as you possibly can, but you've got to get it right. Not only are the budgets much bigger — Seventeen Seconds probably cost between £2,000 and £3,000 to produce — but the pressure's also much more than it used to be. With all of the recordings in those days there was very little A&R input; almost none. You were pretty much left to it, and when A&R did turn up you'd sort of down tools and look around until they went away. In fact, Chris Parry did once say to me that he thought the Cure should be working with a more athletic producer, because every time he came to the studio I was messing about. What I would have liked to say to him was 'Well, actually we were messing about because you were in the studio. We just wanted you to go away!'
"As it happens, Chris Parry was very, very relaxed. We said we wanted to do it on our own and he pretty much left us to it. He came in once or twice. Generally, in those days, when it came to recording the Cure, the Associates and Siouxsie and the Banshees, we just did it. We recorded it and we delivered it. We didn't actually know what the budget was, we were just told 'Right, you've got five days to do it,' or three weeks sometimes, and without the pressure of having to do a certain style of record we just did what felt right at the time."
Motivated by this interview, Mike Hedges sat and listened to 'A Forest' for the first time in about 15 years and was pleasantly surprised by what he heard. "It actually sounds pretty good," he says. "We recorded very quick so I think we could have got a better sound, but it's certainly got a character. The album itself was very, very individual and it still stands out after all this time. I don't think it sounds dated, and I can't say that about certain other albums with which I was involved back in the 1980s..."Please enable Javascript to watch this video
KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Two North Kansas City parents are outraged after they say their blind son's cane was taken away from him at school by a bus driver.
Eight-year-old Dakota Nafzinger attends Gracemor Elementary School. Rachel Nafzinger said school staff took away her son's cane as punishment for bad behavior on the bus and then gave him a swimming pool noodle to use as a substitute.
The school wouldn't go on camera, but North Kansas City School District Spokeswoman Michelle Cronk confirmed taking away Dakota's cane, calling it school property that was given to him when he enrolled. They said they took it away after he reportedly hit someone with it and wanted to prevent him from hurting himself or others.
His family said it was a way to humiliate him for misbehaving.
They say Dakota is like any other 8-year-old, only he was born without eyes -- something in the medical world known as Bilateral Anopthalmia. Still, Dakota loves to sing, fish and swim -- despite the extra work those activities require from someone who is blind.
"It's a lot harder with this," he said, indicating the swimming pool noodle he's now having to use. He said it's not doing much good.
"Why would you do that? Why would you take the one thing that he's supposed to use all the time? That's his eyes," his mother said.
Cronk said Dakota hit somebody with his cane on Monday while riding the bus. When asked why a pool noodle was given to him as a substitute, Cronk said Dakota fidgets and needed something to hold.
"They said they were going to give me this for the next two weeks," Dakota said.
Dakota's mother said he was written up for misbehaving on the bus, but she said she doesn't understand why his punishment was to take away the thing he needs the most.
"He's gone through so much in his life already, 8 years, 8 years, and I just don't like someone else putting my son in that position," she said.
Dakota's father, Donald Nafzinger, said his son simply lifts his cane sometimes and the bus driver thought he was using it violently.
"All around, he's a good little guy, and he shouldn't be treated the way he's being treated," he said.
On Tuesday Dakota attended his sister's concert with nothing but a pool noodle to guide him around.
"Can't feel things," he said.
"If I don't stand up for him, who is going to?" his mother asked.
After Dakota's story aired, a viewer immediately called and expressed an interest in buying Dakota his very own cane. In the hours following, hundreds more expressed an interest in helping Dakota.
Fast forward to Wednesday. The North Kansas City School District released a statement that read in part:
"The District has reviewed the situation. We regret that a mistake was made in making sure the student was in possession of his cane when he boarded the bus Monday evening.
The District has apologized to the family and is working to rectify the situation."
Dakota mother said school officials actually made a surprise visit to their home Wednesday morning and returned the cane that was taken away from him.
"I'm so grateful, grateful to FOX 4, grateful to Facebook and social media," Rachel said. "It's spread like wildfire, and it's all for my son, and so he got what he wanted and hopefully more, so thank you... thank you to everybody."8:00 Jamie Carragher discusses Tottenham's ‘big-game’ problems Jamie Carragher discusses Tottenham's ‘big-game’ problems
Mauricio Pochettino and his Tottenham players must change their record in big matches if they are to bring silverware back to White Hart Lane, says Jamie Carragher.
Spurs suffered a setback in their title bid on Saturday, with a 2-0 defeat at Liverpool in the Premier League extending a wretched series of results away from home against top teams.
Since August 2014, Tottenham have won just once in 15 away games against the other teams currently in the Premier League top six.
That streak reflects a wider issue Spurs have in big matches since Pochettino's appointment. Their record against Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester United, Manchester City and Arsenal across all competitions plus Champions League fixtures reads: nine wins out of 37 matches.
Tottenham have the worst record from away games among the top six
It's a problem Carragher believes they have to address. "I was so disappointed with Spurs [against Liverpool]," said the Sky Sports pundit on Monday Night Football. "It was going back to a Spurs performance you'd see 10 or 15 years ago. That's not Pochettino and it's not this Spurs team.
"The reason I'm highlighting this is I'm a massive fan of that manager, that team. They can't be remembered over the next 18 months, two years, as a team who didn't win anything.
"I've seen it too often with Spurs, they fail to turn up in big games, maybe going back 20 years. Is it a belief thing? Is it a mentality thing, ingrained in the club?
"If that doesn't change, they are going to become like Leeds. Fantastic Leeds, got to the semi-final of the European Cup - so what? They didn't win anything.
Tottenham's big game record
"At the end of their time at Tottenham - maybe in 10 years' time, maybe in two years, I don't know - you want to be able to say 'I've won that'. Show us your medals. If they don't win big games, they're never going to get there.
"I'm not questioning them for not winning the league or the Champions League, but go and win an FA Cup. Go and win the Europa League. They should be the best team in the Europa League, the players they've got now.
"But if they don't win big games and change these stats, they'll never win anything."
If Tottenham don't win big games and change these stats, they'll never win anything. Jamie Carragher
Gary Neville was also critical of Tottenham's "timid" display at Anfield and says that away at Liverpool, Manchester United and Manchester City, they have looked a different team to how they play at home.
However, he also raised a couple of mitigating factors.
"I don't think they should be judged the same as the other sides in the top six," he told Sky Sports.
"One, is their net spend is £11m. To transform the mess Pochettino's done in three years from where Spurs were to where they are now is a big job.
Tottenham have spent just £11m net since Pochettino's arrival
"The second one is why I have a lot of sympathy for them - their average age. It's the youngest in the division.
"I've loved watching Spurs over the last three years, I think the coach is fantastic. I think his interview after the game on Saturday was massive frustration. He'll be sensing they're a young team, they need education, they need time to grow but they're a bit timid in these matches.
They've got to mature as young players and develop that belief, because they're better than what they're showing away from home. Gary Neville
"When I watched them at home against Manchester City it was one of the best things I've seen. They ran all over them. Proactive, front-foot, pressing the ball everywhere on the pitch, almost eating their opponents alive. Then they go away from home and that belief and confidence saps from them.
"They've got to mature as young players and develop that belief, because they're better than what they're showing away from home.
Tottenham have the youngest average age in the Premier League
"I think there's still a little bit of time, education, growing to do as a team. But in the next 18 months Pochettino will want them to get to that point where they're not timid in away games. They've got to go there and go for it. Go for Liverpool, go for Manchester United, go for Manchester City. They can't do it at home and then go away and not do it.
"But I've got a little bit of sympathy for them because of those two things."Run Around the Classroom Waking Phorus Up In This Fun Dungeon Event!
Heya adventurer! How has your week been? Have you eaten? Are you hydrated? Are you feeling relaxed? If you said yes to all then all is well, we can jump right into the heart of things now! First up, just want to let everyone know that this week the maintenance is pushed back 1 day, so you will have to wait until Thursday to check out all the new goodies going into the game. But it will be worth the wait, I promise! What goodies, well, how about a new event dungeon! We have a new event dungeon where you can compete with another person on who can wake up the most sleeping Phorus. “But GM Amelia, why on earth would you want to disturb a slumbering creature’s sleep?” you might ask. Why, for the awesome rewards of course! Plus, they’re in school and you shouldn’t be sleeping class anyway! And it’s so much fun making Professor Banthus angry. Don’t take my word for it though, test it out on Thursday! And you should also check out the new stuff we have at the Item Mall for this week. I guarantee you’ll be completing a lot of sets *wink*.
Private Phoru Academy
Those mischievous Phorus are sleeping in class and Professor Banthus is allowing them to. Race against the clock to wake the Phorus up and don’t let Professor Banthus get in your way. But be careful, you only have to wake them, not hurt them!
You can get 3 [Cobo] Private Phoru Academy Student IDs when you log-in for an accumulated time of 10 minutes on the weekdays and you can get 5 by logging in for the same amount of time on the weekend. You’ll have so much IDs to sneak in class, you can keep waking Phorus up to your heart’s content!
when you log-in for an accumulated time of 10 minutes on the weekdays and you can get 5 by logging in for the same amount of time on the weekend. You’ll have so much IDs to sneak in class, you can keep waking Phorus up to your heart’s content! Win or lose the event dungeon, you can still get a Phoru’s Thank You Stamp (you can get more by winning though!) which you can exchange for fancy costumes, a weapon costume, sit-motions, and much more!
(you can get more by winning though!) which you can exchange for fancy costumes, a weapon costume, sit-motions, and much more! Winners and losers will also get a Phoru’s Random Cube by clearing the event dungeon once. This cube contains all manners of useful things to help you along your journey!
by clearing the event dungeon once. This cube contains all manners of useful things to help you along your journey! And if you want a more permanent reward, you can craft your Chibi Academy Uniforms, Elrios Fountain Pen Weapon¸ and your custom sit motions to become permanent when you use a Phoru’s Magical Combiner! How awesome is that? Totes awesome!
Item Mall Goodies
The 2017 Winter Casual Accessories are out so you can pair it up with the costume! Add some life into your casual look with these adorable accessories! Watch out for them on Thursday!
The Dragon Knight, Holy Unicorn, Dark Shadow sets are back! If you haven’t completed these su-weeeet sets yet, now’s the perfect time to do so because when they’re gone, you might never see them again. So, start collecting the pieces on Thursday!
LAST CHANCE!
Also, remember these adorable Chubby Seal/Cozy Seal sit-motions? You only have a few days left to get them before they disappear. And then you’d have missed your chance to get something adorable. Forever! Don’t miss your chance, get them now!
That’s all for now folks~
Watch out for the update on Thursday and see y’all in-game!Show full PR text
Performance Traction Helps Camaro Z/28 Soar on Track
Algorithm helps maintain momentum for faster lap times
DETROIT – Engineers call it "flying car" logic. On the 2014 Chevrolet Camaro Z/28, the Performance Traction Management system delivers faster lap times on an undulating race track by helping maintain the car's full power and momentum even if the tires briefly lose contact with the ground, in certain track conditions.
Created for track use only, the "flying car" logic woven into the Z/28's standard PTM system integrates the chassis mode selection, Traction Control and Active Handling Systems. Each is tuned specifically in the Z/28 for optimal track performance and consistency, and is activated by the driver pressing a button in the center console.
Without "fly car logic", the PTM would interpret the force reduction on the tires as a loss of traction and reduce torque to restore it. Such an intervention would likely slow the car and reduce momentum.
"PTM uses torque, lateral acceleration and rear-axle wheel slip to define the amount of traction control required, but when the car clears a rise on the track, it normally wants to decrease torque to increase traction," said Bill Wise, Camaro Z/28 vehicle performance engineer.
"The unique logic in the system uses the ride-height sensors to determine the reduction in force on the tires that's unique to track driving and allows the car to continue with uninterrupted momentum and, ultimately, a better lap time."
Technologies such as PTM and the track-oriented logic helped the Camaro Z/28 log a lap on Germany's legendary Nürburgring road course that was four seconds faster than the Camaro ZL1, and beat published times for the Porsche 911 Carrera S and the Lamborghini Murcielago LP640. The Flugpltaz section of the Nürburgring has a rise that engaged the logic during the Z/28's 7:37 lap time.
Additionally, PTM enables the driver to press the accelerator pedal to wide open at the exit of the corner and manages acceleration based on the given vehicle dynamics. Five performance levels, or modes, are available to accommodate a variety of driving conditions.
The track-oriented "flying car" logic is available in all PTM modes, but it is most effective in Mode 5, calibrated for the fastest lap times. The Z/28 represents the first non-Magnetic Ride Control application of PTM, pioneered on the Corvette ZR1 and incorporated in the Camaro ZL1. Engineers further refined it for the car on the road course at GM's Milford Proving Ground in Michigan and on Virginia International Raceway and Road Atlanta.
Like the Flugpltaz, a section of the Milford course proved particularly effective in calibrating the logic. It features a hill sandwiched between turns Pahrump 1 and 2, named for and based on a pair of challenging corners on the 3.4-mile-long road course at Spring Valley Motorsports Ranch, in Pahrump, Nev.
"The hill between Pahrumps 1 and 2 is ideal for testing the feature," said Wise. "The car noticeably lifts as it clears the top of the rise. Without the logic built into PTM, the torque reduction would unnecessarily slow the car. With it, the car receives full torque over the rise, which helps reduce the lap time – and it is part of the reason why PTM Mode 5 can be as good, or better, than a driver's best effort, on certain track conditions."
Complementing PTM, the Z/28's reflexes over rises and grip around corners are competition-derived spool-valve dampers, specific suspension bushings, coil springs and stabilizer bars, a unique zero-preload limited-slip differential and 19-inch wheels wrapped with Pirelli PZero Trofeo R motorsport-compound tires.
"The new Camaro Z/28 was bred on and for the track," said Wise. "From the hardware bolted to the chassis to the software such as the "flying car" logic, every element built into it was designed to help deliver faster lap times, with consistency, control and dependability."
Ready for the track
The 2014 Camaro Z/28 is the fastest Camaro ever on a track, with improved speed coming from three areas:
• Increased grip: The Z/28 is capable of 1.08 g in cornering acceleration, due to comprehensive chassis revisions
• Increased stopping power: The Z/28 features Brembo carbon ceramic brakes capable of 1.5 g in deceleration, and consistent brake feel, lap after lap
• Reduced curb weight: The naturally aspirated Z/28 is 55 pounds lighter than the Camaro SS 1LE, with changes ranging from lightweight wheels to thinner rear-window glass.
Power comes from the 7.0L LS7 engine, rated at an SAE-certified 505 horsepower (376 kW) and 481 lb-ft of torque (652 Nm). A close-ratio six-speed manual transmission is the only transmission offered and power is distributed to the rear wheels via a limited-slip differential featuring a helical gear set, rather than traditional clutch packs, for optimal traction.
Founded in 1911 in Detroit, Chevrolet is now one of the world's largest car brands, doing business in more than 140 countries and selling more than 4.9 million cars and trucks a year. Chevrolet provides customers with fuel-efficient vehicles that feature spirited performance, expressive design, and high quality. More information on Chevrolet models can be found at www.chevrolet.com.So I’m not sure if this kind of development methodology has ever been applied to such an extreme before so I figured I’d document it. In a nutshell, it’s sort of like test-driven triplet-programming development.
While speed-developing our alpha codebase, four of us sat around a table in the office in Berlin. Three people (Vitalik, Jeff and me) each coders of their own clean-room implementation of the Ethereum protocol. The fourth was Christoph, our master of testing.
Our target was to have three fully compatible implementations as well as an unambiguous specification by the end of three days of substantial development. Over distance, this process normally takes a few weeks.
This time we needed to expedite it; our process was quite simple. First we discuss the various consensus-breaking changes and formally describe them as best we can. Then, individually we each crack on coding up the changes simultaneously, popping our heads up about possible clarifications to the specifications as needed. Meanwhile, Christoph devises and codes tests, populating the results either manually or with the farthest-ahead of the implementations (C++, generally :-P).
After a milestone’s worth of changes are coded up and the tests written, each clean-room implementation is tested against the common test data that Christoph compiled. Where issues are found, we debug in a group. So far, this has proved to be an effective way of producing well-tested code quickly, and perhaps more importantly, in delivering clear unambiguous formal specifications.
Are there any more examples of such techniques taken to the extreme?Sacked Catalonia leader Carles Puigdemont and four associates turned themselves in to Belgian police on Sunday, the Brussels prosecutor's office said, following Spain's issuing of an arrest warrant.
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Puigdemont is wanted by Madrid for actions related to his push for the region's secession from Spain.
His move comes as two polls suggested pro-Catalonia independence parties will together take the most seats in December's regional election although they may fall just short of a majority needed to revive the secession campaign.
Gilles Dejemepps, spokesperson of Brussels public prosecutor, explains the Belgian procedure
Parties supporting Catalonia remaining part of Spain would divide seats but garner around 54 percent of the vote, the polls suggested.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy called the Dec. 21 election after firing the previous government and imposing direct rule over the autonomous region following a unilateral declaration of independence by Catalan lawmakers on Oct. 27.
'The EU will do nothing against the law, against Spain,' says French-Spanish lawyer Jean Marc Sanchez
According to a GAD3 survey of 1,233 people conducted between Oct. 30 and Nov. 3 and published in La Vanguardia newspaper, pro-independence parties ERC, PDECat and CUP would take between 66 and 69 seats in the 135-seat parliament.
A second poll taken over the same period for the conservative newspaper La Razon echoed the GAD3 survey, showing pro-independence parties would capture the most votes though still fall just shy of a parliamentary majority with 65 seats.
Other seats would be generally divided between parties supporting the region continuing to be part of Spain, but they parties are not allied.
Voter participation, however, will rise to a record of 83 percent, the GAD3 poll showed.
Catalonia's statehood push has tipped Spain into its worst political crisis since its return to democracy four decades ago as surging pro-secession sentiment in the region has in turn kindled nationalism across the country.
Politicians on remand
Puigdemont travelled to Belgium shortly after Madrid took control and now faces charges for rebellion, sedition, misuse of public funds, disobedience and breach of trust relating to the secessionist campaign.
On Saturday, Puigdemont - who PDECat said on Sunday would lead the party in the election - called for a united Catalan political front in the face of the elections.
On Thursday, nine members of his sacked cabinet were ordered by Spain's High Court to be held on remand pending an investigation and potential trial.
Judge to rule on Spanish arrest warrant by 9.17am tomorrow, reports FRANCE 24's Pierre Benazet
One member of the dismissed cabinet, Santi Vila, was freed after paying bail of 50,000 euros ($58,035) on Friday. The other eight could remain in custody for up to four years.
According to the GAP3 survey, 59 percent believed legal action against Puigdemont was unjustified while 69.3 percent said that the jailing of the Catalan politicians would |
take over, Chemistry World reports.
But one psychologist warned the hormone shift is wrongly seen as negative.
Dr Petra Boynton, of the British Psychological Society, said there was a danger people might feel they should take hormone supplements to make them feel the initial rush of lust once more.
'Not ever-lasting'
The Italian researchers tested the levels of the hormones called neutrophins in the blood of volunteers who were rated on a passionate love scale.
It is suggesting that what happens first is the best bit - and that isn't true
Dr Petra Boynton, British Psychological Society
Levels of these chemical messengers were much higher in those who were in the early stages of romance.
Testosterone was also found to increase in love-struck women, but to reduce in men when they are in love.
But in people who had been with their partners for between one and two years these so-called "love molecules" had gone, even though the relationship had survived.
The scientists found that the lust molecule was replaced by the so-called "cuddle hormone" - oxytocin - in couples who had been together for several years.
Oxytocin, is a chemical that induces labour and milk-production in new and pregnant mothers.
Donatella Marazziti, who led the research team, said: "If lovers swear their feelings to be ever-lasting, the hormones tell a different story."
Similar research conducted by Enzo Emanuele at the University of Pavia found that levels of a chemical messenger called nerve growth factor (NGF) increased with romantic intensity.
After one to two years, NGF levels had reduced to normal.
'Real Cupid's arrows'
The researchers said: "Whether more nerve growth is needed in the early stage of romance because of all the new experiences that are engraved into the brain, or whether it has a second, as yet unknown function in the chemistry of love, remains to be explored."
Michael Gross, a bio-chemist and science writer who has studied the latest findings, said: "It shows that different hormones are present in the blood when people are acutely in love while there is no evidence of the same hormones in people who have been in a stable relationship for many years.
"In fact the love molecules can disappear as early as 12 months after a relationship has started to be replaced by another chemical glue that keeps couples together."
He added: "To any romantically inclined chemist, it should be deeply satisfying to be able to prove that chemical messengers communicate romantic feeling between humans."
"It may be the only thing that science can offer as a real-world analogy to Cupid's arrows."
But Dr Boynton said: "This feeds into a 1970s view that when you meet it's all sparky, and then it's a downward trajectory to cuddles - which is seen as a negative.
"It is suggesting that what happens first is the best bit - and that isn't true."
She added: "I'm concerned that, having identified these hormones, there will be some move to suggest replacements to recreate the early passion."It was Emmanuel Omogbo’s night.
When the junior forward checked in for the first time against San Jose State, one referee decided he needed to tie his shoe, conveniently letting the standing ovation in Moby Arena last an extra moment.
Omogbo, just over a week removed from the tragedy that took both of his parents and his twin two-year-old niece and nephew, repeatedly delivered in crunch time to help the Rams squeak by the Spartans.
It was his first game back since returning from the funeral service in Maryland. The flight and other expenses were paid for by a GoFundMe account set up by CSU and approved by the NCAA.
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Among those to donate was the man trying to find a way to stop him Wednesday night, San Jose State head coach Dave Wojcik.
“I became aware of it last Tuesday, I think when everyone did,” Wojcik said of the tragedy. “We were actually at Boise State at the time. I called Coach Eustachy and said ‘hey, where can I send money?’ I didn’t even know they had a fund. They were just working on it at the time. When he told me, I called my wife and we donated money for him. My heart goes out to him, from my family and I, and from my players. I just can’t even imagine it. And the kid has done a great job of handling it, just seeing him out there playing. I wanted to help him in any way I could.”
Omogbo scored all of his 11 points (and went 4-for-4) in the final 12 minutes against SJSU, and also pulled down seven rebounds. But even as the opposing coach, Wojcik enjoyed the CSU player’s big performance.
“Absolutely, it’s good to see him out there,” Wojcik said. “It’s probably his stress reliever, whatever word you want to call it. His getaway. It was good to see him out there and playing. I don’t know him personally, but he seems like a great kid. I talked to him afterwards and I just wanted to congratulate him on handling it the way he handled it, because I don’t know if I could handle it that way. He’s a strong kid, he’s a tough kid. I just told him I’m thinking about him and I’m praying for him.”
Collegian Sports Editor Emmett McCarthy can be reached at sports@collegian.com and on Twitter @emccarthy22.When JiaJia, a Chinese-built robot, did a short Q&A with an AI expert earlier this, year most tech journalists focused on the delay in her responses and her less-than-brilliant answers. Many in China were struck by something quite different: her white embroidered robes and elaborate hairstyle: “Beautiful!” was a common comment.
For the occasion she wore hanfu, a historic style of clothing inspired by China’s ancient and medieval rulers. That’s frequently how JiaJia dresses for public appearances—or rather, is dressed by the slew of humans responsible for choosing her outfits. As “humanoids” like Jia, developed to look like people, become commonplace, the developers of these machines are going to have to think more often about this: What should a robot wear in the 21st century?
To a human reared on western 20th-century movies about the future, the words “robot” and “fashion” bring to mind outfits dramatically unlike JiaJia’s attire—they generally involve black leather (or fake leather) for male robots, and form-fitted jumpsuits of some kind of shiny fabric or a punk-rock aesthetic (video) for women.
But for robot “women” in Asia, just like for human women, fashion is shaped not by visions of a cyberpunk future, but also ideas about the past, society and race.
JiaJia, China
Reuters/Aly Song JiaJia at an exhibition in Shanghai in April 2016.
Apart from the occasions where she’s appeared in a gold lamé gown, Jia Jia, who has been in development since 2012 at the Hefei-based University of Science and Technology of China in eastern China, usually wears “Han” clothing. One of her creators explained to Quartz via email that while deciding how to dress her, the team drew inspiration from a Chinese folk tale about a helpful fairy.
In The Conch Fairy, according to a summary from Chen Xiaoping, director of the university’s robotics lab, an orphan farmer brings home a conch shell. While he’s away tilling the fields, a beautiful fairy emerges from it each day to secretly surprise him with a spotless house and an array of delicious dishes on his return. Professor Chen cites the tale, which he says dates from the 4th century, as inspiration for the “service robots” the lab is developing. In the future, Chen believes robots will be commonplace for service tasks in restaurants and nursing homes.
JiaJia is a newer iteration of a robot the lab first developed in 2008, whose name, KeJia, was inspired by the tale.
“We all agreed that Conch Fairy in the tale is a prototype of service robots. This is really amazing since the tale was recorded in a Chinese historical document,” said professor Chen via email. “JiaJia/KeJia follows up the old dream of service robots since ancient times. We would like to reflect this with JiaJia’s dresses and outfits of Han and Tang dynasties, as you see in the photos.”
Professor Chen added that the elaborate clothing is designed and hand-made by students and experts at the lab’s figure-design group—a level of craft beyond the reach of most human women.
There are also practical reasons for the clothing choice—robots aren’t as flexible as humans and draped or wrapped clothing is more forgiving. “The robot can hardly wear modern dresses without remolding or re-designing them, since the structure of JiaJia’s shoulders is a little different from humans’. But JiaJia can wear Chinese traditional dresses easily,” wrote the professor.
Facebook/Xinhua Robot reporter, left, human reporter, right.
The aesthetic adopted for JiaJia shows how movements built around tradition can seep into spaces that are ostensibly about science and technology—as well as how robots can contain ideas about culture. In May, a calligraphy-drawing male robot in flowing robes (video) appeared at an expo, this time modeled on a Ming dynasty-era philosopher admired by Chinese president Xi Jinping. The Chinese leader has sought to promote a new respect for historic Chinese figures such as Confucius, once disparaged by the pary.
Kevin Carrico, an anthropologist, linked JiaJia’s clothing to another effort in China built around the past, noting that one enthusiast for the “robot goddess” commented online that the “the era of Han Clothing has arrived.” Carrico has studied a two-decade old grassroots clothing movement in China whose adherents have taken to publicly wearing what they call Han clothing. He describes the movement in a new book as involving invention rather than revival—and has noted that is followers are invested in the idea of the cultural superiority of the Han, the ethnic majority that forms China’s mainstream.
“This robot is a very interesting development—it combines mastery of the most advanced AI technologies (or at least attempts at mastery) with a ‘traditional’ look,” said Carrico, in an email to Quartz soon after JiaJia’s interview. “In that sense it’s almost a metaphor for all of the contradictions in culture in China today, the desire to master science and technology while maintaining a ‘Chinese’ essence,’ this ti-yong ideology.”
Sophia, Hong Kong
So far, JiaJia has mostly been on the exhibition circuit in China. But a humanoid developed in Hong Kong named Sophia, modeled physically after Audrey Hepburn and Caucasian in appearance, gets around a lot more than her Chinese counterpart. She’s been on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in New York, sung at Hong Kong’s Clockenflap music festival, where she wore a jean jacket and a blue wig, and appeared last year on the cover of Elle Brasil.
Jeanne Lim, chief marketing officer at Hanson Robotics (pdf), which created Sophia and other lifelike robots, does double duty as Sophia’s stylist.
“She’s kind of like us, we sort of dress for the occasion,” Lim told Quartz. Lim bought Sophia a jacket for Clockenflap from Hong Kong department store SOGO, and has also bought her ready-to-wear items from the US department store Nordstrom. For the Elle photo shoot, magazine staff showed up with a rack of clothes, the same as they would for a human model, Lim recalled. They photographed her holding a clutch though it’s not clear what Sophia might put in it: a spare battery, perhaps.
The challenges to dressing Sophia involve both form and function, Lim said. For starters, Sophia’s body ends at her waist. For the Fallon show (watch from about 2:20), Sophia appeared on a wheeled pedestal, which allowed her to don a long skirt and speak with the late-night host more-or-less face to face. Because Sophia’s interactive capabilities depend in part on a front-facing camera on her chest that allows her to “read” expressions and react appropriately, lower-cut necks are better and turtle-necks are out. Dresses are hard because she needs somewhere for her power cord to emerge from. Lim said breathable fabrics are important too—Sophia tends to get quite warm when she’s powered up, and needs something that dissipates heat.
As well as off the rack, Lim’s tried out designers to make bespoke clothing for Sophia but hasn’t been entirely happy with the results. “I guess I’ve only looked at designers for human beings,” she said.
Lim thinks Sophia looks good in silver, and other materials and color that are sleek and convey an aesthetic of advanced technology. “She could blend in, but because she is not human she just looks better in something that is more edgy and futurist,” said Lim. “We want her to represent future technology, future architecture, future design.”
Lim is still working on Sophia’s look: “It’s sort of like the robot as well—her intelligence and character evolving, so is her fashion sense. It doesn’t do justice to box her into a specific style right now.”
Chihira, Japan
Reuters/Issei Kato Aiko Chihira, who signs and speaks some Chinese, at a Japanese department store in April 2015.
Toshiba’s Chihira android is probably the most low-maintenance of the three.
Reuters/Fabrizio Bensch Chihira at a trade fair in Germany in 2016.
Chihira has at times been seen wearing a kimono, for example at an event at a department store in Japan in 2015. Toshiba told Quartz that Chihira Aiko, an earlier version in the series, used to make public appearances on seasonal occasions and her outfits would be chosen from readymade options in collaboration with the clients at whose events she was appearing.
A later iteration, Chihira Junco, leads a less exciting life. She mostly works as a receptionist and in this role, the company said, she generally wears a corporate uniform. Toshiba did not elaborate on who chooses these or how many different suits she has.A young Pekin man will serve jail and demanding probation terms, but no prison, for causing an accident that killed his best friend about a week after he said he last smoked marijuana.
The judge who sentenced Brock Meerseman on Wednesday paused several times in deep thought over the case that pitted the chemical science of marijuana against how the drug is treated in the state’s DUI law.
The law has been under review since marijuana became legal for medical purposes this year. It’s also been criticized for allowing drivers in cases such as Meerseman’s to be convicted of driving under the influence when no evidence of impairment exists.
It has put state courts in a “tenuous position,” said Tazewell County Associate Judge Tim Cusack. “There will be more and more instances of this kind of case.”
Meerseman’s case stood unique on its own.
Cusack found “extenuating circumstances” to sentence the 20-year-old to six months in jail and four years’ probation, rather than an otherwise-mandatory prison term of three to 14 years for aggravated DUI causing death.
The sentence brought tears to the mother of Brandon Haley, 19, who was killed instantly in October 2013 when a power pole guy wire sheared off the roof and passenger doors of Meerseman’s airborne car.
Meerseman didn’t heed a flashing warning sign 760 feet from the end of Hickory Grove Road at its intersection with Wagonseller Road, or the stop sign where the road ended.
He was talking with Haley as they drove shortly after dawn, he said. The two were driving to Pekin after they ended a late night of fishing by sleeping in the car, Meerseman said.
Police found $4,200 in cash and a small container that smelled of marijuana residue in the car. Six days earlier Meerseman was cited with a city ordinance for possessing a marijuana pipe.
He admitted smoking the drug that day. After the accident nearly a week later, inert chemical residue of marijuana called metabolites were found in his urine. A blood sample, which might have determined whether Meerseman had more recently smoked the drug, was not taken after the crash.
Under the state DUI law, “We don’t have to prove” Meerseman was impaired by the drug at the time of the crash, Assistant State’s Attorney Kate Legge told Cusack. The mere presence of the metabolites was a violation of the driving law, she said.
“The state wants you to believe” marijuana caused Meerseman to miss the warning and stop signs, countered defense attorney Brian Addy. “But it has no evidence.” Meerseman “didn’t plead guilty to impaired driving, but to causing an accident that killed,” he said.
While Cusack accepted the DUI law as it stands in his sentence considerations, he speculated that Meerseman might have been impaired by fatigue rather than marijuana.
A prison sentence “would end this case” when Meerseman completes it, he said. “Probation doesn’t.”
Cusack ordered Meerseman to “speak publicly as often as possible” to community groups about the dangers of drugs and driving during his probation. He also will work 1,000 hours of community service, spend the first 18 months under house curfew and submit often to drug and alcohol tests.
“If there’s any amount of (those intoxicants), even trace amounts, you’re going to prison,” Cusack warned him.
Follow Michael Smothers at Twitter.com/msmotherspekinTexas Senate leaders upped the ante on tax cuts Tuesday, announcing three bipartisan bills that would reduce property and business levies by more than $4.6 billion over two years — a revenue loss Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said the Legislature could easily spare, thanks to flush state coffers, while also addressing state employee pensions, teacher health care, deferred maintenance and other pressing needs.
Citing Gov. Greg Abbott’s recent call for nearly $4.5 billion in "lasting" relief and emphasis on business tax cuts, Patrick said Tuesday the three-part proposal is the "next step" in an ongoing effort to cut taxes after the upper chamber initially proposed a flat $4 billion in relief last month — $3 billion for property tax cuts and just $1 billion going for franchise tax cuts.
GOP Sen. Jane Nelson, the Senate’s chief budget writer, is filing two of the bills in the package, which she noted Tuesday has "broad bipartisan support" although no Democrats showed up to a news conference Tuesday to tout it.
Five Democrats, including Austin state Sen. Kirk Watson, are co-authoring Nelson’s Senate Bill 1. That legislation would cut school property taxes by about $2.5 billion by altering the state’s mandatory homestead exemption, which has been a flat $15,000 since 1997. The bill, which would require voter approval as it would amend the state constitution, calls for an exemption equal to 25 percent of the statewide median home value. That means it would increase or decrease as that number goes up or down, but also buck a common criticism that past rate cuts — and the current flat exemption — has been masked by appraisal value creep.
"Home values obviously have risen through the years but the homestead exemption has remained flat," Nelson said during a news conference Tuesday, flanked by Patrick and a dozen Republican senators. She later noted the plan is to get the measure "on the ballot by September, so we can get this relief to taxpayers by 2016."
The Flower Mound Republican said that under her bill, the average exemption would total $33,625; That would increase to $35,979 by 2017. Assuming an average school district tax rate of $1.25 per $100 valuation, the measure would save the average homeowner $233 in 2016 and $263 in 2017, said state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a tax consultant from Houston who is one of 19 Republican senators co-authoring the measure.
Patrick said Tuesday the bill is designed to ensure the homestead exemption "(grows) over time so it doesn’t lose value." He and Nelson also noted that tying the exemption to the median home value would protect seniors from higher taxes amid rising real estate values.
Watson said he supports legislation because of that fluid aspect, but mostly because it reduces the state’s reliance on local property taxes to fund public schools. As those collections rise, the amount of money the state is obligated to spend on public education decreases.
"That is something that I have been harping on for some time, so I am overall pleased that what has happened is something that I think will make a difference that the state has responsibility for," said Watson, who filed his own bill last month to increase the state homestead exemption by $10,000 that also included an "indexing" provision calling for that figure to grow along with valuations.
Nelson’s other bill, Senate Bill 7, would permanently reduce the rate of the business franchise tax by 15 percent, a cut she said "will make it easier for businesses to grow."(That is not in addition to a 5-percent franchise tax rate cut legislators passed in 2013, set to expire later this year).
State Sen. Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown, is filing the other bill, also related to the franchise or "margins" tax. Senate Bill 8 would expand the number of businesses that are exempt from paying that tax by increasing the minimum revenue they must bring in to avoid the levy, from $1 million to $4 million. That would exempt 61,000 smaller businesses from the tax — more than half of the businesses currently paying it — and cost the state about $380 million a year in lost revenue.
The legislation "provides meaningful tax relief to those who need it most," Schwertner said.
Nelson said all three bills, and any others that call for tax relief, will be heard by the Senate Finance Committee, which she chairs, next week.
Patrick said Tuesday the upper chamber also is exploring how to give property tax cuts to businesses and that the "next step," after the bill package announced Tuesday is to figure out how to rein in appraisal value creep — the aim of several bills already filed, including one by Bettencourt.
"That is a big part of tax relief is addressing value increases, as well," Patrick said.
As far as addressing the state’s growing needs, Patrick promised a package soon that would address an underfunded state employee pension fund, an insolvent teacher health care plan, decaying state facilities "and other key issues that senators have brought up" in recent weeks during budget hearings.
The announcement came the day after House Ways and Means Chairman Dennis Bonnen vowed more than $4 billion in tax cuts from the lower chamber, which did not include any relief in its base budget proposal released last month.
Asked if Abbott was on board with the package, Patrick said Tuesday: "We’re so close shoulder-to-shoulder you couldn’t put a piece of paper between us."
Abbott told reporters Tuesday he hasn’t had a chance to look at the plan, but "It sounds like we are very close," the House included.
"It’s just a matter of coming together, working out any differences that we have," he said.
Patrick pointed out Tuesday that 24 of the Senate’s 31 members have agreed to co-author the proposed tax relief package, which Nelson described as an unprecedented demonstration of support. While five Democratic senators are currently co-authoring SB 1 — out of 11 total — only four are co-authoring SB 7 and only three are co-authoring Schwertner’s SB 8.
Watson isn’t supporting either of the franchise tax bills, noting the Legislature expanded it in 2006 to pay for school property tax cuts but it has never made up for the revenue loss.
Despite the bipartisan backing for the package, at least one Republican senator joined the Texas Democratic Party education and other advocates Tuesday in criticizing it.
"My big concern is I cannot support tax cuts until I know there’s a plan in place to meet the needs of this state," said Sen. Kevin Eltife, R-Tyler, reiterating a point he has made repeatedly during recent Senate Finance Committee meetings.
Fiscal analyst Dick Lavine of the Center for Public Policy Priorities, a think tank that advocates for low- and moderate-income Texans, said there are "better uses" for the money being used for the relief, which he noted consists largely of carryover the Legislature refused to spend on things like public schools last session when they restored only part of $5.4 billion in public education cuts made in 2011.
"The Legislature shouldn’t take billions in revenue off the table while the state is shortchanging foster kids’ safety and cramming 25 or 30 pre-K students into some classrooms," said Texans Care for Children CEO Eileen Garcia. "Our Legislature’s responsibility is to make sure Texans’ needs are met before looking at giveaways."NASHVILLE -- The 600 delegates at the National Tea Party Convention feel taxed to death, ignored by their elected representatives and the media, and appalled at the federal government's spending -- and there are millions of Americans just like them. Their anger has helped claim some political scalps, and they vow to "take back America." What is unclear to them, and to the political establishment watching warily, is how they might do this.
It's a critical moment for a movement that is unmistakably people-powered, that has been deliberately left leaderless to give voice to all frustrations. And although the mood here has been festive, even giddy, the fluidity of the group has been on full display.
Here was a California woman counseling people on how to register new Republican voters in their communities, but there were others who criticize the Republican Party as fiercely as they do the Democratic Party. Here attendees lashed out against the practices of the Washington establishment, but there a man from Memphis announced the formation of a political action committee. Here a former congressman delivered a fiery defense of America's "Judeo-Christian values," but there delegates walked out of a prayer session they thought crossed a line.
The convention, which concludes Saturday night with a keynote address by former Alaska governor Sarah Palin (R), in some respects has had the feel of a big blind date. The delegates chatted each other up for a year online, checking out each other's ideas and grievances, and they thought they might have something in common. Now they are spending a couple of days together, at a very nice resort, nibbling hibachi beef and browsing elegant "tea bag" jewelry, to see whether they like each other enough to be together.
Jeff Link, a luxury jewelry maker from New York, says that President George W. Bush started the fiscal policies that ruined the economy and that President Obama is making them worse, a belief shared by many here. But, he says, looking at the crowd, which is overwhelmingly white and middle-aged, "it saddens me not to see this gathering more diverse."
Jim Linn, an electrical engineer from San Diego, says that strict term limits must be imposed to "get control of Congress" and that the Constitution must be interpreted in ways that match his understanding of the Founders' intent. That would mean scrapping a lot of the amendments, he acknowledges, but not Nos. 2, 10, 16 and 17. He worries that a deeper depression is coming, and he tells his friends to store food, even though he knows it makes him sound like a crackpot.
Annie and Tom Runn, who have done missionary work in Haiti and Cuba, spent last week at the Republican National Committee gathering in Hawaii, where they live, and then came here. They can't support Obama because he's for "abortion and homosexuals," Tom Runn said. "We would support and vote for Sarah [Palin] over and over and over."
Lori Christenson, who started the Evergreen-Conifer Tea Party in Colorado in her house using the social networking site Meetup.com, wants politicians to act like their power comes from the people, not from their celebrity. Her group refuses to get involved with conservative social issues, which she calls "very, very divisive."
"I am coming to realize at this convention," she said Friday, over the thundering of a speaker from Judicial Watch, "that we are very, very different in terms of our beliefs. So now what?"
In Washington, where Democrats seemed oblivious to voter anger in Massachusetts and lost their supermajority in the Senate, White House officials are keeping a close watch on the developments here.
"The tea party movement has grown out of a sense of frustration about government here in Washington," senior adviser David Axelrod said Friday in an interview that will air Sunday on C-SPAN. "It's not isolated to Democrats or Republicans.... There is a sense that this town is consumed by politics, that people are consumed by their own ambitions and that we're not dealing with the real problems."
So far, the only formal political machinery to emerge from the convention is a planned political action committee announced Friday by Mark Skoda, a leader of the Memphis Tea Party, in front of a worldwide press corps of nearly a hundred. Skoda said the PAC would help elect up to 20 political candidates who advocate fiscal responsibility, less government, lower taxes, states' rights and strong national security. But it was not clear that Skoda's Ensuring Liberty Corp. would gain the support of the hundreds of tea party groups across the country.
"Let us not be naive here," Skoda said. "Holding up signs and simply responding with emotion does not get people elected.... While this is not the only way that the tea party movement can progress and mature, this is one way that we believe it can seek together the approach to counter the fragmentation that exists today."
Skoda, who grew up in a family of Democratic politicians near Cleveland, said in an interview that he has spent much of his working life as an executive with UPS and FedEx, opening up markets in Asia and Europe, an experience he said deepened his appreciation of the conservative values of liberty and economic freedom.
The PAC, he said, is not an attempt "to replace the Republican National Committee," but rather "a way by which people who have worked so hard thus far in the rallies, whose voices have not been heard, will be able to participate with their talents and their treasures -- and ultimately assure that the people are elected."
One emerging set of principles that could align tea party groups is taking shape on the Tea Party Patriots' Web site, where registered members can contribute to something that might resemble a platform.
"Note it is called the Contract From America, not the Contract With America," said William Temple, who runs a tea party group in Brunswick, Ga. "We are the ones giving the direction."
A cheerful man with a broad set of interests -- he is a pastor of "an all-black Maranatha" church, a painter, a retired Secret Service and Homeland Security employee, and a historical reenactor -- he made these pronouncements using an accent he hoped would sound early American, and he was dressed in period costume as Button Gwinnett, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
Although some here praised Obama for his energy and for making history, many delegates said concern over his policies has pushed them into political activism for the first time in their lives.
On Thursday night, giving the opening address, former U.S. representative Tom Tancredo (Colo.), who ran for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination as an anti-immigration candidate, railed against Obama and "the cult of multiculturalism." Americans could be "boiled to death in a cauldron of the nanny state," he said. "People who couldn't even spell the word 'vote,' or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House."
When Tancredo said, "His name is Barack Hussein Obama," the audience booed loudly.
"The race for America is on," Tancredo said. "The president and his left-wing allies in Congress are going to look at every opportunity to destroy the Constitution before we have a chance to save it. So put your running shoes on."
Staff writer Anne E. Kornblut in Washington contributed to this report.Certain corners of the internet were abuzz this week when voice actors Kevin Conroy and Mark Hammill hinted at possible animated adaptations of two classic Batman storylines: Hush and A Death in the Family.
If you’re a comics-obsessed dork, you’ve already read A Death in the Family. If you aren’t, you should read it because it’s fucking incredible. The comic is an amazing artifact of Reagan-era conservative panic, a fevered nightmare where Robin is a moody Gen X street kid, Batman is aided by his friends in the CIA, and the Joker is dealing arms to Hezbollah. The only thing missing is a scheming Japanese business tycoon.
Bringing the whole thing together is an insane Mamma Mia! plot where Robin tries to discover the identity of his mother: Is it the Mossad agent Sharmin Rosen? The mercenary Shiva Woosan, who is training Arab terrorists? Or Sheila Haywood, the famine relief worker in Ethiopia?
Batman, the story of an orphaned billionaire who fights crime in his hopelessly corrupt city using only his own intelligence and ingenuity, is an essential American myth. The way we tell and re-tell his stories reflects a lot about our culture.
A Death in the Family is both an important piece of the Batman canon and an indispensable text for analyzing the Reagan era. In the story, Jason Todd – the second Robin – dies at the hands of the Joker shortly after Batman’s archnemesis crippled Batgirl Barbara Gordon. In real life, comic book readers voted by dialing a 1-900 number to kill the unpopular, Generation X Robin. Earlier in 1988, the year the arc began, writer Jim Starlin introduced the character KGBeast, a superpowered Soviet assassin.
This book not only uniquely captures the moral terror of late-80s conservatives, it illustrates the pathologies running through large parts of American culture at the time. In A Death in the Family Batman becomes an avatar of the moral superiority of American capitalism, using all the tools at his disposal to battle the legacy of liberalism gone mad, rampant moral perversion, and the threat of Shia Islam to Western hegemony in the Middle East, all of which are threatening to destroy the future, a generation of ungrateful, disaffected slackers.
Which is to say, there’s a whole lot to unpack here.
The book begins with Batman and Robin beating the hell out of a kiddie porn ring.
Robin is an aggressive and broody teen, a street kid by the name of Jason Todd that Batman adopted when he found him stealing the hubcaps off of the Batmobile. He represents Generation X, a bunch of latchkey kids born in the late-70s recession that the era’s adults were simultaneously terrified of (think of the devil children of Carrie, The Omen, and Halloween) and terrified for (think of the moral panics around Satanic ritual abuse and Dungeons & Dragons). Note that in the opening scene, they’re fighting people who prey on children.
Robin flies off the handle and uses excessive force, even by Batman’s standards, against the pornographers, and he takes him off duty. Robin is out walking in his old neighborhood when a woman hails him from an abandoned building and gives him a box of his father’s belongings. Robin is examining his birth certificate when…
TWIST! It turns out that Catherine Todd isn’t his real mother. The smudged-out name on his certificate begins with an “S” and there’s only three names beginning with “S” in his father’s address book.
Any plotline with mommy stuff is a big red flag telling you to look deeper. Here, Robin’s three possible mothers are competing fantasies about mother figures. Sharmin Rosen, the Mossad agent, represents the protector mother; Shiva Woosan, mercenary, is the dangerous, exotic mother of Oedipal lust; and Sheila Haywood, the famine relief worker, is the nurturer mother. A large part of this comic is the Reagan right figuring out which of these mother figures created this new wayward generation about which it feels so ambivalent.
It’s also hilarious that this is the exact plot of the ABBA jukebox musical Mamma Mia!.
Meanwhile, the Joker has broken out of Arkham Asylum again and he’s headed for the Middle East with a stolen cruise missile armed with a nuclear warhead.
Batman is on the case.
Like America, his membership in an “internationally recognized organization” legitimizes his actions. But also like America, he isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty, stepping outside the confines of international law and flexing the power afforded him as a capitalist of considerable means.
Obviously, if Batman is America, then the “internationally recognized” Justice League in this analogy is the UN. Like America, Batman takes advantage of the legitimacy the Justice League lends him without being too squeamish about actually obeying the conventions of international law. This is extremely good.
Batman makes a deal with his friend at the CIA, an operator named Ralph Bundy who has no issue dealing with a mentally ill vigilante in a bat costume: He will take out a group of “Shi’ite extremists” who have captured a Navy C-130 if he can first examine the plane. These extremists are clearly Hezbollah, because it’s the 80s and Hezbollah and Iran (who we’ll get to later) are the main Middle Eastern bad guys.
Unbeknownst to Batman, Robin has also flown to Beirut in pursuit of Possible Mommy #1: Mossad Agent Sharmin Rosen. Telling his cabby (in Farsi, because everyone in Lebanon speaks Farsi in this comic) to take him to “the worst section of this city, a place where criminals gather,” he finds a Beirut “in turmoil…torn apart by armed polarized factions, each trying to seize control.”
“Seems everyone’s either armed or crippled by the war. You can feel the tension in the streets,” he observes. “This is not a place for an American.”
That everyone in Lebanon speaks Farsi in this comic speaks to a larger theme at work here where all Shi’ite Muslims are basically interchangeable and are also all pretty much evil. The baddies that have the Navy plane are referred to simply as “Shiite extremists.” Later, Lady Shiva is training another group of terrorists are also referred to only as “Shiites.” In three different times in the story arc, Starlin makes a joke of an American referring to a Middle Eastern person as “Abdul,” not caring what their actual name is.
Batman and Robin bump into each other on the street in Beirut, they realize the people they’re tracking (Rosen and an arms dealer named Peter Brando) are at the same hotel and in fact, Rosen seems to be working Brando. They track Rosen and Brando to the Israeli border where Brando and Rupert, the Joker’s fedora-wearing henchman, are brokering the deal between the Joker and the terrorists.
Batman and Robin spring into action to stop the terrorists and the Americans that brokered the deal, who have pointed the nuke at Tel Aviv.
Despite the help |
ere (who went to the Philadelphia Flyers) and Chris Drury (who went to the New York Rangers) during the free agency period. The Sabres nearly lost Thomas Vanek to the Edmonton Oilers, which offered him a seven-year, $50 million offer sheet, but the Sabres matched the offer on July 6. After these events, the team changed its policy of not negotiating contracts during the regular season. Long-time Sabres broadcast color commentator Jim Lorentz announced his retirement during the pre-season. Hockey Night in Canada's Harry Neale took over the position in October 2007.
Post-Briere–Drury era [ edit ]
During the 2007–08 season, the Sabres hosted a game against the Pittsburgh Penguins on January 1, 2008, which was played outdoors at Ralph Wilson Stadium, home of the National Football League's Buffalo Bills.[17] Officially, the game was called the AMP Energy NHL Winter Classic, known colloquially as the "Ice Bowl" due to it taking place at the same time as college football bowl games. The Sabres lost 2–1 in a shootout. The Sabres failed to qualify for the 2008 playoffs and became only the third team in NHL history to go from finishing first overall in the regular season standings to finishing out of the playoffs the following year.
On June 10, the Sabres officially announced their new AHL affiliate, beginning in the 2008–09 season, would be the Portland Pirates from Portland, Maine. This ended their 29-year affiliation with the Rochester Americans. They signed with the Pirates for two seasons, with a parent club option for a third.[18] The Sabres entered the 2008 free agency period quietly, but on July 1, signed goaltender Patrick Lalime to a two-year contract. Three days later, the Sabres acquired Craig Rivet from the San Jose Sharks in exchange for a second round draft pick in each of the next two drafts. The Sabres also extended the contracts of three players: Paul Gaustad (four years), Ryan Miller (five years) and Jason Pominville (five years). Miller was slated to become an unrestricted free agent following the upcoming season while Pominville was set to become a restricted free agent.
On October 8, the Sabres named defenseman Craig Rivet team captain, the first single full-time captain since Stu Barness term from 2001 to 2003. The team was also active at the trade deadline. First, they signed Tim Connolly to a two-year, $4.2 million extension, then acquired Mikael Tellqvist from the Phoenix Coyotes for a fourth round pick in the 2010 draft. Dominic Moore came from the Toronto Maple Leafs for a second-round pick in the 2009 draft, then Buffalo received a second-round pick in the 2009 draft from the Edmonton Oilers in exchange for Ales Kotalik. On April 9, the Buffalo Sabres were eliminated from the playoffs.
Mikael Tellqvist was acquired by the Sabres on March 4, 2009. He was their backup goaltender for the remainder of the 2008–09 season.
General manager Darcy Regier announced on the first day of free agency for the following season the Sabres had signed unrestricted free agent defenseman Steve Montador to a two-year contract. They also signed free agent defenseman Joe DiPenta to a one-year contract on July 11, and extended contracts with three other players: Andrej Sekera to a multi-year deal, Clarke MacArthur to a one-year contract, and Mike Grier to a one-year contract. Grier, having played two seasons with the Sabres, returned after playing the last three with the San Jose Sharks.
At the beginning of the season, the Sabres announced the Buffalo Sabres Road Crew, which saw appearances by the Sabres' coaching staff, general manager Darcy Regier and broadcasting crew for charity. Four stops were scheduled throughout the season in Tampa, Florida, Washington, D.C., Raleigh, North Carolina, and Atlanta at established Buffalo fan clubs. Many native western New Yorkers live in those four cities; Sabres fans have been known to have large contingents in attendance, rivaling those of the home teams when playing in Raleigh and Tampa.[19]
After only playing two games with Buffalo that season, Daniel Paille was traded to the Boston Bruins on October 20, 2009, in exchange for a third-round and a conditional fourth-round draft selection. Paille's move to Boston marked the first ever trade of a player under contract between the two division rivals in their common 39 years in the NHL.[20] On January 1, the Sabres became the first team to win consecutive games when trailing by three or more goals since the Dallas Stars did it in 2005–06; Buffalo defeated the Atlanta Thrashers 4–3 in overtime. It was Buffalo's second straight win in a game it trailed 3–0, following a 4–3 victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins.[21] On March 3, the day of the trade deadline, the Sabres made two deals. The first was with the Columbus Blue Jackets, which sent them Nathan Paetsch and a second round draft pick in exchange for Raffi Torres. The Sabres' second and final deal sent Clarke MacArthur to the Atlanta Thrashers for third- and fourth-round draft picks. On March 27, the Sabres clinched their first playoff berth since 2006–07 with a 7–1 rout of the Tampa Bay Lightning. On April 6, the Sabres clinched the Northeast Division title by defeating the New York Rangers by a score of 5–2. On April 26, the third-seed Sabres were eliminated from the Stanley Cup playoffs by the sixth-seeded Boston Bruins in six games.
The Sabres unveiled new jerseys on September 18, 2010, that readopted the classic 1970–1996 logo, with a third jersey having an alternate throwback arrangement that pays homage to the AHL's Buffalo Bisons, complete with the team's 40th Anniversary insignia (essentially the original royal blue version of the current logo with the year "1970" inside).[22][23] The roster did not have many significant changes; one of the most notable was the team's decision to waive center Tim Kennedy, a Buffalo native, to avoid paying the award he won in arbitration. Defensemen Henrik Tallinder and Toni Lydman were allowed to leave as free agents, while the team signed veterans Jordan Leopold and Shaone Morrisonn to replace them. Additionally, center Rob Niedermayer was added as a Stanley Cup-winning, veteran presence.
The Pegula era (2010–present) [ edit ]
On February 18, 2011, the sale of the Sabres franchise to Terrence Pegula was finalized.
On November 30, 2010, Ken Campbell of The Hockey News reported a story that billionaire Terry Pegula had signed a letter of intent to purchase the Sabres for US$150 million. Pegula was the founder, president and CEO of East Resources, one of the largest privately held companies in the United States before he sold the company.[24] After the report was released, Sabres managing partner Larry Quinn claimed it was "untrue" but refused further comment.[25] The $150 million was later determined to be an undervalued amount, as Forbes magazine had valued the team at just under $170 million in 2010. In December, Pegula officially expressed interest in buying the Sabres for $170 million and submitted a letter of intent to the NHL. In January, Golisano reportedly issued a counteroffer with an asking price of US$175 million.[26] Pegula and Golisano reached an agreement to sell the team on January 29, 2011, with Pegula purchasing the team for $189 million ($175 million with $14 million in debt included)[27][28] with the Sabres and Golisano officially making an announcement in a press conference on February 3, 2011.[29] NHL owners approved the sale on February 18.[30]
In the conference, it was stated an unnamed bidder submitted a much higher bid than Pegula's, but made the bid contingent upon moving the team.[31] The description is consistent with that of Jim Balsillie, who has made public his efforts to move a team to Hamilton, Ontario, a move the Sabres have actively opposed. Terry Pegula named former Pittsburgh Penguins executive Ted Black to be team president.[32] Pegula was introduced as the Sabres' owner in a public ceremony at HSBC Arena on February 23, accompanied by what would be the final appearance of all three members of The French Connection before Rick Martin's death three weeks later. Around the 2010–11 trade deadline, the team attempted to trade Craig Rivet, but was unsuccessful. After initially clearing waivers, Rivet entered re-entry waivers and was claimed by the Columbus Blue Jackets.[33] Late on February 27, the team acquired Brad Boyes from the St. Louis Blues in exchange for a second-round draft pick.[34] This was the Sabres' sole trade of the deadline. After Pegula's official takeover of the team, the Sabres finished the regular season 16–4–4, never losing two consecutive games in that span, and landed the seventh seed in the Eastern Conference.[35] Pegula's approach was credited by players, fans and the public with bringing new energy to the team, sparking a run to the playoffs that seemed improbable only months earlier. On April 8, the Sabres clinched a playoff berth for the second consecutive season, defeating the Philadelphia Flyers 4–3 in overtime. The Sabres clinched the seventh seed and faced Philadelphia in the first round. The Sabres had a three games to two lead but lost the series in seven games.
The Sabres began the 2011–12 season in part of the NHL premiere series for the first time, playing games in Finland and Germany. The team was particularly well-received during a game against Adler Mannheim in Mannheim, the hometown of Sabres forward Jochen Hecht; a contingent of 65 Adler fans traveled from Germany to Buffalo in February 2012 to witness a Sabres game against the Boston Bruins.[36] Prior to the first game, Lindy Ruff named Jason Pominville the Sabres' 13th full-time captain in team history.[37] The Sabres began the season relatively strong but collapsed after a Boston Bruins game in which Bruins forward Milan Lucic hit and injured goaltender Ryan Miller; the subsequent months saw the Sabres collapse to last place in the Eastern Conference. Despite a two-month rally that began in February along with the emergence of rookie forward Marcus Foligno, the Sabres lost the last two games of the regular season and fell three points short of a playoff spot.
The 2012–13 NHL lockout eliminated the first part of the 2012–13 season, which ultimately began with a scheduled 48 games.[38] After a 6–10–1 start to the season, the contract of long-time head coach Lindy Ruff was terminated by general manager Darcy Regier on February 20, 2013, ending 16 seasons as head coach. Ruff was replaced by Ron Rolston first on an interim basis, then permanently after the season ended.[39] Due to the lockout-shortened season, the trade deadline was moved to April 3, 2013. In the days leading up to it, the Sabres were active in trades. On March 15, the Sabres' first trade sent T. J. Brennan to the Florida Panthers in exchange for a fifth-round pick (originally owned by the Los Angeles Kings) in the 2013 draft.[40] On March 30, the Sabres traded Jordan Leopold to the St. Louis Blues in exchange for a second-round pick and a conditional fifth-round pick in the 2013 draft.[41] On April 1, the Sabres traded Robyn Regehr to the Los Angeles Kings in exchange for two-second round draft choices (one in 2014 and the other in the 2015).[42] The final trade came on the day of the trade deadline, April 3, where the Sabres sent Jason Pominville to the Minnesota Wild for Johan Larsson and Matt Hackett. The official announcement came after the 3pm deadline. At the time of the official announcement, it was not clear if there were other parts of the deal as the trade was still pending NHL approval.[43] It was later revealed draft picks were also involved in the deal: the Wild would receive a fourth-round pick in 2014, and the Sabres would receive a first-round pick in the 2013 draft and a second-round pick in 2014.
The following season, on November 13, 2013, the team dismissed general manager Darcy Regier and head coach Ron Rolston. Former Sabres head coach Ted Nolan was named interim head coach for the remainder of the season (he later signed a three-year contract extension) and Pat LaFontaine was named president of hockey operations. On January 9, 2014, Tim Murray was named general manager. On February 28, 2014, Murray made his first major trade, sending star goaltender Ryan Miller and forward Steve Ott to the St. Louis Blues in exchange for goaltender Jaroslav Halak, forwards Chris Stewart and William Carrier and two draft picks. After just over three months as president of hockey operations, Pat LaFontaine resigned from the Sabres to return to his previous position with the NHL on March 1, 2014.[44] Among highlights in the otherwise bad 2013–14 season included the "butt goal" in which a severely short-staffed Sabres won their December 23 contest against the Phoenix Coyotes when Coyotes goaltender Mike Smith backed into his own goal with the puck lodged in his pants,[45] and the lone NHL appearance of former Lancaster High School goaltender Ryan Vinz, who was working as a videographer in the Sabres organization, to suit up as a backup goaltender in the wake of the Ryan Miller trade. The Sabres finished the 2013–14 season last in the NHL and again missed the playoffs.
Despite winning two more games than the previous season, the 2014–15 season was much like the previous one, with the team sitting near the bottom of the standings the entire season, and finishing last in the NHL. On March 26, 2015, during a 4–3 overtime loss to the Arizona Coyotes, spectators at the game, ostensibly fans of the Sabres, cheered after a game-winning goal by Coyotes centre Sam Gagner. Said fans were more eager to see the team lose (the Sabres and Coyotes were 29th and 30th in the standings at the time) in the hopes that it would ensure the team would deliberately lose to finish in last place and guarantee a top-two pick in the 2015 NHL Entry Draft, which included two extremely highly touted prospects, Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel. These spectators' "embrace the tank" philosophy led to criticism from the media and Sabres players for how the fans reacted.[46] However, some praised the fans for how they reacted, saying that they "did the right thing".[47] The Sabres clinched last place (and therefore a top-two pick) with a loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets on April 10 (this was later confirmed to be a number-two pick after the team, for the second year in a row, lost the draft lottery); the team used the pick to select Eichel. Murray fired Nolan at the end of the season, citing a lack of chemistry and lukewarm relations between them.[48] On May 28, 2015, Dan Bylsma was hired as the 17th head coach in franchise history.
The hiring of Bylsma, the drafting of Eichel and 2014 second overall pick Sam Reinhart, the acquisition of star centerman Ryan O'Reilly in the offseason, and the rising performance of youngsters Zemgus Girgensons, Jake McCabe and Rasmus Ristolainen resulted in an improved season in 2015–16. Even though the Sabres again missed the playoffs for the fourth consecutive season, the team managed to finish just under.500 in points percentage while fans and critics have praised these rebuilding efforts by Sabres' general manager Tim Murray.
In summer 2016, the team announced that its television broadcasts would be spun off to their own regional sports network, MSG Western New York. The new network continues to operate under the MSG banner but under Pegula Sports and Entertainment control and features additional programs centered around the Sabres and the Buffalo Bills, which the Pegulas purchased separately in 2014. The team failed to make significant progress, and in fact slightly regressed, in 2016–17, missing the playoffs for the sixth consecutive season, leading to the firings of both head coach Dan Bylsma and general manager Tim Murray on April 20, 2017.[49]
During the 2017 off-season, the Sabres hired two of their former players as head coach and general manager: Jason Botterill as general manager and Phil Housley as head coach.[50] Among the more notable roster changes for this season was the return of former scoring leader Jason Pominville to the team in a trade that brought him and defenseman Marco Scandella to Buffalo in exchange for sending forwards Tyler Ennis and Marcus Foligno to the Minnesota Wild.[51]
On January 1, 2018, the Sabres participated in the 2018 NHL Winter Classic, losing 3–2 after overtime to the New York Rangers.[52]
In the 2017–18 season, Buffalo finished in last place in the NHL for the third time in five seasons and won the draft lottery for the 2018 NHL Entry Draft for the first time since 1987, using the pick to select Rasmus Dahlin from Frölunda HC of the Swedish Hockey League.
On November 27, 2018, the Sabres became the first team in NHL history to lead the league in points after the first 25 games of the season, after finishing last in the league the previous season.[53] The team won 10 games in a row for the first time since the 2006–07 season and tied the franchise record.[54] Jeff Skinner became the seventh player in franchise history to score 20 or more goals in less than 27 games, and only the second player to score 20 goals before December.[55]
Team information [ edit ]
Broadcasters [ edit ]
Current
Past
In-game personalities [ edit ]
Doug Allen sings the Canadian and U.S. national anthems at most home games (except in cases where there is a conflict with his charitable work for the Wesleyan Church)[56] and he is accompanied by organist Curtis Cook.[57] During Tom Golisano's ownership, the team occasionally used the services of singer Ronan Tynan, who sang "God Bless America" while Allen performed the Canadian anthem (in such cases, the U.S. anthem was not performed). When Allen is unavailable, Kevin Kennedy (the regular anthem singer for the Buffalo Bandits) is the usual fill-in; on rare occasions since the Pegulas took over, Black River Entertainment personalities have performed the anthems. The Canadian and U.S. national anthems are sung before every Sabres home game, regardless if the visiting team is Canadian or American, because Buffalo is adjacent to the Canadian border and many spectators come from Canada.
Rich Gaenzler, morning host at WGRF, will take over as in-game host beginning in 2018.[58][59] WBFO personality Jay Moran is the current public address announcer; he succeeded Milt Ellis in the position.[59]
Minor league affiliates [ edit ]
The Sabres are presently affiliated with two minor league teams, the Rochester Americans of the American Hockey League, and the Cincinnati Cyclones of the ECHL. The Americans play at the Blue Cross Arena in Rochester, New York. Founded in 1956, the Americans were previously the Sabres AHL affiliate from the 1979–80 season to the 2007–08. During the original Sabres affiliation, the Americans won three Calder Cup championships and finished as runners-up another six times. They finished out of the playoffs only five times in 28 years. The Sabres became re-affiliated with the Americans starting with the 2011–12 season when after buying the Sabres, Pegula purchased the Americans from former owner Curt Styres.[60][61]
The Cincinnati Cyclones are based in Cincinnati, Ohio and have been the Sabres ECHL affiliate since the 2017–18 season, after their previous affiliate, the Elmira Jackals, folded. Unlike the Americans, the Cyclones are not owned by Pegula but are instead owned by Nederlander Entertainment. The Sabres previously owned an AHL affiliate in Cincinnati with the Cincinnati Swords in the 1970s.
Season-by-season record [ edit ]
This is a partial list of the last five seasons completed by the Sabres. For the full season-by-season history, see List of Buffalo Sabres seasons
Note: GP = Games played, W = Wins, L = Losses, OTL = Overtime Losses/SOL = Shootout Losses, Pts = Points, GF = Goals for, GA = Goals against
Season GP W L OTL Pts GF GA Finish Playoffs 2013–14 82 21 51 10 52 157 248 8th, Atlantic Did not qualify 2014–15 82 23 51 8 54 161 274 8th, Atlantic Did not qualify 2015–16 82 35 36 11 81 201 222 7th, Atlantic Did not qualify 2016–17 82 33 37 12 78 201 237 8th, Atlantic Did not qualify 2017–18 82 25 45 12 62 199 280 8th, Atlantic Did not qualify
Players and personnel [ edit ]
Current roster [ edit ]
Updated February 25, 2019 [62][63]
Team captains [ edit ]
Front office [ edit ]
Jason Botterill, who previously played for the Sabres, was named the team's general manager on May 11, 2017[64] Kim Pegula, as chief operating officer of Pegula Sports and Entertainment, serves as team president.
Head coaches [ edit ]
Current head coach Phil Housley was hired on June 15, 2017.
Of the 18 head coaches the Sabres have used in their history, seven of them had previously played for the Sabres during their playing career: Floyd Smith, Bill Inglis, Jim Schoenfeld, Craig Ramsay, Rick Dudley, Lindy Ruff and current head coach Phil Housley. Two others, Dan Bylsma and Ted Nolan, had played in the Sabres' farm system.
Team and league honors [ edit ]
Hockey Hall of Famers [ edit ]
The Buffalo Sabres has an affiliation with a number of inductees to the Hockey Hall of Fame. Sabres inductees include 11 former players and four builders of the sport.[65] The four individuals recognized as builders by the Hall of Fame includes former general managers, head coaches, and owners. In addition to players and builders, three broadcasters for the Buffalo Sabres were also awarded the Foster Hewitt Memorial Award from the Hockey Hall of Fame, Ted Darling in 1994, Rick Jeanneret in 2012, and Harry Neale in 2013.[66][67]
Four sports writers from publications based in Buffalo, and St. Catharines, Ontario (which is within Buffalo's media territory), were also awarded the Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award from the Hockey Hall of Fame. Recipients of the award include Charlie Barton (Buffalo Courier-Express) in 1985, Dick Johnston (Buffalo News) in 1986, Jack Gatecliff (St. Catharines Standard) in 1995, and Jim Kelley (Buffalo News) in 2004.[65][68]
Retired numbers [ edit ]
Buffalo Sabres Hall of Fame [ edit ]
Scoring leaders [ edit ]
Regular season scoring leaders [ edit ]
Recording 552 regular season points and 39 playoff points, René Robert is the sixth highest all-time regular season points leader, and the fifth highest all-time playoff points leader with the Sabres.
These are the top-ten-point-scorers in franchise regular season history.[72] Figures are updated after each completed NHL regular season.
* – current Sabres player
Playoff scoring leaders [ edit ]
These are the top-ten playoff point-scorers in franchise playoff history.[73] Figures are updated after each completed NHL season.
NHL awards and trophies [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Notes
^ [5] The name was selected because, as public relations director Chuck Barr wrote in a press release, 'a sabre is renowned as a clean, sharp, decisive and penetrating weapon on offense, as well as a strong parrying weapon on defense.' ^ The word sabre is rarely spelled as such in the United States (where it is saber) but, as with many words which can end either in -re or -er, it is spelled sabre in neighbouring Canada.Happiness and life satisfaction may come from having parents who are caring and less psychologically controlling when growing up, according to a new study.
Having parents who are caring and less controlling in childhood may have a beneficial impact on mental wellbeing in adulthood. Having parents who are caring and less controlling in childhood may have a beneficial impact on mental wellbeing in adulthood.
A new lifelong study from University College London (UCL) in the UK, published in The Journal of Positive Psychology, has found a number of important predictors of mental wellbeing in adulthood based on their childhood environment.
The researchers assessed 5,362 British people aged 13-64 - forming a representative population for survey purposes - who were part of the Medical Research Council (MRC) National Survey of Health and Development (NSHD). This unique national survey has been tracking people since their birth in March 1946.
Of the study participants, 2,800 are under active follow-up, while complete wellbeing data was gathered for 3,699 participants at the ages of 13-15, reducing to around 2,000 participants by the ages of 60-64.
Using a 25-item questionnaire, the research team aimed to measure three different concepts of care.
To assess parental bonding, study participants were asked to agree with statements such as "appeared to understand my problems and worries." Phrases such as "tried to control everything I did" were designed to assess psychological control, while disagreeing with statements such as "let me go out as often as I wanted" aimed to measure behavioral control.
Adults completed the questionnaires retrospectively to describe how they remembered their parents' attitudes and behaviors before they were 16 years old.
The study controlled for confounding factors such as parental separation, childhood social class, maternal mental health and participants' personality traits.
Psychological control 'limits a child's independence'
The effect on individuals with parents who exerted greater psychological control during childhood was found to lower their mental wellbeing during adulthood significantly - particularly during the ages of 60-64. This effect was so pronounced that the authors of the study liken it to the recent death of a close friend or relative.
Dr. Mai Stafford, reader in social epidemiology in the MRC Unit for Lifelong Health & Ageing at UCL, explains: "We found that people whose parents showed warmth and responsiveness had higher life satisfaction and better mental wellbeing throughout early, middle and late adulthood."
Examples of psychological control which can limit a child's independence and leave them less able to regulate their behavior include not allowing them to make their own decisions, not letting them have their own way, invading their privacy and fostering dependence (rather than independence).
From other studies, the research team also know that that if a child shares a secure emotional attachment with their parents, they are better able to form secure attachments in adult life.
Dr. Stafford says:
"Parents [...] give us a stable base from which to explore the world, while warmth and responsiveness has been shown to promote social and emotional development. By contrast, psychological control can limit a child's independence and leave them less able to regulate their own behavior."
Dr. Stafford adds that "policies to reduce economic and other pressures on parents could help them to foster better relationships with their children. Promoting a healthy work-life balance is important as parents need time to nurture relationships with their children."
Earlier this year, Medical News Today reported on a new study that showed how important it is for parents to avoid 'overvaluing' your child to prevent narcissism and the value of parents showing warmth to develop high self-esteem.
Written by Jonathan VernonIn 2016 ninety countries and two territories retain the death penalty for certain crimes, with retentionist countries spread across the globe in Europe, Africa, North and South America, and Asia. Amnesty International claims that roughly two thirds of the world’s countries have abolished capital punishment, stating that in the course of the last decade an average of three countries a year “abolished the death penalty in law or, having done so for ordinary offences, have gone on to abolish it for all offences.”
Undoubtedly the trend seems to be that capital punishment is in decline. Exactly when and where this trend started however, is perhaps a surprise.
Since ancient times the death penalty has been a punishment for certain crimes. In the eighteenth century BCE the Code of Babylonian king Hammurabi listed the death penalty as punishment for twenty five different offences, although not for murder. Capital punishment was used in Ancient Egypt, Rome and Greece, and by the medieval period it was well established in European, African and Asian societies. The execution methods themselves took on a variety of ghastly forms, from drowning to being hanged, drawn and quartered.
30th November 1786 marked the first time in European history that a country permanently abolished the death penalty. At a time just a few years before Europe was changed irrevocably by the explosion of the French Revolution and other popular uprisings in the name of progress, it is perhaps surprising that this groundbreaking reform actually came from a member of the Habsburg Dynasty.
Leopold II served as Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1765 to 1790, before inheriting the title of Holy Roman Emperor following the death of his brother: Joseph II. His time as ruler of Tuscany saw him implement a host of changes, removing restrictions on personal freedoms that had been put in place by his predecessors: the Medici, and lowering the rates of taxation to a fairer, rational system. Most shocking of his reforms however, was the abolition of capital punishment.
Prior to 1786, Leopold had blocked any executions in Tuscany, meaning the death penalty hadn’t been exercised there since 1769, the year before he took power. In 1786 he moved to make the change permanent, reforming the penal code to see capital punishment abolished and having all equipment that could be used for execution destroyed. Torture was also outlawed in one of the most striking examples of enlightened absolutism – a period in European history when rulers from Charles III of Spain to Catherine the Great of Russia attempted to govern with the inspiration of the Enlightenment.
Tuscany proved to be the exception rather than the rule. The French Revolution and its aftermath saw a massive upsurge in executions as the Guillotine went to work. In Britain meanwhile, some two hundred and twenty crimes were punishable by death by the late 1700s, although the severity of the punishment meant juries would often acquit if they felt it excessive for the crime. In 1823, five laws were passed to exempt roughly a hundred crimes from the death penalty. Between 1832 and 1837 further reforms saw capital punishment removed as the punishment from more crimes, though in 1840 an attempt to completely abolish the death penalty was blocked.
Throughout Europe campaigns continued for the abolition of capital punishment, yet change was slow to come about. Britain, France and Germany all retained the death sentence until long after the Second World War. In the case of Britain, although 1965 legislation saw capital punishment no longer applied in murder trials, one could officially be executed for treason as late as 1998. West Germany officially abolished capital punishment in 1987 (although the last execution had taken place in 1949). In France, the last execution took place in 1977, the death penalty itself abolished in 1981.
Capital punishment is now exceedingly rare in Europe. In Russia the death penalty has been indefinitely suspended, meaning the country is abolitionist in practice. As such, Belarus is the only country on the continent that still practices it.This feature originally ran in October 2015 and is being republished ahead of The Dark Tower.
When Stephen King published his first novel, Carrie, on April 5, 1974, the New England author unknowingly caused a rift in genre storytelling and filmmaking that has yet to zip back up. Since then, he’s published nearly 100 works and sold over 350 million copies, all of which have spawned countless films, mini-series, and television shows over the past four decades.
Some have been great, some have been awful, some shouldn’t even be allowed to use the original title. When you have an oeuvre with that much depth and licensing that ridiculously expansive, it’s understandable why quantity would triumph over quality. Still, when filmmakers do manage to connect with King’s work, it often conjures up something iconic and masterful.
“I love the movies, and when I go to see a movie that’s been made from one of my books, I know that it isn’t going to be exactly like my novel because a lot of other people have interpreted it,” King previously digressed on the subject. “But I also know it has an idea that I’ll like because that idea occurred to me, and I spent a year, or a year and a half of my life working on it.”
That’s the allure of his many adaptations. Even at their worst, they all work off ideas and concepts that were at one time unique and exciting enough to compel him to write 400 or 1,500 pages about them. Though, because we don’t want to subject you to garbage like The Lawnmower Man or The Mangler, we decided instead to offer up his 10 strongest — all features, mind you.
–Michael Roffman
Editor-in-Chief
__________________________________________________________
10. Cujo (1983)
There’s a lot that gets lost in translation from page to screen with Cujo. The somewhat rambling domestic dramas of the book’s various characters don’t condense into a 91-minute film particularly well, which makes all of the familial drama at play feel rushed and overwrought. Cujo himself fares even worse. In print, the good dog ravaged by rabies is probably one of King’s more realistic villains, but the limits of early ‘80s effects make him look as much like a vicious killer as Mr. Ed chewing peanut butter looks like an actual talking horse.
What saves the film, though, are the performances, particularly Dee Wallace’s turn as the terrified but protective mom Donna. Cujo’s potential victims are so realistically terrified and shocked by what’s happening to them that they encourage a similar level of psychological horror from its viewers. Or at least enough suspension of disbelief to imagine that the characters aren’t being menaced by a muddy and drooling ball of fluff.
King’s Consensus: “Cujo is a terrific picture. You know, that one often gets overlooked. If I have a resentment, it’s that Dee Wallace [Stone] never got nominated for an Academy Award. She did a terrific job as the woman who gets stuck out there with the rabid dog who’s menacing them.” —ABC’s Nightline, November 2007
Trailer:
–Sarah Kurchak
09. Christine (1983)
Christine brings together two of modern horror’s biggest innovators – King, of course, but also Halloween director John Carpenter – and, like the novel, the film adaptation transcends the “killer car” gimmick that’s so easy to stamp on the story. What’s clear in this adaptation is that both Carpenter and screenwriter Bill Phillips understand that this is a story about so much more: high school, popularity, and the distance that grows between old friends as time has its way.
Aside from a throwaway prologue, there’s very little “horror” in the first half. Instead of accelerating into the bloodshed, Christine cruises leisurely through scenes that set up the central relationship between Keith Gordon’s nerdy Arnie and John Stockwell’s hunky Dennis, as well as Arnie’s strained exchanges with both his parents and the school bullies. It’s here the film is strongest, if only because the acting is so pitch perfect. Gordon gracefully tracks Arnie’s evolution from bespectacled doofus to black-shirted dynamo, while Robert Prosky finds an astonishing amount of heart in the book’s fairly one-dimensional shop owner Darnell.
Ultimately, though, Christine is just too faithful to its source material. With so many story beats to hit, Arnie’s turn to the darkside feels shockingly abrupt. Alexandra Paul’s Leigh is never given space to breath (literally), and, as such, her third-act relationship with Dennis feels perfunctory. That, however, doesn’t detract from Carpenter’s chilling score or his astounding use of stop-motion effects whenever Christine begins rebuilding herself or squeezes into a thin alleyway. A wonderful example of ’80s ingenuity. Also, if Radiohead says they’re “Karma Police” video wasn’t at least partially inspired by the death of bully Buddy Repperton, they’re lying.
King’s Consensus: “They may have been leery of Carpenter because Carpenter’s last movie, The Thing, had cost a lot of money, and it was a box-office failure, but otherwise the industry in general has always seemed very high on Carpenter, and I’m surprised in a way that they didn’t go ahead with it. But Carpenter was tapped to direct Christine, and they’re in their second week of production now.” —Den of Geek, May 1983
Trailer:
–Randall Colburn
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08. The Green Mile (1999)
While Frank Darabont is rightly celebrated for his masterful work in The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile often gets short shrift for being, you know, not one of the greatest movies of all time.
Perhaps more so than Shawshank, The Green Mile is King and Darabont at their most sentimental: gentle giant John Coffey (a breakout role for the powerful Michael Clarke Duncan – RIP) provides an oasis of childlike wonder and hope in the midst of the profound cynicism surrounding Tom Hanks’ Paul Edgecomb.
Hanks and Duncan are backed by a tremendous supporting cast of character actors, including Sam Rockwell, Doug Hutchison, David Morse, and Patricia Clarkson, and the subtle mysticism of Coffey’s “gift” elevates |
better parents, better spouses. Juliann wore hers for a couple of days. Andrew said he would wear his until he died. She figured it would last maybe a week.
From his lookout spot below the rest of the crew, Brendan could see the fire start to shift. He had never seen one get so big so fast. Soon it had passed his trigger point, the ever-changing point on the horizon that meant he needed to move. It was about 3 p.m.
Up on the ridge, Jesse got on the radio. “Hey, Doughnut,” he said. “We got eyes on it. If you need to get out of there, go ahead.”
“OK,” Brendan said. “If you need anything, give me call.”
“All right,” Jesse said. “We’ll see you soon.” Brendan got up off his rock and hurried toward his safety zone. By the time he looked back, the spot where he’d been standing was overtaken by flame. A little later, he caught a ride to safety with another Hotshot crew.
At 3:26, the National Weather Service in Flagstaff called the fire behavior analyst on the ground in Yarnell and told him there was a thunderstorm blowing in from the northeast. Winds were gusting 40 to 50 miles per hour. To the untrained eye, a storm might have looked like relief – dark clouds rolling in with rain to dampen the fire; in fact, it was the opposite. A seasoned firefighter like Eric knew what to expect: The winds would fan the fire like bellows on a furnace. And instead of blowing the fire away from the Hotshots, it would soon be sending the flames right toward them. At the same time, all firefighting aircraft in the vicinity were grounded, for safety. Seven minutes later, a mandatory evacuation order was issued for Yarnell.
From up on the ridge, the Hotshots would have seen a line of cars streaming onto the highway, away from Yarnell. The fire had reversed course and was closing in. Eric radioed Incident Command: “We’re in a bad spot. We gotta move.”
The team started moving south along the dirt trail, away from the oncoming fire. Down the hill, about half a mile away, they spotted a small llama ranch, its perimeter cleared of brush – a decent safety zone. To get there, though, they would have to drop down into a small, U-shaped canyon, effectively losing any view of the fire, then fight their way through a few hundred yards of thick chaparral – the same dry kindling that Eric had clawed his way through earlier.
The fire had by now quadrupled in speed. It was racing toward them at 15 miles per hour – roughly 1,300 feet per minute. They had a decision to make. They could keep moving south along the trail and drop over the ridgeline on the other side. They could stay put, in the black, and hope that either the fire would die down or a helicopter might come to pick them up. Or they could make a run for the ranch.
They didn’t have time to think about it long. Maybe they didn’t think about it at all. At 4:30, Eric radioed that they were moving toward Yarnell in the black. And then they dropped into the canyon – which was green.
Now the Hotshots were running blind. They no longer had eyes on the fire. They busted their way through the heavy brush, hacking through the prickly pear cactus, the boulders underfoot. They stumbled that way for a few frantic minutes. And then the fire hooked around the ridge and into the canyon and cut off their path to the ranch.
A wall of flames 40 feet high was sweeping its way up the canyon, 400 yards away. At that point, they would have had about a minute. Since they couldn’t get to the safety zone, they had to make one of their own. Andrew Ashcraft and Travis Turbyfill, the two sawyers, started attacking the brush with their chain saws, while the rest of the guys swung their Pulaskis, frantically doing what they were trained to do: move dirt, and move dirt faster.
At the same time, someone was hurrying to light a backfire. If they could set the ground in front of them on fire, the main fire would suck those flames toward it, scorching the ground along the way. That ground would then be relatively safe. They dumped fuel from their drip cans around the zone they’d created, then set the chain saws at the outer perimeter, so that when they exploded no one would get hurt.
They were about to light the backfire when one of the Hotshots got on the radio, using the call sign Granite Mountain 7. He was out of breath, and he sounded panicked. He was trying to call Air Attack, the helicopter crew circling overhead, but they couldn’t make him out.
“Whoever is yelling on the radio needs to stop!” the Incident Commander said. At which point Eric got on the radio. The Hotshots’ escape route had been cut off, he said, and they were deploying their emergency shelters.
Eric’s voice was calm – some said the calmest they’d ever heard him. At 4:47, he radioed his last transmission: “Deploying.” And then, just like they’d practiced, the Granite Mountain Hotshots climbed into their shelters.
The smoke was too thick for any rescue helicopters to get through. Incident Command tried to raise the Hotshots on the radio: “Are you there, Granite Mountain? Are you there, Granite Mountain?” There was no answer. At 5:30, a Department of Public Safety helicopter was able to take off, but the smoke was too thick for them to see anything, and they weren’t even sure where to look – no one knew the Hotshots had dropped into the bowl.
Finally, at 6:30 – an agonizing 103 minutes later – the helicopter was able to get on the ground. The onboard medic hurried to the site where they’d seen the shelters. As he approached, he spotted the metal blade from a chain saw and a pickax with the handle burned away. The ranch house was unscathed. Everything else was a smoldering moonscape.
As he got close to the site, the medic heard human voices coming from the shelters. For a moment, his heart leaped – maybe there were some survivors. He yelled out to them through the smoke. But as he got closer, the medic realized the voices were only coming from their radios.
Experts estimate that the fire burned between 3,000 and 5,000 degrees. In the end, there wasn’t much left. But what there was told a story.
The 19 Hotshots were all together. No one panicked, no one ran. Travis Turbyfill and Andrew Ashcraft, the sawyers, were at the edge of the group, closest to the flames. They were cutting lines up until the end.
When Juliann got Andrew’s effects back, his boots and clothes were gone. His metal belt buckle didn’t make it. His pocketknife. The journals that he kept. There was a piece of Velcro from his watchband but not the watch itself. Even the metal plate and eight screws in his leg, from when he shattered it in a rappelling accident a few years back, had disappeared.
Two things, she discovered, had somehow survived the fire. One was Andrew’s wedding ring, titanium. The other, shrunken and black, was the rubber wristband that said: be better.AUSTRALIA’s east coast could be smashed by another severe weather event this week, with forecasts of another dangerous east coast low.
Early forecast models are showing the potential for significant rainfall across large areas of NSW and the southern half of QLD across the weekend and into early next week.
According to Higgings Storm Chasing, a trough is likely to be located across Western and South-West QLD during Saturday, extending into Central and Western NSW.
This trough is forecast to interact with an approaching strong upper level trough to draw in strong moisture off the Coral Sea and Pacific to produce widespread rain and wind.
During late Sunday and into Monday initial forecasts predict there’s the potential for an east coast low to develop along the NSW coast somewhere between Wollongong and Port Macquarie.
BSCH weather maps show an east coast low located off shore from Sydney at 4pm on Monday June 20.
If these are correct, areas of the NSW coast mostly from the Hunter south, could see up to 150mm of rainfall in 24 hours plus winds over 125km/h.
The weather system may also impact eastern Victoria as it moves further south.
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The Bureau of Meteorology told News Corp Australia that it’s too early to tell exactly how significant the weather event will be.
“The previous system brought extensive rainfall all along the coast and ranges, this one is developing differently, it’s moving different ways and this one is a little bit shorter than the previous one,” senior forecaster Peter Gajewski said.
At this stage they are expecting around 80mm of rain to fall across the NSW coast from Friday through to Sunday.
The forecast isn’t good news for residents who are still cleaning up from the massive east coast low that hit earlier this month.
A number of people lost their lives in floodwaters which caused more than 50 million dollars damage in QLD, NSW and Tasmania.Mike Johnson has taught all over the country in his 43 years in the industry.
Puketapu School principal Mike Johnson has been teaching so long some of his current students are the children of past pupils.
On Friday Johnson marked the end of the school term as well as the end of a 43-year career in education.
He began his teaching at Devon Intermediate in 1972 and since then had taught at numerous schools across the country and Taranaki before ending up at Puketapu.
"Some of the children here, I taught their parents at Devon," he said.
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"It's a whole new generation."
After four years at Devon Johnson moved to Mossburn School in Southland with his wife. He then moved on to South Canterbury where he taught a sole charge school.
"Then like all Taranaki people the mountain calls you back," he said.
He went back to Devon Intermediate again but after two or three years decided he needed to become a principal.
He took the top job at Pungarehu School around the coast, before moving 5km down the road to Rahotu School, which was double the size.
"The coast became very much a part of our lifestyle," he said.
But 13 years later he moved to Marfell School in New Plymouth.
"I was at Marfell for five years and then I missed having year seven and eights as part of the school," he said.
A job came up at Puketapu School in Bell Block and Johnson has been there for the past 10 years.
Johnson said he had focused on literacy, numeracy and physical education as principal and tried to set an example by riding his bike to work a couple of times a week.
For his last day on Friday, many of the students decorated their bikes and rode them to school, before lining them up outside the school hall for his last assembly.
Johnson has ridden around Lake Taupo 17 times, year after year except for the time he broke a bone in his neck while on trail ride with the school.
He said he had tried to develop a sense of community at the school, which carried on from what they had while teaching on the coast.
"That's what we're trying to establish here is a school community," he said.The Marlins have claimed right-hander Odrisamer Despaigne off waivers from the Orioles, reports Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet (via Twitter). Baltimore designated the spot starter/long reliever for assignment last week and placed him on waivers on Tuesday.
Despaigne, 29, appeared in 16 games and totaled 27 1/3 innings for the Orioles this season after coming over from the Padres in an offseason trade. The Cuban-born righty initially signed with San Diego for a $1MM signing bonus and delivered a solid rookie campaign, posting a 3.36 ERA with 6.1 K/9, 3.0 BB/9 and a 52.1 percent ground-ball rate in 16 starts (96 1/3 innings). Since that time, though, it’s been a struggle for Despaigne at the big league level, as he logged a 5.80 ERA in 125 2/3 innings last season in addition to his 2016 struggles.
Despaigne doesn’t possess premium stuff but instead relies on a number of offerings, including a four-seam fastball, a cut fastball, a sinker, a slider, a curveball and a changeup, per PITCHf/x data available at Fangraphs. He did average a career-best 92.8 mph on his heater when working exclusively in relief this season, so perhaps additional exposure in that setting could yield better results. He’ll provide Miami with some rotation and bullpen depth over the final couple weeks of the season but won’t be postseason eligible in the event that Miami stages a comeback and secures a Wild Card spot.
With fewer than two years of big league service time, Despaigne won’t be eligible for arbitration following the season. As such, he’ll remain controllable through the 2021 campaign.Few diseases inspire more terror than Ebola. The deadly virus causes rapidly worsening fever and pain, internal hemorrhages and, usually, death. Most patients spend their last days in isolation, sometimes bleeding from their eyes and nose, surrounded by people in Hazmat-style suits and goggles. Some suspect the current outbreak originated among bat hunters near Guéckédougou, Guinea. Since February, it has spread to 1,093 people and killed 660 in the West African countries of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. Family doctor and native of Windsor, Ont., Tim Jagatic is on the ground in Kailahun, Sierra Leone, helping Doctors Without Borders fight the worst Ebola outbreak in history.
Q: How does this illness present? What is actually happening?
A: When the virus enters the body, it attacks the immune system and the blood vessels. It releases an immune cascade at the same time as your blood vessels are being weakened. On the outside, you see fever, headache, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, joint pain, muscle pain—a lot of things people associate with the common cold. With the progression of the disease, you might see the hemorrhagic signs. We see that in fewer than 50 per cent of cases.
Q: What are the hemorrhagic signs?
A: We see people with nosebleeds. They have bloody vomit, bloody diarrhea, internal bleeding and conjunctivitis [bloodshot eyes].
Q: What’s the usual cause of death?
A: There are many, and because it’s such a large outbreak, we’re starting to see some signs that we didn’t associate with Ebola before. We saw some patients with elevated blood sugar. We’ve seen people dying from what seemed to be a heart attack. We’ve seen people dying from blood loss. We’ve seen people just being overwhelmed by the disease. We don’t have much diagnostic material to work with, so we’re not able to do an EKG to see if it was a heart attack or not.
Q: You were in the outbreak zone back in March and April, in Guinea. What has changed?
A: I was there for about three weeks. I saw an epidemiologist, and he said, “We’re seeing the tip of the iceberg.” Plain and simple: The virus has gotten to a point where it’s able to spread itself, just because it’s a capital city, and within a population with a cultural practice that lets this virus spread around.
Q: How is it spreading within communities?
A: Funerals are the biggest point of infection. When one person dies, people from all over will come and practise their behaviour rituals [touching and kissing the unembalmed body without washing their hands after]. A dead body is the most infectious thing, and that’s when the majority of people come into contact with it. Another one is being exposed to sick people. The whole family is taking care of them, being exposed constantly.
Q: What would you be doing in an ideal situation to respond to Ebola?
A: We need twice as many people. We simply don’t have the numbers to delegate all the things that have to be done when we’re in the isolation ward. Because we’re wearing personal protective equipment, it limits the amount of time that we spend inside the isolation unit. We would like to keep a visit between 45 minutes and one hour, but now, we’re stretching it to almost two hours. We put ourselves through a very strong physiological stress when we’re using personal protection gear, because it’s impermeable. So we sweat, we’re losing water, we’re getting hotter and it wreaks havoc on the body. Our own endurance starts to wear down.
Q: What treatment can you provide?
A: The treatment is supportive therapy. Someone has a fever; we give them Tylenol. If someone has diarrhea, we give fluids. We provide high-quality nutrition. We also provide a round of antibiotics for any side bacterial infections. We do a whole bunch of things to push away any distraction the immune system might have from fighting the disease.
Q: It’s suspected the strain is Zaire ebolavirus. The mortality rate is as much as 90 per cent. What levels of mortality are you seeing?
A: I don’t have the numbers in Sierra Leone. Patients are coming in with much later disease progression. Back in Guinea, we were running at about 50 per cent survival. There’s a little town just about an hour and a half north of Conakry, and there was immediate organization of the community and [Doctors Without Borders] together. It was explained to them how the virus was spread, what to do to prevent the spread, what the symptoms look like and how it’s important to come to treatment. In this little village, we had a survival rate of 75 per cent. Because people were coming in early, the outbreak was shut down in one month. The 90 per cent mortality is associated with when nothing is done.
Q: There have been some erroneous local beliefs and some negative practices in response this outbreak. How are you responding?
A: Yeah, it’s really important for us to understand why it’s happening. In Guéckédougou [in Guinea], the people had a person die in their village. That happens. The next day, [health workers] show up in space suits and start spraying everything [with disinfectant]. And then more people started dying. So it seems [to them] like after we showed up with the spray, more people died. And they say, “Oh, so you’re spraying Ebola in our village.” This was the line of reasoning. It’s difficult to explain that there’s something so small, you can’t see it with your own eyes, but it’s one of the deadliest things. We take for granted our basic level of education in the West.
Q: Can you give me an idea of the panic? What about you? You could get it, too.
A: In the community, the biggest point of fear is the unknown. They know something bad called Ebola is in their community, and it’s killing people they know and love, and they don’t know how to stop it. On a personal level, when I’m dressed up in my full personal protection equipment, I know I am not exposed to the virus. When we’re back in our compound, we’ve gone through multiple decontaminations. There are all these checkpoints to make sure we’re washing our hands. Also, we know how the virus is spread, so we know how to avoid being contaminated. There is a very strong sense of safety.
Q: But it is killing health care workers: at least one Ugandan doctor, at least one nurse.
A: Potentially they weren’t aware of what they were dealing with, so they might have been more relaxed. They might not have worn gloves. They might have got body fluids with high viral loads on their skin, then made contact with their mucous membranes. The virus is not that contagious: I can have a conversation with someone who is infected, with no more than three feet between us and no mask, because we’re separated. The virus is not aerosolized. When we’re in closer vicinity, when we’re being exposed to bodily fluids, we take more precautions.
Q: Putting someone in isolation is not a normal cultural practice. Is it having an effect on well-being?
A: We do address this. Today, we had two or three family members of different patients come in. They got dressed up in personal protective equipment. We went in there with them, and we explained what to do. We also have other areas set up. Because the isolation unit is in tents and we just have fencing as our barriers, we have chairs family members can sit on outside. The patients sit inside, and they’re able to talk normally with each other. Also, social bonding is forming among many of the patients. I’d say there’s a good 10 to 15 patients in there who will survive. This group of women are sitting there during lunchtime, and because it’s kind of boring, sitting in these isolation units, they become friends, they’re gossiping, they’re having a good time, almost.
Q: It’s interesting that’s happening in the hospital, because there’s some stigma in communities. Have you seen that?
A: Oh, yes. There was a group of seven people dropped off at our hospital yesterday, because they were believed to have been in contact with somebody who had Ebola. They were shunned. Rocks were being thrown in their direction. When our ambulance showed up to deal with the dead body, the leader of that community forced our ambulance to take those people. Two of them ended up being feverish, so we kept them in our ward for suspected cases. But we had to have a long discussion with community leaders.
Q: Can you see Ebola spreading beyond West Africa?
A: I find that highly unlikely, simply because the world is on high alert about West Africa right now. We have such strong public health measures and such strong infrastructure in the West. It wouldn’t allow the virus to spread.
Q: What’s been the most challenging part for you, personally?
A: We saw one of our own staff members test positive, a local staff member [in Guinea]. He showed up with a fever. He was feeling nauseous and he had diarrhea and vomiting. We did blood tests, and then I went back to Brussels. I got a phone call to let me know that he did test positive. It was hitting close to home. He did get infected before he started working with us.
Q: You’re taking so many precautions, but the risk is there. Are your loved ones okay with you going into an Ebola zone?
A: They’re not the happiest, but they understand why I’m doing it.
Q: And why are you doing it?
A: There’s a need for it, plain and simple. I have the training to help bring an end to this problem, so I’ll give everything I can.COLUMBIA, MD – Two women were killed in a crash on MD 175 Thursday afternoon that involved several vehicles and may have been caused by a medical emergency, according to the Howard County Police Department.
Lucinda Louise Miller, 67, of Laurel, and Monteia Sherita Carter, 26, of Baltimore, died as a result of the collision, police said.
Miler was driving a 2013 Chrysler 200, while Carter was behind the wheel of a 2012 Honda Accord, officials reported.
Police said that at 12:20 p.m. on Thursday, the Chrysler was headed west on MD 175 when it hit the Accord, which was making a left turn from eastbound MD 175 onto MD 108.
Carter was pronounced deceased at the scene, police reported.
Miller was taken to Howard County General Hospital, where officials said she was also pronounced deceased.
Both women were the only ones in their cars, according to officials.
Before the crash, police said the Chrysler hit two other vehicles: It sideswiped a vehicle parked on the shoulder of MD 175 west of I-95 and it sideswiped a vehicle stopped at a red light, police said. Nobody in those vehicles was injured, according to Mary Phelan of the Howard County Police Department.
"Investigators are looking into the possibility that the driver of the Chrysler may have suffered a medical emergency prior to the incident," police said in a statement. "Investigation is continuing."
Several roads were closed in the area of MD 175 and MD 108 after the crash, and police said all roads had reopened by 4:45 p.m.
Previous Report
COLUMBIA, MD – Police said a fatal crash has closed several area roads in Howard County Thursday afternoon.
After 2:45 p.m. these roads were closed for the investigation, according to the Howard County Police Department:
MD 175 west between I-95 and MD 108
MD 108 at MD 175
MD 108 at Old Waterloo Road
MD 108 at Lark Brown Road
Drivers are asked to avoid these areas.
There were three vehicles involved in the crash, which occurred before 1 p.m., according to state transportation officials.
This article will be updated as more information is available. Get Patch news alerts.
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Cree
Heat sinks have made LED bulbs the freaks of the lighting world. Metal collars and other heat sinks serve to draw away heat from LEDs to ensure long life, but they also give LED bulbs an unfamiliar, bulky look and add to their costs.
LED maker Cree on Tuesday is introducing a new consumer bulb that does away with the metal heat sink seen on most LED bulbs. The dimmable bulbs come with a lower cost, too: $7.97 for a 40-watt and 60-watt equivalent, down from $9.97 for a “soft white” version. The “daylight” version with whiter light costs $8.97.
The new design employs a few engineering tricks and the company's latest generation of high-power LEDs to reduce the cost, says Mike Watson vice president of strategy at Cree, which makes LEDs atop silicon carbide wafers.
Thermal management represent about 25-30 percent of total cost in an LED bulb, second only to the LEDs themselves
To remove the heat sink, engineers created a new structure to house the LEDs. The company’s previous bulbs used a metal “tower” that held the LEDs in the center of the globe and also served to transfer heat to a metal collar at the bulb’s base. These heat sinks can be big: with Cree’s 100-watt equivalent product, the heat sink is nearly as large as the bulb.
In its new design, heat is removed from the LEDs through convection, or a flow of air through the bulb. The LEDs are mounted on circuit boards, rather than the metal tower. As the diodes heat up, they draw air from outside the bulb through small vent-like openings at the base and on the top. Because hot air rises, air flows continually through the bulb to cool the LEDs. The airflow circulates whether the bulb is vertical, horizontal or upside down, Watson says.
In addition to lowering cost, Cree is also seeking to make LEDs look more familiar, so consumers will replace incandescent bulbs and compact fluorescent lights (CFL), he says.
Other lighting companies have taken different routes to thermal management. UGetLight and Switch both have a liquid-cooled bulb, which Switch says ensures long life and makes bulbs safe for enclosed fixtures. The most recent products from General Electric and Philips have eliminated ungainly heat sinks in their first-generation bulbs with more sleek, tapered metal bases near the bottom.
"We believe the most light in a small space or the most lumens per wafer wins in the end." —Mike Watson, vice president of strategy at Cree
Heat sinks and other forms of thermal management represent about 25 to 30 percent of the total cost in an LED bulb, second only to the LEDs themselves, Watson says.
Cree was also able to lower costs by using fewer LEDs—eight instead of 10 for a 60-watt equivalent. Its latest high-power LEDs run at a higher current to produce more light in a smaller amount of space. In general, running more current through LEDs will degrade their life. Watson says the Cree’s LEDs are designed for high power and its latest consumer bulbs have the same 25,000-hour projected lifetime, which can be more than 20 years depending on use.
"We believe the most light in a small space or the most lumens per wafer wins in the end," Watson says. "Having a high-power LED means you can drive the product harder and at higher temperatures reliably."
Cree’s 60-watt equivalent consumes 11 watts, compared to 9.5 watts for its current product, and the 40-watt equivalent still draws six watts.
The LED lighting industry is in a race to bring down the purchase price of bulbs and entice consumers to try them, putting the technology on a relatively rapid cost reduction curve. And as prices creep under $10 and approach $5, more consumers are likely to buy LEDs and fuel faster adoption.15 Home and Grain Elevator, Destrehan, Louisiana, 1998
In 1998, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta asked Richard Misrach to produce a body of work for their “Picturing the South” series. Misrach decided to focus on “Cancer Alley,” the Mississippi corridor that stretches a hundred and fifty miles between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, a startling landscape where antebellum mansions and current-day communities line the swamps and levees among gargantuan industrial plants that produce a quarter of America’s petrochemicals.
Over a decade later, the Museum asked Misrach to return to Cancer Alley to shoot, and then combined this new work with the original series for an exhibition and book called “Petrochemical America,” published by Aperture. In re-approaching the project, Misrach hoped to find avenues of environmental and structural change in this region and for the nation. He began collaborating with the landscape architect Kate Orff of the firm Scape, and the second half of “Petrochemical America,” is an “Ecological Atlas” composed of drawings and maps that help unfold the complex historical, economic, and ecological factors that affect the region. “My hope is that by integrating emotion and analysis, photography, research, and speculation, the book can play a role in sparking a deeper discussion about the future of energy and our shared climate and the landscape that we have made,” Orff said in a recent interview with Aperture’s Melissa Harris. “To move forward into a cleaner, more just energy era we’ll have to have a different, more synergistic approach.”
All photographs from “Petrochemical America” (Aperture 2012), Richard Misr |
likely to occur (entering and leaving the room).
5) How One Jolly Rancher Silenced the Room – Praise, Extra Credit, and Rewards
I once had a teacher come to my room, look at my students as they were entering, and comment that they were her most difficult class. The students were entering the room, a bit talkative, but had made their way to their seats, and most were sitting. I told her, that I would show her how to get them all quiet and on task by only spending a few pennies. She didn’t believe me, especially considering the group of students in the room.
But I walked over to one student who was doing what he was supposed to, and commented “oh, I really like how Billy is working on his Do Now, thank you so much” and I placed a jolly rancher on his desk. Soon other students quickly sat down, and began getting quiet as I walked around the room, looking for other students to reward. I made a few nice comments to other students, and rewarded one or two more. Within one minute, everyone was on task, and quiet.
Why I Walk Around the Room with a Marker
I don’t always give candy, but one jolly rancher is about ten cents and can be such a powerful motivator.
I do the same thing with a marker. Anyone I catch doing what they’re supposed to, I put +10 on their paper. Ten extra credit points, just for doing what you’re supposed to.
I once had a teacher who would walk around the room with a marker, but instead she would put a zero on their paper because they weren’t doing their work. What message was that communicating to the student? That no matter how hard they tried for the rest of the period, they could not earn a good grade, so why bother? She couldn’t understand why her students didn’t like her and why there were so many discipline issues in her class.
I give extra credit out like it’s water and my students are in the desert.
Sometimes, instead of calling it homework, I call it ‘extra credit.’ It actually has the same impact on their grade (unless, of course, they don’t do it), yet they all want to do it because in their mind ‘extra credit’ is good, and ‘homework’ is bad.
Every once in a while, I will ask the class how much extra credit they would like on the question or activity I am about to give. At the beginning of the year, they usually say 10 points, by the end of the year they’ve figured me out and are saying numbers that more look like Bill Gates’s pay checks.
Finally, I give lots of verbal praise. Most days, I don’t give extra credit or candy, just kind words from the front of the room to people who are on task. It’s very effective, and it doesn’t matter what grade they’re in.
6) The Day that They all Enter the Room Thanking and Hugging Me
One day each year, I would email every parent and tell them that they have a great student and how much I enjoy him/her, with a few other kind words. I would have a blank template, so I could just fill the student’s name in and quickly send it to all the students on the same day. The next day is always the best day of the year. Some kids come in and cry, many thank me, some have funny stories about how their parents hit them when they saw a letter from the teacher… until they read it. I once had a student, tears in his eyes, say he had never received a good note from a teacher – he was 15 years old.
Besides that the students will appreciate you, doing this will also win over the parents.
If you’re first call home is a good one, then, when you have to call the parents for a negative reason, you have already won the parent over, making that conversation so much easier. And the parents will be shocked with their student, “how could you do that to Mr. So-and-So” (because they already think you’re the greatest teacher on the planet).
The Shortest Phone Call You’ll Ever Make
Whenever I tell my teachers to call as many parents as they can the first few weeks of school, they always respond that that would take forever. Clearly, they have never called home to say something nice to a parent.
Positive phone calls home are the easiest, and quickest thing in the world to do. The parents are so stunned, they can barely say thank you, and then you say goodbye. It lasts maybe 20 seconds.
7) Why I Give Makeup Work
It took me a long time to come around to the idea of makeup work for students who had done poorly – or not done the work at all. I felt like I was reinforcing a bad habit, and not teaching them to be accountable.
Then I realized, that I will be evaluated based on my students’ scores on the state diagnostic. And that will come down to them learning the material.
Now I give makeup work and extra credit out like they’re Jolly Ranchers. If doing some makeup work is what gets them to finally comprehend the material, I will give it to them in mad abundance.
Besides the fact that doing this makeup work may help them actually comprehend the material that I am trying to teach them, they also like me for it, and so do their parents. Not that being “liked” is the goal, obviously educating them is the goal – but classroom management and educating them becomes so much easier when you are liked by your students. And the parents will support you when they have good sentiments towards you as well.
Now I will tell you, there are times when I won’t give it, or I will have long talks with them and their parents about responsibility and punctuality. But for the most part, I will give them extra work to help them master the material.
One last thought. Mistakes are part of the learning process. We learn from our mistakes. So I don’t like to penalize students for making mistakes, which is another reason I normally give them an opportunity to make up a grade, provided they are truly learning the material.
Conclusion
Class should be fun. So should you.
When students enjoy their environment, they are more likely to learn. And when they like you, they are more likely to try hard, because they don’t want to disappoint you.
Spend some time today connecting with your students. Have some fun. Enjoy them. I promise the instructional time that you lose, will be gained back because you will have less discipline issues, and harder working students.
A reflection worksheet for the student who keeps blurting out
Click here to preview it
Bonus: Professional Development
Looking for More Resources to Help with Your Classroom Management?
Below are two courses that I recommend from Teach 4 The Heart that will help you improve your classroom management. I’ve taken these courses, and found them extremely beneficial. I believe in them so much that I became an affiliate of them. So if you choose to purchase the extended course, you will help support this website.
A free 3 day mini course to help you regain control
click on the image to learn more
For a deeper dive, enroll in Classroom Management 101
click on the image to learn moreFBI Special Agent in Charge of the El Paso field office Emmerson Buie Jr. speaks during a press conference at the FBI field office, Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2017, in El Paso, Texas, about the death of a border patrol agent and the severe injuries of a second agent. FBI officials said Tuesday that officers are investigating the incident as a “potential physical assault” on federal officers, but said there are several scenarios that might have led to the agents’ injuries. (Mark Lambie/The El Paso Times via AP)
DALLAS (AP) — An FBI official said Tuesday that the bureau is investigating the death of a border patrol agent and severe injuries to another as “potential assault,” but he wouldn’t rule out that they could have been hurt in some other way.
Special Agent in Charge Emmerson Buie Jr. said during a news conference in El Paso that investigators are still trying to “gather the facts,” but they are currently treating it as an assault on a federal officer.
The couched language comes more than two days after U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agent Rogelio Martinez succumbed to traumatic head injuries and broken bones suffered while on duty, and after several politicians portrayed his death as the result of an attack.
Martinez died Sunday and his partner, whose name has not been released, was seriously injured. They were found late Saturday in a culvert near Van Horn, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the border with Mexico and 110 miles (175 kilometers) southeast of El Paso.
At Tuesday’s news conference, Buie and U.S. Border Patrol Acting Chief Victor Velazquez did not say why they believed the agents may have been attacked.
Authorities haven’t said whether they have any suspects. The state of Texas is offering a $20,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest or conviction, and the FBI on Tuesday tacked on an additional $25,000.
A U.S. official with knowledge of the investigation told the Associated Press Martinez may have fallen into the culvert. The official said Martinez’s partner, who radioed for help, was still recovering in the hospital and has no memory of what happened. The official, who was briefed on the investigation spoke on condition of anonymity and is not authorized to speak publicly, said it happened after dark in an area that’s known for drug activity and where agents often look for drugs in culverts.
Rush Carter, a border patrol supervisor for the region that includes the area where the agents were injured, said Monday night that reports it was an attack were “speculation.” But several elected officials, including President Donald Trump, referred to it as such.
When asked about the president’s remarks Tuesday, Buie said he had not briefed Trump on the investigation.
An FBI spokeswoman told the San Antonio Express-News on Sunday that the agents were “not fired upon,” but she didn’t elaborate.
Martinez’s mother, Elvia Martinez, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that she and her husband are also awaiting more information. She said she didn’t yet know any details about the circumstances surrounding their son’s death.
“He was a very accomplished person and loved his work,” she said tearfully and in Spanish.
Rogelio Martinez, father to an 11-year-old, joined the Border Patrol in 2013.
Chris Cabrera, a spokesman for a border patrol agents union, the National Border Patrol Council, told The Associated Press that the two agents appeared to have been struck in the head with a rock or rocks. Cabrera said agents who responded to the scene described it as “grisly” and said Martinez and his partner had “extensive injuries.”
Trump took to Twitter on Sunday to insist that Martinez’s death underscores the need for a wall along the border between the U.S. and Mexico. The president offered his condolences to Martinez’s family. He also said Martinez’s partner was “brutally beaten and badly, badly hurt” but that it “looks like he’ll make it.”
Authorities haven’t said whether they think drug smugglers or people who were in the country illegally were involved.
Martinez is the second agent to have died this year.
The Border Patrol website lists 38 agents, not including Martinez, who have died since late 2003. Some were attacked while working along the border and others were killed in traffic accidents.
___
Schmall reported in Fort Worth. Associated Press writers David Warren in Dallas and Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.Orangeman accused of driving into crowd can't remember running over a teenage girl, court hears BelfastTelegraph.co.uk An Orangeman accused of driving into crowd at a north Belfast flashpoint has "no memory" of hitting people, a court heard has heard. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/orangeman-accused-of-driving-into-crowd-cant-remember-running-over-a-teenage-girl-court-hears-35775658.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/article35776310.ece/48b06/AUTOCROP/h342/John-Aughey.JPG
Email
An Orangeman accused of driving into crowd at a north Belfast flashpoint has "no memory" of hitting people, a court heard has heard.
Prosecuting QC Neil Connor told Belfast Crown Court that John Alexander Aughey (63) later claimed he felt "in fear of his life", believing he'd been identified as an Orangeman, and was attempting to "escape from a dangerous and escalating situation".
Aughey, from Brae Hill Park, Belfast, also allegedly told police that while he can remember what happened before and after the collision, he has "no memory" of striking anyone. He faces several charges including dangerous driving, causing grievous bodily injury to teenager Phoebe Clawson who was left with a broken collar bone, and fractured pelvis and ankle.
Mr Connor told the jury of eight women and four men that by the end of the case they would be satisfied that Aughey's dangerous driving "fell far below, and we emphasise, falls far below, of what would be expected from a careful and competent driver".
He added that Aughey's driving would be obvious to a careful and competent driver that it was dangerous to any person either on or off the road.
As part of the prosecution opening, the jury where shown a police video which captured Aughey's red Nissan Pulsar car driving across the road and a crowd surging forward only to be stopped by riot police.
The jury also heard that Ms Clawson was trapped under Aughey's car for a time after being carried on its bonnet for a short distance. She was freed by police who rocked the Nissan onto its side.
Mr Connor said that on that July 13 two years ago, "it was fair to say tension was high" in the area, with a large crowd of people gathering at the Ardoyne flashpoint in opposition to a contentious loyalist parade, banned by the Parades' Commission from passing the north Belfast shops.
The court heard that Aughey was part of the parade, and with it being prevented from moving any further than nearby Twaddle Avenue, he decided to drive home, up the Crumlin Road and past the Ardoyne shops. Mr Connor said traffic was slow moving and Aughey's Nissan at times was "essentially" slowed to a stop.
Police CCTV footage, he added, also pictured someone from the crowd moving across and in front of the Nissan, who appeared to kick the vehicle. Mr Connor said the car is then seen "reversing back, and ended up in a diagonal fashion across the road".
Mr Connor said that what is thought to have been a plastic bottle was thrown at the car and bounced off its roof. Aughey drove his car forward, while the lights on the pedestrian crossing were at red, and moved onto the opposite side of the road into a bus stop area and partly across an area of parking bays.
The prosecution lawyer said it was at this stage that Aughey "collided with a number of people", injuring a number of them. "Ms Clawson," he said, "was impacted by the vehicle, forcing her onto the bonnet of the vehicle", and as it continued on, she fell and was "dragged forward slightly and was trapped underneath the" Pulsar.
The car was "ultimately stopped" by police, who had to "roll the car onto its side to free Ms Clawson," but not before two officers were slightly injured when they too were struck by the vehicle.
Mr Connor also told the jury that "one thing is sure", that the injuries suffered by Ms Clawson, "amounts to grievous bodily injury".
Aughey denies a total of six charges and in addition to the injuries caused to the teenager, he is also accused of injuring a 'community representative' who was left with a broken wrist, and another young girl who "thankfully received only bumps and bruises". A man was also left with a sprained wrist, while two police officers were also hurt.
The trial, expected to last up to three weeks, continues tomorrow with plans to show further CCTV footage from the scene to the jury.
Belfast Telegraph DigitalNo. 25 Florida State (25-15, 10-9 ACC) took the series opener from rival Miami (18-20, 9-10) on Friday night with a 6-3 victory.
Another game and another home run for Dylan Busby, making him the first Seminole to ever notch three RBI in five consecutive games.
Quick Pitch:
- Florida State pitching took another step forward on Friday night. FSU starter Cole Sands scattered two runs over 4.1 innings on five hits, one walk, while striking out seven.
- The Hurricanes would take a 1-0 lead in the second when Sands allowed a solo home run to second baseman Romy Gonzalez.
- The Seminoles would take a three-run lead in the top of the fifth. Second baseman Matt Henderson hit a sacrifice fly to left field to score right fielder Rhett Aplin.
- Third baseman Dylan Busby then hit his eighth home run on the season. It was a three-run home run to put Florida State up 4-1 in the top of the fifth.
- Sands allowed another run in the bottom of the fifth, as right fielder Michael Burns singled home first baseman Christopher Barr, before getting the hook.
- The relief pitchers were impressive again as left-handed pitcher Alec Byrd came in with two men in scoring position with two outs in the fifth inning. He got out of the jam that inning without allowing a run to score, but did walk one.
- Right-hander Jim Voyles pitched three solid innings allowing one run on two hits and a walk, while striking out three. Voyles struck out three of the first five batters he faced on Friday night. The one run allowed was charged to him on an RBI walk after he had exited the game.
- "Closer" Drew Carlton came in for the four-out save in the eighth inning with two on, two out and a 2-0 count to Barr. He went 1.1 innings, allowing one walk and struck out one. Carlton threw two straight balls to Barr for the walk and then allowed a walk with the bases loaded. The walk to Barr and the run were charged to Voyles.
- The walk put the score at 5-3 after eight innings.
- In the top of the ninth, Busby would deliver again with Henderson on first base. The junior doubled to score Henderson from first and the score at 6-3.
- Busby stayed red hot in the series opener with Miami, as he went 3 for 5 with a home run, a double and four RBI.
- First baseman Drew Mendoza had a multi-hit game, going 2 for 4 with a double and two strikeouts.
- Henderson also kept his nice run going as he went 1 for 2 with an RBI on a sacrifice fly. He has gone 8 for his last 18 at-bats.
On Deck:
- Florida State attempts to clinch the series tomorrow night against Miami. First pitch is at 7:00 P.M.
- The Seminoles trot out southpaw Tyler Holton and the 'Canes will counter with lefty Michael Mediavilla.May 7 is World Password Day. To learn more about passwords, and simplifying the passwords in your life, go to PasswordDay.org
On Nov. 20, 2014, The New York Times Magazine published “The Secret Life of Passwords.” It was an examination of the humanity that often hides in a simple string of characters, and a reflection on why we imbue these codes with meaning when told not to. A motivational mantra, a swipe at the boss, an ode to a lost love, an inside joke with ourselves, a defining emotional scar — there was something captivating, inspiring even, in these tchotchkes of our inner lives.
In writing that article, I mined for passwords every chance I got: sitting in the doctor’s waiting room, riding Amtrak, filling that awkward lull during Thanksgiving dinner with in-laws. I interviewed several hundred people, most of them strangers. A surprising number were willing to take a broad leap of faith and give me not just the codes that they are never supposed to reveal, but also the emotional secret inside that makes these codes personal.
I met for coffee with a former prisoner to discuss why his password
included what used to be his inmate identification number
(“A reminder not to go back,” he offered).
I gently pressed a woman at the park about her having discovered her son’s password (“Lamda1969”) after he committed suicide, and her realization, painfully late, that he had been gay.
I emailed with a fallen-away Catholic who told me how his passwords incorporated the Virgin Mary (“It’s secretly calming,” he confessed).
Stuck on a tarmac, I sat next to a childless 45-year-old woman who eventually revealed to me that her password was the name of the baby boy she lost in utero (“My way of trying to keep him alive, I guess,” she said).
Entrancing in their own right, these gems also hinted at something larger: how humans are creative and sentimental creatures, what drives us to quirky routines, and why we turn shackles into art. The New York Times Magazine and Medium ran stories on the topic.
Readers began offering their own backstories behind their old passwords, 15 of which are below:Ads support the website by covering server and domain costs. We're just a group of gamers here, like you, doing what we love to do: playing video games and bringing y'all niche goodness. So, if you like what we do and want to help us out, make an exception by turning off AdBlock for our website. In return, we promise to keep intrusive ads, such as pop-ups, off oprainfall. Thanks, everyone!
By Ryan Tyner / February 3rd, 2013
Monolith Soft has shared what appears to be concept art for their 3DS project they are working on. They posted the art on their Japanese Facebook page. They are looking for staff to assist them on the game. The positions are for their Kyoto office, which is the team manned by Yasuyuki Honne and the team that developed Baten Kaitos and Baten Kaitos Origins.
So what does everybody think? The game certainly looks fascinating! I can’t help but think of the Wizard of Oz when I look at it. Hopefully we’ll have some news regarding the game soon, maybe at E3.
Monolith Soft’s Facebook Page
About Ryan Tyner Ryan is an owner and manager of the oprainfall website, mostly managing changes needed for the website and maintenance. He also writes articles from time-to-time. His gaming interests include mostly RPGs; both Western and Japanese. Ryan has a graduate degree in psychology.
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Who are we and what are we doing?
We are a team of Communication students that attend the University of Southern California (USC). Everyday, we are educated by our professors about the effects of media exposure on the masses, taking into account the new mediums that people conform to. The extensive pages of studies we are instructed to read, cover the effects of various types of media on individuals, but in all those pages, no one studies us-the students learning about the various types of people and the ways they are affected by a particular cereal commercial.
We are setting out to change this. By publishing our first Kickstarter campaign, "Glass in the Class", we set out to make a webisode series about the way Google Glass plays a role in a college setting. To clarify, the webisodes will not solely be composed of us wearing Glass, but mainly with the information and statistics we are able to generate after using them.
We will study the ways Glass improves learning in the classroom, as well as around campus. New episodes will be released weekly, which include clips from events taking place that week and findings about how Glass improves or worsens the learning experience for students. Through the use of research, studies that will be conducted, and findings, the webisodes will provide viewers with an understanding of how Google Glass will affect learning.
What process will you use when conducting the study?
In order to conduct our study, we have reached out to professors at our University in order to use Google Glass while they are lecturing and many have accepted. The study will be based on the three team members and the ways Google Glass affects heir learning patterns.
For example, for a week, one team member would use Google Glass to take notes using Evernote, search the web for additional facts about what the professor is teaching, and to record the lecture. Simultaneously, another team member would be sitting in the next seat, taking notes manually, like the rest of the class and at the end of the week, productivity levels will be measured by the amount of information that is retained by each student. After we run through the three team members, we will begin to monitor students in the class until we reach 50 students. After conducting the study on the 50 student panel, our findings will be compiled and we will put them out for everyone to see.
Why should I help you?
We have brought our project to Kickstarter for funding, because we want to operate independently from the University. We would like to cover all costs for the study so we can offer our published findings to Universities across the world, rather than a single school. Our findings will help transform the way schools view Google Glass and will aid in their decision to allow the product in classrooms or not. This is a one-of-a-kind opportunity to change the education system, because we don't come across the opportunity everyday to introduce a new method of learning to students around the world.
I want to pledge $50, but what will the T-shirt look like?
We're glad you asked! The shirts have been designed and come in any size. Here's a mockup:
What does your pledge cover?
Funding costs will bridge the gap between money we have raised and the money we still need for the first year of production and the cost of conducting studies. You will contribute to ignite the first research study about Google Glass and it's benefits in an educational setting. The research and findings that come out of the webisodes and studies will go directly into a journal that will be published for Universities around the world to consult when deciding whether or not to allow Glass in the Class (excuse my pun).Next
This is Joe Arpaio
Why was Arpaio in court in the first place, you ask?
To say he’s got a shady history with civil rights would be an understatement
Arpaio is the former sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona.
He was found guilty of contempt of court earlier this summer.
GUILTY
Next
Next
When his department began tackling illegal immigration in the early 2000s, Arpaio did the most rational thing he could think of...
Erm illegals are not people arg
And drained the entire sheriff’s budget in a crusade to those find those darn ‘aliens.'
Meanwhile, the Arizonans he was supposed to be serving faced the brunt of his budget cuts.
Police units tasked with protecting local towns had resources slashed in favor of immigration task forces. Deputies made fewer arrests, emergency response times took longer, and more cases were not investigated and ultimately ignored.
In El Mirage, a small town in Arpaio’s jurisdiction, 30 violent crimes went uninvestigated, including more than a dozen sexual assaults.
Arpaio was so bad at his job that the Bush administration began an investigation into
potential civil rights violations
1/5 of traffic incident reports have evidence of 4th Amendment violations.
Copyright © 2017 Blurred Bylines | Shari Rose
432 sexual assault and child molestation cases, majority involving Latinos, were not investigated.
The 3-year civil rights investigation into Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s practices continued under Obama. Here’s what the Justice Dept. found in 2011:
Latino inmates at county jails were routinely abused through excessive force and denial of health services.
comes into power
And weasels his way out of it
Soooo….
abuses that power
Racist old white guy
Sound familar?
gets caught
But I think...
Sound pretty un-American
And neglecting those he’s charged with protecting
Trump justified his presidential pardon by arguing that Arpaio served his country.
Violating Americans’ civil rights
So why did Trump pardon Arpaio?
Obama's a socialist Kenyan Muslim!!
Or maybe it’s a special kind of love between two old racist white dudes
But you really don’t need to look any further than Charlottesville to know why Trump pardoned Arpaio
Maybe it’s because they’re both birthers.
I mean, statistically, these guys hate most of the people they’ve ever encountered. That has to be exhausting. And probably disheartening. What a supremely strange thing to willingly do to one's self.
I think these KKK white power whatever people are kinda missing the point here. As demographics change and countries age, white supremacists' pool of future club members is shrinking. What they’re calling for grows more impossible year after year. They must know this, right?
Quick sidenote
It’s no secret what Trump believes
Obviously
And it’s no secret these hate groups support a Trump presidency
And it’s no secret these hate groups support a Trump presidency
Because nothing says leadership like using a humanitarian disaster to distract from your outright abuse of power.
It’s no surprise that Trump chose this weekend to announce the pardon. That’s how you know even he is aware of how bad this looks.
He announced it Friday evening. The night before Hurricane Harvey.
A person who supports the KKK and groupslike them is the thinnest definition of a person.
Yes, they are humans. But what they believe in is the furthest thing from humane.
And Trump supports them
**Like he’s a pilgrim kidnapped from the 1600s scary**
And though Pence’s beliefs are legitimately scary
Pence is at least intellectually and emotionally competent enough to be president.
Obviously!
Donald Trump is incapable of the presidency
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Created by Shari Rose
He’s not even capable of being an American
This guy?
Next
Latino drivers were 4 to 9 times more likely to be stopped than white drivers.
Trump has pardoned Sheriff Joe Arapio
So, what does this mean exactly?
… Here’s a little context firstThey can’t all end with “yes I said yes I will Yes,” but is there anything less satisfying than turning the final page of a book you’ve loved and being thoroughly dissatisfied with its conclusion? This only happens to us rarely, and while a weak ending usually won’t completely ruin a great novel, it can certainly leave us feeling frustrated. After the jump, we round up books both classic and contemporary that have had us hooked all the way through, only to leave us wanting more (and not in a good way). Warning: spoilers abound.
The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
It’s not the book’s final resolution, which nods back to and ultimately subverts the titular “marriage plot,” that we mind — Mitchell deciding to leave Madeleine alone because he knows he’ll never be what she really wants sounds about right to us. But we’re all kinds of conflicted about how Eugenides chose to have her part ways with Leonard, the bipolar genius who she loves, and who has become powerless to stop ruining her life. The problem is that the author never seems to entirely understand this fantastic (reportedly David Foster Wallace-based) character he’s created, so everything from Leonard’s manic honeymoon episode to the depression that follows to his abrupt departure from Madeleine’s life feels cartoonish and unfulfilling.Joshy.IGN Profile Joined May 2011 United States 513 Posts Last Edited: 2012-01-23 20:03:25 #1
Hello everyone! IGN Pro League is thrilled to announce our second iteration of Team Arena Challenge, featuring many respected and elite invited teams! This edition of Team Arena Challenge also has a semi-open, application-based qualifier element. If you are unfamiliar with IPL Team Arena Challenge, check out the following links:
IPL Team Arena Challenge 1 General Discussion thread
IPL Team Arena Challenge
Bracket Link: Official IPL 2 TAC Bracket
Stream Link: http://www.ign.com/ipl
Hello everyone! IGN Pro League isto announce our second iteration of Team Arena Challenge, featuring many respected and elite invited teams! This edition of Team Arena Challenge also has a semi-open, application-based qualifier element. If you are unfamiliar with IPL Team Arena Challenge, check out the following links: The Invited Teams!
SlayerS*
SlayerS* compLexity / MVP
compLexity / MVP Mousesports
Mousesports ReIGN
ReIGN Dignitas
Dignitas Team Liquid
Team Liquid FXO
FXO Quantic
Quantic Evil Geniuses
Evil Geniuses Empire
Empire oGs
oGs TSL
Note: The team Incredible Miracle, a joint winner of Team Arena Challenge 1, have declined their invitation. We are sorry that they did not wish to participate, and we hope to see their players in our various other events!
* : SlayerS has ultimately decided to withdraw from the tournament, so their position has been given to the third-place qualifying team
The team Incredible Miracle, a joint winner of Team Arena Challenge 1, have declined their invitation. We are sorry that they did not wish to participate, and we hope to see their players in our various other events!: SlayerS has ultimately decided to withdraw from the tournament, so their position has been given to the third-place qualifying team StarTale instead. The Format!
Semi-Open Qualifiers
IPL TAC 2 welcomes any uninvited team to apply for participation in our two online qualifiers. The first online qualifier will begin this Sunday, January 8th at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Standard Time ( IPL TAC 2 welcomes any uninvited team tofor participation in our two online qualifiers. The first online qualifier will beginat 10:00 a.m. Pacific Standard Time ( 18:00 GMT (+00:00) ). To apply for the semi-open qualifiers, send an e-mail to ffields (at) ign (dot) com with the subject line "IPL TAC 2 Application: (Team Name)" Please include your team roster and website if you have one in the e-mail. We are not placing a cap on how many teams may enter, but we do ask that only serious teams with Masters and Grand Masters players (with a MINIMUM of 5 players) send applications. All applications will be accepted or declined at the discretion of IGN Pro League. Our second online qualifier will be on Sunday, January 15th, also at 10:00 a.m. PST ( ). To apply for the semi-open qualifiers, send an e-mail towith the subject line "IPL TAC 2 Application: (Team Name)" Please include your team roster and website if you have one in the e-mail. We are not placing a cap on how many teams may enter, but we do ask that only serious teams with Masters and Grand Masters players (with a MINIMUM of 5 players) send applications. All applications will be accepted or declined at the discretion of IGN Pro League. Our second online qualifier will be on, also at 10:00 a.m. PST ( 18:00 GMT (+00:00) ) and any team that is accepted may play in one or both of the qualifiers. Only team managers may observe games, maximum two managers per team. ALL REPLAYS must be submitted to IPL admins from both teams to ensure that no games are missing or disputed. If all replays are not submitted, teams may be asked to re-play their matches.
All teams that are accepted for our qualifiers will be placed into a fully randomized, single-elimination bracket. The format of each match will be Winner's Format best of 9. The first map of each round will be determined by IPL, and the first players for each team will be declared to an IPL admin before the match begins. The default server for this tournament is North America unless both teams agree to play a game or series on another server. The top two teams from each of the two qualifiers will be seeded into the main tournament against our invited teams!
) and any team that is accepted may play in one or both of the qualifiers. Only team managers may observe games, maximum two managers per team. ALL REPLAYS must be submitted to IPL admins from both teams to ensure that no games are missing or disputed. Ifreplays are not submitted, teams may be asked to re-play their matches.All teams that are accepted for our qualifiers will be placed into a, single-elimination bracket. The format of each match will be Winner's Format best of 9. The first map of each round will be determined by IPL, and the first players for each team will be declared to an IPL admin before the match begins. The default server for this tournament is North America unlessteams agree to play a game or series on another server. Theteams from each of the two qualifiers will be seeded into the main tournament against our invited teams! The Main Tournament
This tournament is a double-elimination bo9 Winner's Format. Each match will consist of five players from each team. Teams choose their first player blind, then the winner of the first game stays on to play a new player from the losing team. The winner of each game stays on until all five players from the opposing team have been defeated. This can result in an all-kill, where one player defeats all five of the opposing players in a row. It can also result in a reverse all-kill, where a team's anchor player can come back from 0-4 to win it all for their team!
If Team A loses to Team B in their first match, they will drop into the lower or losers bracket and will have another chance to fight their way to the finals. The grand finals will require the team coming from the lower bracket to win twice in order to become the champions, while the team coming from the winners or upper bracket will only need to win one bo9. There will be 16 total teams competing from around the world!
This tournament is a double-elimination bo9 Winner's Format. Each match will consist of five players from each team. Teams choose their first player blind, then the winner of the first game stays on to play a new player from the losing team. The winner of each game stays on until all five players from the opposing team have been defeated. This can result in an all-kill, where one player defeats all five of the opposing players in a row. It can also result in a reverse all-kill, where a team's anchor player can come back from 0-4 to win it |
For many months I’ve intended to write an article on the Commons Space at the World Social Forum (WSF) which took place in Montreal in August of 2016. Leaving 2016 behind and looking forward to 2017 I feel this is an appropriate moment for reflection both on the WSF and the Commons within the broader political context.
The continued rise of a authoritarianism and the far right in 2016 in Europe and the US calls for renewed solidarity and political action. The world is changing and there is a sense of urgency. There is a deep need for new political imaginaries that transcend the tired divisive politics that have failed ordinary people in so many ways. Commons are key to this new imaginary.
So how might the Commons be considered as a political subject? This indeed was an important discussion at the World Social Forum(WSF). Coming to a shared understanding and language when speaking about Commons is a challenge many face in articulating this new political imaginary. Let me clarify my position with a little theoretical detour.
For me identification with the Commons precedes that of the market and state. Commons emerge from and serve what anthropologists call primary sociality, this is the sphere of social bonds, of tangible relationships, that of family, friendship, community, they are primary because our identification with these relationships takes precedence over commitments to more abstract and as a result secondary spheres of sociality, those of Nation, State or Market.
Consider this extended quotation which I find particularly useful from anthropologist Stephen Gudeman’s book, The Anthropology of Economy: Community, Market, and Culture:
The commons is a shared interest or value. It is the patrimony or legacy of a community and refers to anything that contributes to the material and social sustenance of a people with a shared identity: land, buildings, seed stock, knowledge of practices, a transportation network, an educational system, or rituals. As the lasting core, though changeable over time, the base represents temporality and continuity. Without a commons, there is no community; without a community, there is no commons (Emphasis Added).
Most modern economists — after Galileo, Descartes, and Locke interpret the material commons of a people as an independent, objective entity that can be properly managed only by having! expressly stated rights of access (Ostrom 1990). They re-read the commons as something separate from a human community, perhaps as a symbol of community but not the community itself. This market and modernist reading separates objects from subjects.
My use of the term “ commons” is different from that of most contemporary economists political scientists in another way. For them a commons is real property used by market agents and contained within a market; a commons is either an open-access resource, freely available to all, or a common-pool resource, regulated by rules of use (Ostrom 1990). These theorists would show how control of certain scarce resources through social rules rather than competitive exchange supports market ends and the achievement of efficiency; thus, they argue, market actors sometimes agree for reasons of self-interest to form limited economic communities with a commons. I think this formulation represents a misunderstanding of the social sphere of value, reduces the social to self-interest, and conflates community and market through the misapplication of the language of trade. Communities of the form I examine are not devised to serve market life; irreducibly social, they operate for themselves as they relate to self-interests and the world of trade.
On my view, the commons is the material thing or knowledge a people have in common, what they share, so that what happens to a commons is not a physical incident but a social event. Taking away the commons destroys community, and destroying a complex of relationships demolishes a commons. Likewise, denying others access to the commons denies community with them, which is exactly what the assertion of private property rights does. The so-called “tragedy of the commons “ (Hardin 1968), which refers to destruction of a resource through unlimited use by individuals, is a tragedy not of a physical commons but of a human community, because of the failure of its members to treat one another as communicants and its transformation to a competitive situation. Often a community economy does not despoil the environment as rapidly as a market economy does, because in doing so it despoils itself. (Gudeman, S.F., 2001, pp. 27.).[1]
This description informed not only by Gudeman’s own research but by decades of cross cultural anthropological research into the nature of economy and exchange is the understanding of the Commons I subscribe to. Commons initiatives are diverse and any effort towards definition must be broad enough to reflect this. I would emphasize that the ‘failure’ of any Commons must be considered in broader social, economic, political and environmental contexts in which they are embedded that can be more or less antagonistic toward their welfare. Where the powers of Market and State have interests even the most well organised Communities will struggle. The real tragedy of the Commons is that where a Commons is not recognised as serving the instrumental logics of Market and State they will be treated as externalities when in truth the Commons are the ground on which they stand.
There are various efforts to establish legal status for Commons initiatives but this is complex and caution must be exercised. Legislation is a processes of translation where by a State will seek to understand and make sense of Commons in it’s own legal terms, in the logics of rights and property, this must be carefully negotiated so as not to compromise the autonomy of Commons. Additionally to define what is a Commons is also to define what is not and so policies and legal definitions inadequate to the task of recognising a plurality of organisational forms and practices risk being instruments of exclusivity.
Today Commons are the dark matter of our political and economic universe. Their presence are felt but little understood if at all by mainstream politicians and economists. What is needed is a kind of Copernican revolution, a paradigm shift away from what Gibson Graham(2006) call a Capitalocentric and instrumental relationship with the world and to a way of life oriented towards celebrating and nurturing our interdependence and the common good as the base and basis for good living, Buen Vivir.
Utopian promises of ideals to be realised come the revolution have little appeal today. A future characterised by a shift away from Capitalocentric forms of social organisation would be Post-Capitalist. While P2P technologies offer many possibilities, Post-Capitalism as a general condition for society will not be achieved through technical wizardry alone, it requires a revolution of every day life, that is cultural change, a change in how people see, experience and act in the world, what is called prefigurative practice.
The Commons is not a means to some Post-Capitalist end, but an end in itself. Commons are sites, physical or digital for the realisation and celebration of human values, collaboration, cooperation, giving, sharing, friendship that are all too often marginalised or instrumentalised by the utilitarian thinking that dominates so much of our world today. In this sense Commons seek to resist capitalist instrumentality. Markets should serve society and not the other way around. Through recognition, shared learning and solidarity with the many initiatives that embody these values in practice a network of networks becomes visible. Michel Bauwens and the P2P Foundation (P2PF) among others have done incredible work in this regard and the P2PF Wiki is an invaluable resource.
Not only are other worlds possible, but they are already here.
My motivation to participate in organising the Commons Space at the World Social Forum came from this understanding of Commons. The Commons Space was an invitation for initiatives to gather in solidarity, to share, learn and to celebrate the work of the many who are proof that not only are other worlds possible, but they are already here. The program was the result of a series of calls for participation and with limited means the organisers worked to make the programming process as open and inclusive as possible.
The Post-Capitalist Convergence a key gathering in the program was a huge success and attracted over 150 people from a broad variety of initiatives. With careful facilitation in under 2 hours this diverse group were able to identify shared concerns which were further refined before being presented as a declaration on the final day of the WSF at the Agora. For those who are not familiar with it, the WSF is a huge event with tens of thousands of participants from all over the world. The Agora is the final gathering where outcomes and actions from the the many convergence sessions are shared. The Agora is an opportunity to make visible shared interests and invites the possibility for consolidation of efforts.
I include here a link to the declaration of ‘Initiatives of the Convergence for Post Capitalist Transition’ which emerged from the ideas and proposals discussed throughout the many meetings, convergence sessions and the Agora. In many ways this was a statement of shared values rather than of commitment to specific actions. Participants were encouraged to take what they found valuable from the experience and to realise those values in their own projects and contexts. It is useful to reflect on both specific actions that emerged from the WSF but also those areas that require further attention.
The question of how to make commons visible was taken up during the forum in a meeting of mapping initiatives. Silke Helfrich and Jon Richter from http://transformap.co/, Jason Nardi from Ripess, Wendy Brawer from http://www.greenmap.org/ came together to investigate the possibilities of interoperable standards for sharing data between different commons mapping projects. The group continue to work together and plan to organise further mapping events over the coming year. I also recommend reading Mapping as a Commons for more details on the concept.
Claudia Gómez-Portugal who works with the Commons Recovery Foundation has also initiated a discussion on learning as a commons. While still in the early stages this aims to bring together practitioners experienced with alternative approaches to learning. From home schooling to online peer learning networks to explore what is ‘Learning as a Commons’?
The wonderful Matthieu Rheaume and friends invited participants at the Commons Space to collaborate in the creation of a Commons card game which I look forward to playing. See the Facebook page for further details. With the help of some very talented Djs who produced a top secret mix, Matthieu also organised a Silent Disco and in the pouring rain took a group of 20 or so wild things for a memorable dancing tour through the streets of Montreal. If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.
If you are interested in getting in finding out more about any of these initiatives do get in contact via the Commons WSF mailing list.
A major problem at the WSF was that about 200 people primarily from the Global South were refused visas by the Canadian government and could not participate in panels and assemblies. This had a serious impact. The Commons Space was also affected as a participant from Dakar was among those refused. Montreal is a wonderful city and the Social Forum organising team worked really hard to make it a success but such restrictions do raise the question of whether it is appropriate to host the WSF in the North. One of our goals was to create a space where activists from North, South, East and West could meet. The promotion of an open call for participation through our own networks of contacts was not enough to ensure the kind of diverse representation we had hoped for. Most of the participants at the Commons Space were European or North American with a smaller contingent from Central and Latin America but there were very few participants if any from Africa, the Middle East, Asia or Russia. What can we as organisers do to support broader participation in future?
Language is another issue, while the definition for Commons that I provide at the beginning of the article is broad, many initiatives while sharing similar concerns and values do not use the language of Commons to describe what they do. There is significant crossover for example with movements for Social Solidarity Economy (SSE) and DeGrowth. A sensitivity to issues like these is important for those who wish to pursue constructive dialogue between movements.
Despite the challenges the Commons Space succeeded in bringing people from many different movements together. Including activists from Solidarity Economy, DeGrowth, Environmental and Transition movements to name just a few. The Post-Capitalist convergence was a big success with over 150 people taking part.
The following quote by Buckminster Fuller epitomises the DIY spirit that many P2P and Commons initiatives embody.
In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete. That, in essence, is the higher service to which we are all being called.
I love this quote and unfortunately I don’t have a proper source for it so taking it out of context and on face value considering the problematic model a metaphor for Capitalism or Liberalism as it is experienced today, then the quote encourages us to focus on building alternatives rather than engaging in struggle. This would assume that people have the freedom to pursue their lives in relative peace. While this might be the case for the lucky few, most people today are struggling to survive a system that is failing them and in times of political and economic crisis, vulnerable communities become targets of austerity and discriminative policies and the outspoken, artists, activists, journalists and intellectuals become the targets of repressive governments. If the failure of the problematic model threatens the basic common good then struggle is unavoidable. This historic moment is full of uncertainty. Cynicism is understandable but this is not a time to turn away from the world it is a time for renewed solidarity and political engagement.
I need no convincing of the significant contribution Commons approaches offer as solutions to many of the worlds problems. Commons are central to healthy and sustainable communities but today for many, Commons are more than that, they are a matter of survival.
In the months since the forum the extreme right have continued to make gains both in Europe and the US, the crisis of the political center is likely to propel this further. This is a crisis of political imagination and the need for new imaginaries that break with the old is more urgent than ever. Commons can make valuable and practical contributions to such a project by working in solidarity with other social movements but there is much work to be done.
Before the WSF I wrote an article for Shareable and included a number of questions, they were first posed by Commons Space participants as lines for investigation, avenues by which common cause with other social movements might be identified. Leaving 2016 behind and beginning a new year I invite you to take them and consider them once again. They remain open questions and useful guides for all who consider Commons essential for a shared future.
What role do commons play in the transition to a post-capitalist future? What is the relationship of social movements to the commons movement? Is the notion of the commons and the practice of commoners present in the discourse of social movements? Do the movements organize according to commons principles? Have they been empowered by open infrastructures as commons? Is there an understanding of the commons as a political framework rather than a resource management arrangement? Are these new political movements rethinking democracy, practising or working toward participatory and radical democracy? Are social movements and commoners re-imagining state power to shift legislation and resources to support commons? Do these new political movements represent a window of opportunity to widen the space for commoning or how can commoners mobilize in response to movements whose activities accelerate enclosure, for example TTIP, the rise of far right nationalism or political repression and internet censorship?
As a closing remark I wish to express my deep thanks to all who organised events and participated in making the Commons Space and the World Social Forum a success. Special thanks is due to Elisabetta Cangelosi, Nicole Leonard, Frederic Sultan, Alain Ambrosi and Yves Otis as the core organising team who made the Commons Space a reality. I also wish to thank the wonderful people at Ecto and PercoLab who hosted us during the WSF and Foundation Charles Leopold Mayer for their generous support that enabled us to bring so many wonderful, inspiring activists together.
Best Wishes to you all in 2017
In Solidarity
ReferenceAbout 14 million Americans are out of work
What does the last-minute deal to raise the debt ceiling do to aid the flagging, faltering economy? Nothing.
The economy is in appalling shape. Last week, the Commerce Department’s latest estimate of economic growth left many economists agog. In the second quarter, the economy grew at an annual rate of 1.3 percent. In the first, it grew at an annual rate of just 0.4 percent, a figure revised down sharply from previous estimates. Based on the first six months of 2011, the economy is growing less than 1 percent per year, about one-third of the speed we would expect during a normal expansion. In short, the recovery has completely stalled and the economy is perilously close to double dipping back into recession.
Those horrid growth figures are magnified by horrible jobs figures. Currently, 14.1 million Americans are out of work. Millions more are underemployed, discouraged from hunting for jobs, or “missing” workers who have elected not to enter the labor market. Even if the economy suddenly starts growing at the pace of the 2002-07 expansion, the unemployment rate would not drop to its prerecession level of 5 percent until 2018.
But the debt deal pays no attention to the unfolding catastrophe in the real economy. The deal’s major accomplishment, as touted by the White House, is hardly an accomplishment at all—merely an admission that Congress has probably avoided doing too much damage during this idiotic debate. “Independent analysts, economists, and ratings agencies have all made clear that a short-term debt limit increase would create unacceptable economic uncertainty by risking default again within only a matter of months and as [Standard & Poor’s] stated, increase the chance of a downgrade,” the White House noted. “By ensuring a debt limit increase of at least $2.1 trillion, this deal removes the specter of default, providing important certainty to our economy at a fragile moment.” In other words, a round of applause: Congress has probably managed to shoo away the shadows that Congress itself cast.
And many analysts argue that the debt compromise might actually do the economy harm by cutting government spending while the recovery is still soft and reducing investment in research, education, and infrastructure. Paul Krugman, perhaps the Obama administration’s most trenchant critic from the left, argues that point. “It will damage an already depressed economy; it will probably make America’s long-run deficit problem worse, not better; and most important, by demonstrating that raw extortion works and carries no political cost, it will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status,” he writes.
More moderate prognosticators agreed. “When you look at the debt burden, there is a numerator and a denominator. We may end up creating so much damage to the denominator, which is growth of GDP, that what we do in the numerator, reducing the debt, may end up being insufficient,” Mohamed El-Erian, the CEO of PIMCO, told Bloomberg.
To be fair, the bill does backload its cuts toward the end of the 10-year budget window, meaning that the real deficit-cutting may happen when the economy is stronger than it is right now. According to the Congressional Budget Office’s scoring of the legislation, the deal cuts just $25 billion from the 2012 budget and $47 billion from fiscal year 2013. That is not much, given that the government allots about $1.3 trillion per year to discretionary spending.
But considering how close the economy is to a double dip, these small short-term cuts might be enough to kill the recovery. The Obama administration failed to get its most effective, most desired stimulus measures written into the final compromise, despite months of wrangling. The deal lets the payroll tax cut and the federal extension to state unemployment benefits expire, even though the economy—particularly the labor market—has not really improved since those measures were enacted. Not extending the unemployment benefits alone might shave enough from GDP to send the economy back to scratch growth. Today, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated that not extending federal benefits will cut $60 billion in annual spending. If you presume that each dollar of unemployment insurance boosts GDP by $1.60, that alone smacks 0.5 percent off of GDP.
When confronted with that fact, members of Congress shrug. My colleague Dave Weigel asked Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., about the discretionary spending cuts, and whether they threaten growth and jobs. “Sure they do,” he answered. “Now, what we don’t know is: What will the offset be of improved certainty and confidence? And we’ll just have to see.” The White House, for its part, says it now plans to “pivot” to jobs, with the debt ceiling and compromise bill out of the way. But the debt ceiling debate seems to have proven that no stimulus measures can make it through this Congress. How could they, if a conservative bill containing all cuts barely managed to squeak through?Under fire from feminists about the "sexist" depictions of "Slave Leia, rumor has it that Disney is planning to drop all merchandise featuring Princess Leia in her slave costume and pull any reference to it in marketing, yanking the chain on one of the most iconic costumes in sci-fi history.
The report comes from the site Making Star Wars, which regularly leaks insider info on the latest Star Wars developments. Editor-in-chief Jason Ward said that while he'd heard rumors a while back that Disney would be pulling the feminist-infuriating "Slave Leia" figure, he didn't think the story had legs. But a recent Facebook post from Star Wars comic artist J. Scott Campbell seemed to confirm that Disney was going to be heeding feminists' call, saying that Marvel artists are now forbidden not just to feature Leia in the costume but to even depict her in "a sexy pose."
"Disney is already well on it's' way to wiping out the'slave' outfit from any future products period," wrote Campbell. "You will NOT see an[y] future merchandising featuring the slave outfit again. Trust me.... I've heard it from two sources. We can't even draw Leia in a sexy pose at Marvel, let alone in that outfit! We also had a 3-D SL [Slave Leia] statue killed at a major manufacturer because there will no longer be any SL merchandise."
As Ward explains, while Leia was described in the Return of the Jedi script as wearing a dancing girl's clothes, collectors in the 1990s began to reference the figure as "Slave Leia," and the name stuck. Ward suggests that pressure to pull the character might come not only the left, who find the "slave" reference demeaning to women, but also to some conservative parents, who might find the sexual aspects of the character distasteful. But with Disney's all-out embrace of political correctness, the former is obviously the driving factor.
Carrie Fisher herself recently brought up the slave costume, advising The Force Awakens star Daisy Ridley to "fight for your outfit."
"Don't be a slave like I was," said Fisher. "You keep fighting against that slave outfit."
Toyland notes that the Star Wars toymaker Hasbro recently "came under fire for not just having a lack of female Star Wars toys in general, but also for the fact that the Star Wars Black Series line went for several years with just a single female figure in the roster. The fact that it was the scantily-clad Return of the Jedi Leia, rather than any of the several other outfits the Princess wore during the saga, drew even more ire than if there had been no female toys at all."
Yet again, a major company caves to the demands of the left. Other than liberal feminists, the other major winners are toy collectors, whose "Slave Leias" just skyrocketed in value.Many unknown dinosaurs await discovery in rock formations all over the world, but some new species are hiding in plain sight. One such animal, described in an in-press Cretaceous Research paper, had one of the largest heads of any dinosaur.
As recounted in the study by Yale paleontologist Nicholas Longrich, in 1941 the partial skeleton of a large horned dinosaur was found in the 74-million-year-old rock of New Mexico's San Juan County. The bones stayed in their field jackets for over five decades, and it was not until 1995 that they were prepared. Using the dinosaur Pentaceratops as a model—which is common in the New Mexico rock in which the skeleton was found—the giant dinosaur was completed and put on display at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, where it gained the Guinness World Record for the largest dinosaur skull ever found (a somewhat dubious distinction since the skull was incomplete and most of the frill was reconstructed with plaster).
But the Sam Noble specimen may not be a Pentaceratops at all. Longrich lists 22 features that distinguish the large specimen from the smaller Pentaceratops and more closely associate it with the subgroup of horned dinosaurs containing Triceratops, Torosaurus and their closest relatives (called the Triceratopsini). On this basis Longrich has called the unique specimen Titanoceratops.
The recognition of Titanoceratops generates new hypotheses about the evolution of the last of North America's horned dinosaurs. At about 74 million years old, Titanoceratops extends the range of the Triceratopsini back about five million years and may indicate that large body size evolved among this subgroup earlier than had been thought. Though certainly an impressive specimen, the main value of Titanoceratops may be in helping paleontologists trace the evolution of horned dinosaurs just before the catastrophic end-Cretaceous mass extinction.
Dinosaurs do not come with name tags, however, and as this study shows, specimens are subject to reassignment. Specimens thought to belong to one species have turned out to represent another, and dinosaurs thought to be unique have been found to be growth stages of an already known species. During the past year paleontologists have been actively debating whether or not the horned dinosaur Torosaurus is actually the adult stage of Triceratops, and e-mails sent through the Dinosaur Mailing List have already suggested that Pentaceratops and Titanoceratops may be growth stages of just one species as well. This is not something that will be resolved in a week, a month, or even a decade. Skeletal anatomy, the microstructure of dinosaur bone and the geological context of multiple specimens all come into play, and (as always) more fossils are needed for comparison. The animal Longrich has named Titanoceratops certainly did exist, but as with any other species, the animal's name is a scientific hypothesis that will likely be discussed and debated in years to come.
There was also an academic substory to the debut to Titanoceratops. The paper describing the dinosaur became available as an accepted, in-press manuscript, meaning that it has not officially been published yet. This raised some sticky questions about the way species are named and scientific papers are disseminated.
At Chinleana, paleontologist Bill Parker noted that the rules for naming new dinosaur species set forth by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature require that papers appear in print. Since we don't know when the Titanoceratops paper will be officially published, then, an unscrupulous onlooker could potentially muck up the whole process by rushing a description of the same animal into print by another route. This problem was also pointed out earlier last month by paleontologist Andy Farke, where he provided several examples of "zombie nomenclature" in which new species were described in online publications before becoming officially recognized.
Having pre-print papers is advantageous because it speeds up the dissemination of scientific ideas, but it can also be a risky move for authors. This issue could be resolved if the body charged with overseeing species names, the ICZN, changed their practices regarding electronic publications, but as Farke notes, this would be a bureaucratic nightmare that may take years to sort out. Something will have to change, though. I hope the transition will be sparked by the recognition that journals need to come to grips with online publication and not by an unfortunate case of claim-jumping.
References:
Longrich, N. (2010). Titanoceratops ouranous, a giant horned dinosaur from the Late Campanian of New Mexico Cretaceous Research DOI: 10.1016/j.cretres.2010.12.00749ers’ Reid, Warriors’ Green respond to McNair’s inflammatory comment
A comment made by Texans owner Bob McNair to his peers has likely erased whatever goodwill was created when NFL players and owners met Oct. 17 to discuss ongoing protests of the national anthem.
The day after the meeting, which was generally described as postitive, McNair used the phrase “inmates running the prison” to express his concern to other owners that the players were wielding too much influence, ESPN The Magazine reported in a story published Friday.
In response, the Texans players reportedly considered staging a walkout Friday. Ten players actually left the facility, and wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins didn’t return. Houston head coach Bill O’Brien said Hopkins took a “personal day.”
Niners safety Eric Reid was one of 12 current players at the meeting in New York with 11 owners, a group that included McNair.
“I don’t think you could have picked a poorer choice of words, to refer to us as inmates in your prison,” Reid said. “But welcome to America 2017.”
Houston Texans owner Bob McNair watches the game from the field during the first quarter of an NFL football game at NRG Stadium, Sunday, Oct. 1, 2017, in Houston. ( Karen Warren / Houston Chronicle ) Houston Texans owner Bob McNair watches the game from the field during the first quarter of an NFL football game at NRG Stadium, Sunday, Oct. 1, 2017, in Houston. ( Karen Warren / Houston Chronicle ) Photo: Karen Warren, Houston Chronicle Photo: Karen Warren, Houston Chronicle Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close 49ers’ Reid, Warriors’ Green respond to McNair’s inflammatory comment 1 / 3 Back to Gallery
On Friday, McNair issued a public apology through the Texans saying he was using a figure of speech and not referring directly to players. Reid said he got “positive vibes” from McNair during the meeting in New York with other players.
“I want to believe he didn’t mean it, but that’s the norm in our society,” Reid said. “And that’s the issue. So we’ve got to get that reversed.”
A host of NFL players weighed in on McNair’s comments, many on social media.
Seahawks cornerbacks Richard Sherman, via Twitter, said: “Don’t apologize! You meant what you said. Showing true colors allows ppl to see you for who you are.” Raiders tackle Marshall Newhouse referred to himself as “Inmate #63925552.”
The conversation was also part of the NBA on Friday.
Warriors forward Draymond Green said McNair should be fined by commissioner Roger Goodell.
“I don’t think it should be up to (McNair) to change his behavior,” Green said. “They got a commissioner just like any other league. First they were sons of bitches and now inmates? I know some inmates. They don’t pay taxes. They’re not community leaders. They’re not (Eagles safety Malcolm) Jenkins, flying to the White House, flying to D.C., doing all these things to make a difference. They’re not (Colin) Kaepernick, donating $1 million. That’s like, c’mon man — inmates? That’s unacceptable.”
On Oct. 19, a day after the meeting with owners, Reid echoed many players and said the discussion was productive. He said the NFL plan to raise awareness of issues such as racial injustice made him feel that, eventually, he would stand for the national anthem.
Reid was the second NFL player to protest, following Kaepernick, and he’s been perhaps the most vocal regarding protests this season with Kaepernick unemployed.
NFL executive Troy Vincent, who has “little patience for the protests,” according to the ESPN story, called 49ers general manager John Lynch on Oct. 14 and told him that if Reid knelt during the anthem the next day he shouldn’t “bother to show up” at the meeting with owners because he wouldn’t be taken seriously.
On Friday, Reid said that conversation wasn’t relayed to him, and Vincent didn’t speak with him directly when he was in New York. Reid noted Kaepernick wasn’t invited to the meeting.
“Colin was the first one to start protesting,” Reid said. “I was the second. So it’s blasphemous to try to create some sort of compromise without us being in the room.... A lot of (players), bless their hearts, I admire them for joining the cause, they don’t even protest. A couple of players that were in the meeting have not participated in a protest.
“But those are the folks that you want to talk to about ending our protest? It doesn’t make any sense. It’s asinine to not invite Colin to that meeting and then to say that I wouldn’t be taken seriously in that meeting, if I continued to protest.”
Eric Branch covers and Connor Letourneau are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: ebranch@sfchronicle.com cletourneau@sfchronicle.comPlastic Bags By the Numbers 19 billion: Plastic bags used each year by Californians 552: Plastic bags each Californian uses every year, approximately 147,000: Tons of waste created by plastic bags 5 percent to 6 percent: Portion of plastic materials recycled in the state each year 500 to 1,000: Years it takes for a plastic bag to degrade, some scientists say; the exact figure hasn’t been determined.
Trendsetting California is on its way to becoming the first state to ban plastic shopping bags.
In a 41-27 vote, the Assembly on Wednesday passed a bill that would prohibit grocery stores from offering plastic bags starting January 2012. Instead, consumers would either have to carry their groceries in reusable bags or pay 5 cents or more for a paper bag made of partially recycled content.
Convenience stores and drugstores, as well as mom-and-pop shops, would have to ditch the plastic bags as of July 2013.
The law, if enacted, would be a milestone for environmentalists who have long thought of plastic shopping bags as the scourge of the planet, especially for the ocean and marine animals that often ingest the bags.
The key to passage was support from the California Grocers Association, which switched from opposing the bill, giving the measure new life.
David Heylen, spokesman for the grocers group, said the bill made both environmental and economic sense after recent revisions. The most important of the changes was an amendment that blocks local governments from enacting new or stricter laws.
Cities such as San Francisco and Oakland already have bans, and 20 other California municipalities are considering similar laws. Heylen said there was a growing concern among grocery chains that a patchwork of laws would be untenable. Another important change was that the bill covered not just supermarkets but convenience stores and smaller markets.
“We wanted uniformity in who the bill impacts, and we wanted uniformity in how it was enacted,” Heylen said.
Environmental groups including Heal the Bay and San Diego Coastkeeper hailed the passage and said it could lead the way for other states.
“We hope California can show other states that this is doable. We think this bill can be a model for other states to follow,” said Gina Goodhill, who specializes in oceans for the Los Angeles-based Environment California.
Not everyone was pleased with the bill’s passage, however.
Tim Shestek, spokesman for the American Chemistry Council, a trade group for chemistry companies including plastic makers, said if the bill is enacted as now written, it could threaten as many as 500 jobs in the Los Angeles area and amount to a $1 billion tax on consumers, who will be forced to pay for bags that grocers once gave away.
“If you forget your bags, there is no way out. You have to pay,” Shestek said.
He pointed out that buying a paper bag would cost a minimum of 5 cents — grocers could charge more and any money collected would be theirs and wouldn’t be directed to any recycling or cleanup programs.
Joan Robinson, 67, of Mission Hills, who was carrying her small stash of groceries in a reusable bag, wasn’t too concerned about having to pay more. Even though the proposed law might cost consumers in the long run, she sees its benefits — namely keeping the bags out of the ocean and helping her not to forget her bags at home, she said.
Shestek argued that the proposed law would cost the state too much to implement. The bill estimates a cost of $1.5 million in each of the first two years to set up and regulate the program.
Dalon Cherry, 34, of North Park questioned the state’s priorities.
“We have more important things to worry about — the streets, crime, programs for children,” he said while unloading a cart filled with plastic bags in the Ralphs parking lot in Hillcrest.
Besides, Cherry said, he prefers plastic over paper. He reuses plastic bags all the time for trash-can liners or when friends take leftovers home.
Supporters of the bill say the cost to oversee the new program is minuscule when compared with the costs and environmental damage plastic bags cause. According to the bill, written by Assemblywoman Julia Brownley, D-Santa Monica, California spends $25 million a year to clean up plastic-bag waste, and that’s on top of the $300 million that municipalities spend annually.
The bill heads next to a state Senate committee, and then the entire Senate will have to debate and vote on it.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger supports the bill, a spokesman has said.
The San Diego-area delegation was split on Wednesday’s vote, with Democrats Mary Salas of Chula Vista, and Marty Block and Lori Saldaña of San Diego voting yes. Republicans Martin Garrick of Solana Beach, Joel Anderson of La Mesa, Diane Harkey of Dana Point, and Kevin Jeffries of Lake Elsinore voted against the bill. Nathan Fletcher of San Diego abstained, saying he wanted to see the final version from the Senate.After the election of President Trump, Mark Lilla pleaded for the end of “identity liberalism,” claiming that its insistence on difference came at the expense of the commonality needed for the polity to succeed. His advice seems unheeded, however, as David Brooks notes in critiquing the Women’s March as the same “shockingly hollow identity politics” that has “doomed them so often.”
Not to be outdone, Richard B. Spencer, a self-described “identitarian,” continues to make news after being assaulted after the inauguration, with some describing the violence as a “transcendental experience” for anyone identified with the “black-bloc.”
Identity politics are here to stay, it would seem, on left and right. Shuja Haider notes the appropriation of identity politics by the “alt-right.” The safety pin worn by progressives signaling themselves as a “portable safe space” is now mirrored by similar “identitarian” tactics of white nationalists. As she puts it, the leaders of the alt-right are “clear |
At a June 20 appearance in Denver, Sanders drew an estimated 5,000 supporters at a routine campaign stop, equaling the size of the crowd at Hillary Clinton's campaign launch speech in New York City the previous weekend.[74]
On July 1, a crowd of at least 10,000 came to see Sanders in Madison, Wisconsin, nearly twice the size of the biggest crowd of his main primary challenger, Hillary Clinton.[75] A Sanders campaign event in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on July 3, drew over 2,500 supporters. To date, this was the largest audience for any 2016 presidential candidate in Iowa.[76] Sanders drew a crowd of over 11,000 on July 18 in Phoenix, Arizona. At that time this had been the largest crowd of any 2016 candidate, of any party.[77]
Bernie Sanders rally in Portland, Oregon, August 2015
On July 26, "In a defiant, soaring address to end a day of intense and sometimes painful political drama," Bernie Sanders delivered a speech in Philadelphia intended to secure Hillary Clinton the White House, urging his supporters to vote for Hillary Clinton and, to those disinclined to vote for her, pointing out the unacceptable risks of permitting the victory of Donald Trump. [78]
On a three-day West Coast tour in August, Black Lives Matter activists interrupted an event in Seattle. The activists removed Sanders from the podium and Sanders looked on as they spoke. The campaign eventually shut down the event.[79] On the following day Sanders spoke to a crowd of 28,000 supporters at the Moda Center in Portland, Oregon,[80] and on August 10 more than 27,000 people showed up for his rally in the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena.[81] On September 14, 2015, Sanders spoke at Liberty University, a highly Republican-influenced college,[relevant? – discuss] during their Convocation.[82]
In September, Sanders made three speeches in New Hampshire on Labor Day, during his first campaign swing since the launch of his political group, Our Revolution. In these, he attempted to convince the progressives who had backed him into backing Clinton. In doing so, he faced down vociferous objections from audience members who still supported third-party candidates such as Jill Stein, and those who objected to Clinton as their party's nominee. [83]
Polls [ edit ]
Sanders supporters, January 2016
Nationwide, Sanders had considerable support among white and liberal-leaning Democrats but considerably less among nonwhite and moderate or conservative Democrats. An April 2015 report by The New York Times suggested that "[o]nly about a quarter of Democratic‑leaners hold the consistently liberal views that would potentially put them to the left of Mrs. Clinton".[84] A June 2015 New York Times report said, "in an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll this week, 95 percent of nonwhite Democratic voters said they could see themselves supporting Mrs. Clinton for the nomination in the primary. Only about one-quarter of respondents said they could see themselves voting for Mr. Sanders".[25]
Two August 2015 polls showed Sanders leading Clinton by seven points in New Hampshire.[85][86] Both the RealClearPolitics polling average and The Huffington Post Pollster average for the New Hampshire Democratic primary showed Sanders leading Clinton by about 3.5 percent on August 28, 2015.[87][88]
On November 20, an online NBC News poll showed that Sanders's national support continued to grow. A poll that surveyed 5,755 adults nationwide showed Sanders was the preferred candidate of 33% of Democratic and independent voters, still trailing Clinton by 16 points.[89] Sanders continued to show a strong lead among young voters and trailed Clinton by only three points among white voters.
According to a national Quinnipiac University poll on December 2, Sanders polled ahead of the top four Republican candidates in a general election matchup.[90][91]
In weeks preceding the Democratic primaries, Sanders was leading in New Hampshire by 50% to Clinton's 46% and behind Clinton in Iowa, 48% to 45%.[92] A Quinnipiac University poll released on January 12, 2016, showed Sanders leading in Iowa by 49 percent to Clinton's 44 percent.[93]
Caucuses and primaries [ edit ]
Sanders narrowly lost the 2016 Iowa Democratic caucuses by 0.25% of the vote.[94] He won the New Hampshire Democratic primary on February 9, 2016 by 22.4% of the vote (60.4% to Hillary Clinton's 38.0%), receiving strong support from voters who considered it important to nominate a candidate who is "honest and trustworthy".[95][96] This made him the first self-described democratic socialist and first non-Christian to win a major party's U.S. presidential primary.[97][98][99] In his home state of Vermont, Sanders received 86.1% of the vote, denying Clinton any delegates. He also won "landslide" victories in Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii. On March 8, Sanders pulled off an upset in the Michigan Democratic primary, where polls had favored Clinton by significant margins.[100] Of the 78% of pledged delegates allocated in primaries and caucuses by May 10, 2016, Clinton had won 54% to Sanders's 46%.[101] Of the 715 unpledged delegates or "superdelegates" who voted in the convention in July, Clinton had received endorsements from 505 (71%), Sanders 41 (6%).
Nevada State Convention [ edit ]
At the Nevada Democratic State Convention in May, Sanders delegates were outraged by changes to and interpretations of rules that resulted in denial of the credentials of almost 60 Sanders backers, with the result that Sanders, instead of edging Clinton out in delegates to the national convention, came in second.[102] Angry Sanders backers shouted down keynote speaker Barbara Boxer, a Clinton supporter. It was widely reported that some shoving, and throwing of chairs and other objects, ensued before Nevada Democratic Party Chairwoman Roberta Lange ended the convention early, but no actual evidence of chair-throwing ever emerged.[103][104] After the convention was adjourned, casino security guards and local police were called to remove Sanders supporters who refused to leave the casino ballroom.[105] Lange received death threats to herself and her family online and by telephone after "Sanders supporters posted Lange's home and business addresses, email and cell phone number online." Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs said, "We do not condone violence or encourage violence or even threats of violence", and denied that the campaign had a role "in encouraging the activity that the party is complaining about."[106][107][108]
The Nevada Democratic Party wrote to the Democratic National Committee accusing Sanders supporters of a "penchant for extra-parliamentary behavior — indeed, actual violence — in place of democratic conduct in a convention setting."[109] Sanders responded, "Our campaign of course believes in non-violent change and it goes without saying that I condemn any and all forms of violence, including the personal harassment of individuals," but added that his supporters had not been treated with "fairness and respect."[109] In April 2017, the New York Observer reported that DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz had "used the nationally reported Nevada Convention to attack Sanders supporters, spreading a falsehood that they were throwing chairs. Wasserman Schultz never apologized or rescinded her comments."[110]
Demonstrations [ edit ]
Sanders supporters organized various demonstrations in support of his campaign. They are known to have participated in large numbers in the Donald Trump Chicago rally protest[111] and the Democracy Spring protests.[112] On April 3, a large number of Sanders supporters protested in front of CNN Headquarters in Los Angeles, demonstrating against the amount of airtime Sanders received in comparison to other candidates.[113]
Advertising [ edit ]
The campaign began to buy advertising in November 2015 when it spent $2 million on television ads.[114] In the last two weeks of December and the first week of January, the Sanders campaign spent $4.7 million on TV ads, outspending the Clinton campaign.[115] Prior to the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries, the campaign launched the advertisement "America".[116]
Staff [ edit ]
The campaign staff included people with deep political campaign experience and people new to campaign organizing.[117] Campaign manager Jeff Weaver started in politics on Sanders's 1986 gubernatorial campaign.
Claire Sandberg was the Director of Digital Organizing. She worked with senior advisers Becky Bond and Zack Exley to run distributed operations leveraging volunteers where the campaign did not yet have paid staff.[118]
On April 14, 2016, Sanders fired the campaign's national Jewish outreach coordinator, Simone Zimmerman, after it was discovered that she had used foul language to describe the Prime Minister of Israel and Hillary Clinton on Facebook. The hiring of Zimmerman, who has a history of opposition to Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza, had been widely criticized by Jewish groups.[119]
Sexual discrimination allegations [ edit ]
In January 2019, The New York Times reported that allegations of sexual harassment, demeaning treatment and pay disparities pertaining to women in the campaign were being circulated by email.[120] Sanders attributed any such misdeeds to members of his staff, claiming that he was not only unaware of them but had instituted new protocols for addressing such issues.[121] Jeff Weaver, Sanders’s campaign manager in 2016, acknowledged the existence of problems and expressed a desire to do better in any future campaign.[122] Sanders extended an apology on CNN to "any woman who feels like she was not treated appropriately".[123]
Sanders's campaign committee issued a statement thanking the campaign workers for raising the concerns, and pointing at new policies in the 2018 Senate re-election campaign, already implemented prior to the events from 2016 coming to light.[124] Former staffers sought a meeting to address the events,[124] and in response, Sanders met with them in mid-January.[125] The meeting was facilitated by three female leaders in workplace and employment matters. They stated that it was part of "a process to create practical ways for improving the campaign’s culture," and were hoping other campaigns would also take note.[125]
Reception [ edit ]
Part of the line to enter at the Bernie Sanders rally in Washington Square Park
There was widespread support of Sanders's vision of a "political revolution", but others believed his vision was unrealistic or overly liberal.[126] Speaking on Meet the Press on January 24, conservative political commentator David Brooks commented on earlier interviews of Clinton and Sanders, "If I didn't know anything about the race until I saw these back-to-back interviews today, I would think, wow, Sanders really has honed his message, and he's captured both authenticity and joy, and Hillary Clinton hasn't honed her message."[127]
Filling in for Sanders at a campaign event in Iowa, Cornel West "electrified" the crowd, opening his speech by saying, "What a blessing it is to be here with all of my brothers and sisters of all colors here in central Iowa! Brother Bernie and I come from a great tradition, the tradition of Martin Luther King Jr. and Albert Einstein; the tradition of Helen Keller and Ella Baker; the tradition of John Dewey—who is the founder of pragmatism, but he was a democratic socialist, too. The point is that, you see, democratic socialism is not some kind of alien element. It’s organic and indigenous in the history of this nation."[128]
After polls showed Clinton leading by a wide margin in the March 8 Michigan primary, Sanders won in what has been called "one of the greatest upsets in modern political history,"[129] drawing comment from political pundits. ABC News wrote, "Bernie Sanders' win in Michigan will go down as the stunner of the election cycle to date, handing his campaign a fresh rationale and new evidence of his rival's vulnerabilities at a critical time in the race. Sanders’ win will raise new questions about the presumed strength and dominance of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. (It will also raise questions about the reliability of state-level polling)."[130] Sanders said of the victory, "what we have done is created the kind of momentum that we need to win."[131]
On April 1, 2016, Sanders was interviewed by the New York Daily News editorial board.[132] Dylan Byers of CNN politics wrote that the interview "showed him having difficulty clearly answering some questions about both foreign and domestic policy". In response to the criticism from the press, Tad Devine, the senior adviser for the Sanders campaign, told CNN, "I understand when you go to New York you're going to get hit by the tabloids, that's what the primaries are about".[133] The Clinton campaign seized on what they considered a poor performance by Sanders,[134] and sent the interview transcript to millions of its backers in a fundraising email, arguing that Sanders hadn't thought through how he would accomplish his biggest goals.[135] But Peter Eavis of The New York Times wrote that "Bernie Sanders probably knows more about breaking up banks than his critics give him credit for" and that "taken as a whole, Mr. Sanders’s answers seem to make sense."[136]
An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll conducted May 15 through 19 found Clinton and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump in a "dead heat" within the poll's margin of error. But the same poll found that if Sanders were the Democratic nominee, 53% of voters would support him to 39% for Trump.[137] Clinton and Trump were the least popular likely candidates in the poll's history. Sanders received a 43% positive, 36% negative rating.[138]
Clinton named presumptive nominee [ edit ]
On June 6, 2016, the Associated Press and NBC News reported that Clinton had become the presumptive nominee after reaching the required number of delegates, including both pledged and unpledged delegates (superdelegates), to secure the nomination.[139] On June 7, Clinton secured a majority of pledged delegates after winning the California and New Jersey primaries. After the final primary election, the District of Columbia's on June 14, Sanders met with Clinton and congratulated her on her successful campaign. On June 16, Sanders gave a speech broadcast live online to his supporters, saying:
I look forward in the coming weeks to continue discussion between the two campaigns to make certain that your voices are heard and that the Democratic Party passes the most progressive platform in its history, and that Democrats actually fight for that agenda. I also look forward to working with Secretary Clinton to transform the Democratic Party, so that it becomes a party of working people and young people, and not just wealthy campaign contributors, a party that has the guts to take on Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry, the fossil fuel industry and the other powerful special interests that dominate so much of our political and economic life.[23]
After the speech, the head of National Nurses United, the first national union to back Sanders, said, "What we know about Bernie is that he will be there. He’s always been there as a fighter in the Senate, but that he will continue to be there for us. But most importantly, his message was, we have to be there, we have to build a movement, we have to fight."[140] In July, in an effort to win Sanders's endorsement and his supporters' approval, Clinton endorsed several new policies he had advocated for, including plans to eliminate tuition at public colleges and universities and to increase spending for community health centers.[141] On July 12, Sanders endorsed Clinton, saying in a prepared statement:
I am proud of the campaign we ran here in New Hampshire and across the country. Our campaign won the primaries and caucuses in 22 states, and when the roll call at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia is announced it will show that we won almost 1,900 delegates. That is a lot of delegates, far more than almost anyone thought we could win. But it is not enough to win the nomination. Secretary Clinton goes into the convention with 389 more pledged delegates than we have and a lot more super delegates. Secretary Clinton has won the Democratic nominating process, and I congratulate her for that. She will be the Democratic nominee for president and I intend to do everything I can to make certain she will be the next president of the United States.[66]
Wikileaks email release [ edit ]
On July 22, 2016, WikiLeaks released over 20,000 DNC emails, some of which appeared to show DNC officials favoring Clinton over Sanders during the primary. Among other things, one high-ranking DNC official discussed the possibility of making Sanders's irreligious tendencies a campaign issue in southern states, and DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz referred to campaign manager Jeff Weaver as "an ASS" and "a damn liar" and repeatedly called into question Sanders's party loyalty. Wasserman Schultz resigned as DNC chair after the leak, replaced by Donna Brazile, and the Democratic National Committee apologized to Sanders.[142] Speaking on CNN, Sanders responded to the email leak: "it is an outrage and sad that you would have people in important positions in the DNC trying to undermine my campaign. It goes without saying: The function of the DNC is to represent all of the candidates — to be fair and even-minded. But again, we discussed this many, many months ago, on this show, so what is revealed now is not a shock to me."[143]
In October 2016, WikiLeaks released emails from Clinton campaign Chair John Podesta showing that Donna Brazile, who was working as a DNC Vice Chair, had given Clinton staff information on the questions to be asked at an upcoming CNN town-hall meeting. Brazile has denied that she was showing favoritism.[144]
After the election, the U.S. intelligence community and the Special Counsel investigation assessed that the email leaks were part of a larger interference campaign by the Russian government to cause political instability in the United States and to damage the Hillary Clinton campaign by bolstering the candidacies of Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, and Jill Stein.[145][146][147]
Democratic National Convention [ edit ]
Bernie Sanders speaking at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, on July 25, 2016.
Sanders received a three-minute standing ovation when he rose to speak at the Democratic National Convention on July 25. He thanked and congratulated his campaign workers and spoke of his work with the Democratic Platform Committee, saying, "there was a significant coming together between the two campaigns and we produced, by far, the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party...Our job now is to see that platform implemented by a Democratic Senate, a Democratic House and a Hillary Clinton presidency – and I am going to do everything I can to make that happen."[148]
The first night of the Democratic National Convention was frequently disrupted with booing and chanting by a segment of Sanders's campaign workers termed the "Bernie or Bust" contingent. Even Sanders was booed when he said, "We must vote for Hillary Clinton."[149][150] The comedian Sarah Silverman, who had campaigned for Sanders but pledged support for Clinton at the convention, said, "Can I just say: To the 'Bernie or Bust' people, you're being ridiculous."[151] A July 25 report by the Pew Research Center tracing Democratic voters’ support for candidates from March 2015 to June 2016 indicated that 90% of Democratic voters who had consistently supported Sanders said they would support Clinton in the general election.[150]
After Sanders lost the primary to Clinton, Jill Stein of the Green Party offered to let Sanders run on the Green ticket, but he did not respond to her offer.[152] On October 28, 2016, Sanders was declared an eligible write-in candidate for president in California, with Tulsi Gabbard as his vice-presidential running mate.[153] For write-in candidates' votes to be counted in California, the candidate must be certified, which "only requires that 55 'electors' sign on to declare a person a write-in candidate, not that the person consent".[153]
Conclusion [ edit ]
On November 8, as Trump defeated Clinton in the general election, Sanders received almost 6% of the vote in Vermont, despite not being a candidate. This was the highest share of a statewide presidential vote for a write-in draft campaign in American history.[154] He also received more votes in Vermont than Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, and Jill Stein, the Green candidate, combined.[155]
Nationwide, it was possible to vote for Sanders as a write-in candidate in 12 states,[156] and exact totals of write-in votes for Sanders were published in three states: California,[157] New Hampshire,[158] and Vermont.[155] In those three states, Sanders received 111,850 write-in votes, approximately 15% of the write-in vote nationwide and 0.08% of the vote overall.[156]
On December 19, the day that the Electoral College convened in state capitols around the country, Sanders received one electoral vote for president, from David Mulinix, a faithless elector in Hawaii who also voted for Senator Elizabeth Warren for vice president.[159] This was the first electoral vote ever cast for a Jewish American for president in United States electoral history.[160] Two other faithless electors, David Bright in Maine and Muhammad Abdurrahman in Minnesota, attempted to cast their electoral votes for Sanders, but their votes were invalidated by their states' faithless elector laws. Bright subsequently switched his vote to Clinton as pledged, while Abdurrahman was replaced by another elector who voted for Clinton as pledged.[161][162]
Sanders was one of five people who received electoral votes from faithless electors in the 2016 election; the other four were former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell (who received three electoral votes),[163] Native American activist Faith Spotted Eagle,[163] former United States Representative and Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul,[164] and Governor John Kasich of Ohio.[164] The seven faithless electoral votes for president were the most in history, with the exception of the 63 electors who did not vote for their pledged candidate, Horace Greeley, in 1872 (Greeley had died between election day and the convening of the Electoral College).[165][166]
Media coverage [ edit ]
Some Sanders supporters raised concerns that publications such as The New York Times minimized coverage of his campaign in favor of other candidates', especially Trump's and Clinton's.[167][168] A December 2015 report found that the three major networks – CBS, NBC, and ABC – had spent 234 minutes reporting on Republican candidate Donald Trump and 10 minutes on Sanders, despite their similar polling results. The report noted that ABC World News Tonight had spent 81 minutes on Trump and less than 1 minute on Sanders during 2015.[169]
On April 3, 2016, hundreds of Sanders supporters protested CNN's coverage of the presidential elections at CNN headquarters. Calling themselves "Occupy CNN", they claimed that major media networks had intentionally minimized Sanders's airtime in favor of candidates such as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.[170]
In May 2016, MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski called on Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chairwoman of the DNC, to step down over the DNC's bias against the Sanders campaign.[171] The July 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak revealed that Wasserman Schultz was angry about the media's negative coverage of her actions, and that she emailed Chuck Todd on May 18 to say that such coverage of her "must stop".[172] Describing the coverage as the "LAST straw", she ordered the DNC's communications director to call MSNBC president Phil Griffin to demand an apology from Brzezinski.[173][174][175]
Social media [ edit ]
Sanders used social media to help his campaign gain momentum.[176] His campaign utilized Twitter, Facebook,[177] Snapchat, Instagram, Tumblr and Reddit.[178] Sanders gained a large online grassroots following, with supporters rallying support on Twitter under the hashtag #FeelTheBern.
The Sanders campaign was also known for the intense social media activity of some of his backers. Some online activists who enthusiastically promoted Sanders and criticized Clinton supporters were pejoratively called Bernie Bros, insinuating they were sexist in their critique of Clinton.[179][180]
Sanders gained tens of thousands of followers on Twitter during and after his debate appearances.[181][182] Although Twitter followers are only one metric of success, this led USA Today to speculate that he had won the October debate.[183]
Popular media [ edit ]
Saturday Night Live (SNL) highlighted Sanders in its October 17, 2015, cold open with comedian Larry David portraying him in a parody[184] of the first Democratic Primary Presidential debate, which had aired four days earlier on CNN. David returned to the show for the first time in 30 years to portray Sanders.[185] His impression of Sanders, widely received favorably on Twitter, had him waving his arms and saying: "I'm going to dial it right up to a ten: We're doomed! We need a revolution! We've got millions of people in the streets. We gotta do something and we gotta do it now".[185] When shown a clip of David's impression of him by George Stephanopoulos on ABC's This Week, Sanders responded: "I think we'll use Larry at our next rally. He does me better than I do."[186]
David portrayed Sanders again on SNL's November 7, 2015, cold open, a parody of a Democratic candidates' forum hosted by Rachel Maddow that had aired on MSNBC earlier that week.[187][188]
Although he did not win the official award, in December 2015 Sanders won the readers' poll for Time magazine’s 2015 Person of the Year with 10% of vote.[189]
Internet memes [ edit ]
Sanders's campaign generated many Internet memes. A Facebook group called Bernie Sanders' Dank Meme Stash was created to help spread information and comedic entertainment about Sanders. As of March 20, 2016, the group had nearly 420,000 members.[190]
Online dating service [ edit ]
Sanders's campaign also inspired an online dating service, Bernie Singles.[191][192][193][194][195][196] Founded by Arizona State University political science sophomore student Colten Caudle and co-owner David Boni on February 17, 2016,[194] Bernie Singles became a trending topic on Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter.[197]
Tinder [ edit ]
On February 5, 2016, members of the Facebook group "Bernie Sanders Dank Tinder Convos" (BSDTC) (a spin-off of Bernie Sanders' Dank Meme Stash) were reportedly being banned from dating and social discovery mobile application Tinder for promoting Sanders's presidential campaign. BSDTC members would send messages to other Tinder users promoting Sanders and imploring them to vote for him. In response, many BSDTC members' profiles would either become locked or deleted after being flagged for posting spam or being bots.[198][199][200][201][202][203] Tinder spokeswoman Rosette Pambakian stated in an email, "We wholeheartedly support people sharing their political views on Tinder, but we don't allow spamming. So feel free to spread the Bern, just don't spam."[199][203][204]
Bernie or Bust [ edit ]
Bernie or Bust protesters (with some carrying Bernie or Bust picket signs) at the Wells Fargo Center during the roll call vote when nominating Hillary Clinton at the DNC
"Bernie or Bust" refers to the intention of some of Sanders's supporters not to vote for Hillary Clinton if she won the Democratic nomination, but rather to write in Sanders, vote for a third-party candidate such as Jill Stein or Gary Johnson, or not to vote at all.[205]
The movement stemmed from distrust of the Democratic Party establishment and the party's primary system. The party was accused of bias in Clinton's favor beginning around December 2015, culminating in leaked emails just before the 2016 Democratic National Convention.[206] Sanders repeatedly said he would vote for Clinton in the general election in order to avoid a "disastrous" Trump presidency and encouraged his supporters to do the same.[207]
The Bernie or Bust movement is often cited as one of the contributing factors in Hillary Clinton's loss in the general election via the spoiler effect.[208][209][210] Other media commentators have disagreed,[211][212] pointing to how surveys estimated that 6–12% of Sanders voters voted for Trump in the general election, while in 2008, 24–25% of Clinton supporters voted for John McCain.[211][213]
The movement experienced controversy when, at the Democratic National Convention, comedian Sarah Silverman urged other Sanders supporters to back Hillary Clinton and remarked that Bernie or Bust people were "being ridiculous."[151]
Unaffiliated Sanders-for-President organizations [ edit ]
Among the organizations that worked to elect Sanders without any formal affiliation with his campaign was People for Bernie, an online group that grew out of the Occupy movement[214] and was active in sending protesters to shut down Donald Trump rallies.[215][216]
Veterans for Bernie Sanders, also known as "Vets for Bernie," was the first national grassroots association of military veterans ever to organize on behalf of a presidential candidate.[217] VFB mobilized veterans in all 50 states to attend Sanders events, including a veterans' rally in Gettysburg. The group has been credited with developing innovative "social media content based around endorsements from individual veterans."[217][218]
In April 2015, the grassroots group College Students for Bernie was created by college students from universities from across the country. The group served as an outlet and a resource for college students to take an active role in the 2016 election by campaigning for Sanders and fighting for progressive causes. The organization had over 260 chapters established at various universities and colleges in the United States.
/r/SandersForPresident subreddit [ edit ]
A popular subreddit with over 200,000 subscribers,[219] /r/SandersForPresident was an organizing forum that mobilized resources for the campaign. As one of the first places Sanders announced his campaign,[220] it was connected through Grassroots For Sanders,[221] the campaign's digital arm.[222] It was created on December 6, 2013, about 17 months before Sanders announced his candidacy, by Aidan King, a graduate of the University of New Hampshire,[223] and David Fredrick, co-creator of Grassroots For Sanders.[224] King eventually became the Sanders campaign's social media coordinator.
Although the Sanders campaign did not control the subreddit, it communicated with its moderators.[222] Kenneth Pennington, the Sanders campaign's digital director, told media company Mic that "We work closely with those in leadership roles on the subreddit to make sure that the large audience on Reddit knows exactly how to get involved in the campaign and spread the senator's message".[223]
Political positions [ edit ]
10.0–19.9% 20.0–29.9% 30.0–39.9% 40.0–49.9% 50.0–59.9% 60.0–69.9% 70.0–79.9% 80.0%+ Percentage of vote received by Sanders by state or territory in the primaries.
Bernie Sanders Hillary Clinton State-by-state performance.
Generally speaking, Bernie Sanders's views have been described as being to the political left of those of competitor Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama.
Economics [ edit ]
Income and wealth inequality [ edit ]
A cornerstone of Sanders's campaign was to fight the decreasing income of the middle class and the increase of wealth inequality:
What we have seen is that while the average person is working longer hours for lower wages, we have seen a huge increase in income and wealth inequality, which is now reaching obscene levels.... This is a rigged economy, which works for the rich and the powerful, and is not working for ordinary Americans... You know, this country just does not belong to a handful of billionaires. The Guardian (April 2015)[39]
In July 2015 Sanders introduced legislation that would incrementally increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by the year 2020.[225][226] On November 10, 2015, Sanders joined striking Senate cafeteria workers at a "Fight for $15" rally in Washington DC and voiced support for the movement.[227]
Taxes [ edit ]
Sanders supported repeal of some tax deductions that benefit hedge funds and corporations, and would have raised taxes on capital gains and the wealthiest two percent of Americans, using some of the added revenues to lower the taxes of the middle and lower classes.[228][229] Reporting that offshore tax havens have allowed America's largest corporations to avoid taxes on more than $1 trillion in profits, Sanders also introduced legislation to end offshore banking.[230][231] He believed the American government should invest the resulting revenue in America’s small businesses and in aid for working people.[232]
Wall Street reform [ edit ]
On May 6, 2015, Sanders introduced legislation to break up "too big to fail" financial institutions. With three of the four banks that were bailed out during the 2007–08 Global Financial Crisis now larger than they were then, Sanders believed that "no single financial institution should have holdings so extensive that its failure would send the world economy into crisis. If an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist."[233][234]
Jobs [ edit ]
Sanders introduced amendments to Senate bills that promote the creation of millions of middle-class jobs by investing in infrastructure, paid for by closing loopholes in the corporate and international tax system.[235][236] He also supported legislation that would make it easier for workers to join or form a union.[237] Sanders's campaign website also recognized the plight of the long-term unemployed, citing that “[t]he real unemployment rate is much higher than the ‘official’ figure typically reported in the newspapers”.[238]
Trade [ edit ]
Sanders opposed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, which he called "a continuation of other disastrous trade agreements like NAFTA [and] CAFTA."[239][240] In 2014, Sanders wrote that "the TPP is much more than a 'free trade' agreement. It is part of a global race to the bottom to boost the profits of large corporations and Wall Street by outsourcing jobs; undercutting worker rights; dismantling labor, environmental, health, food safety and financial laws; and allowing corporations to challenge our laws in international tribunals rather than our own court system".[241]
Federal Reserve [ edit ]
Sanders proposed these reforms of the Fed: "Banking industry executives must no longer be allowed to serve on the Fed’s boards...The Fed should charge (banks) a fee that would be used to provide direct loans to small businesses...As a condition of receiving financial assistance from the Fed, large banks must commit to increasing lending to creditworthy small businesses and consumers."[242]
Paid leave [ edit ]
Sanders became a prominent supporter of laws requiring companies to provide their workers parental leave, sick leave, and vacation time, arguing that such laws have been adopted by almost every developed country, and that there are significant disparities among the types of workers who have access to paid sick and paid vacation time.[243][244]
Sanders's Guaranteed Paid Vacation Act (S.1564) would have mandated that companies provide 10 days of paid vacation for employees who have worked for them for at least one year. He cosponsored a Senate bill that would give mothers and fathers 12 weeks of paid family leave to care for a baby. Sanders also cosponsored a bill that would guarantee workers at least seven paid sick days per year for short-term illness, routine medical care, or to care for a sick family member.[243][244]
Environment [ edit ]
Sanders considered global warming a serious problem.[245][246] Along with Senator Barbara Boxer, Sanders introduced the Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act of 2007 on January 15, 2007.[247] In a July 26, 2012 speech on the Senate floor, Sanders addressed claims made by Senator Jim Inhofe: "The bottom line is when Senator Inhofe says global warming is a hoax, he is just dead wrong, according to the vast majority of climate scientists."[248] He was Climate Hawks Vote's top-rated senator on climate leadership in the 113th Congress.[249]
Health care [ edit ]
Sanders was a staunch supporter of a universal health care system, and said, "if you are serious about real healthcare reform, the only way to go is single‑payer".[250] He advocated lowering the cost of drugs that are high because they remain under patent for years; some drugs that cost thousands of dollars per year in the U.S. are available for hundreds, or less, in countries where they can be obtained as generics.[251]
As chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging, Sanders introduced legislation to reauthorize and strengthen the Older Americans Act, which supports Meals on Wheels and other programs for seniors. Sanders believed that supporting seniors "is not only the right thing to do, it is the financially smart thing to do", because it decreases expensive hospitalizations and allows seniors to remain in their homes.[252]
NARAL Pro-Choice America gave Sanders a 100% score on his pro-choice voting record.[253]
Campaign finance [ edit ]
Sanders supported the public funding of elections and supported both versions of the DISCLOSE Act, legislation would have made campaign finances more transparent, and would have banned U.S. corporations controlled by foreign interests from making political expenditures.[254] He was outspoken in calling for an overturn of Citizens United, a 2010 Supreme Court decision that overturned McCain-Feingold restrictions on political spending by corporations and unions, as it deemed such restrictions a violation of the First Amendment.[55] Saying that he believed that the Citizens United decision is "one of the Supreme Court's worst decisions ever" and that it has allowed big money to "deflect attention from the real issues" facing voters,[255] he proposed a constitutional amendment to undo the ruling.[256] "We now have a political situation where billionaires are... able to buy elections and candidates", he said.[54]
Foreign policy and national security [ edit ]
Israeli–Palestinian conflict [ edit ]
Sanders supported Israel's right to exist and supported a two-state solution.[257] In July 2014, Sanders formed part of the "unanimous consent" on the Senate Resolution in support of Operation Protective Edge, a military operation Israel launched on July 8, 2014.[258] Sanders said that Israel must have a right to live in peace and security.[259] He compared himself to the first Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion.[259]
When asked about the Palestinian situation, Sanders consistently said that the Palestinians have a right to a state, while Israel has a right to security.[260] A statement published on his Senate website read in part: "Sanders believes the Israeli attacks that killed hundreds of innocent people – including many women and children – in bombings of civilian neighborhoods and UN controlled schools, hospitals, and refugee camps were disproportionate, and the widespread killing of civilians is completely unacceptable. Israel's actions took an enormous human toll, and appeared to strengthen support for Hamas and may well be sowing the seeds for even more hatred, war and destruction in future years."[261]
Surveillance [ edit ]
Sanders was critical of U.S. government global |
ambition of their grand rail infrastructure has drawn so little attention to date in the West outside the shipping industry.
China builds Second Eurasian Land Bridge
By 2011 China had completed a Second Eurasian Land Bridge running from Chinas port of Lianyungang on the East China Sea through to Kazakhstans Druzhba and on to Central Asia, West Asia and Europe to various European destinations and finally to Rotterdam Port of Holland on the Atlantic coast.
The Second Eurasian Land Bridge is a new railway connecting the Pacific and the Atlantic that was completed by China to Druzhba in Kazakhstan. This newest Eurasia land bridge extends west in China through six provinces--Jiangsu, Anhui, Henan, Shaanxi, Gansu, and Xinjiang autonomous region, which neighbors respectively with Shandong Province, Shanxi Province, Hubei Province, Sichuan Province, Qinghai Province, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and Inner Mongolia. That covers about 360,000 square kilometers, some 37% of the total land space of China. About 400 million people live in the areas, which accounts for 30% of the total population of the country. Outside of China, the land bridge covers over 40 countries and regions in both Asia and Europe, and is particularly important for the countries in Central and West Asia that dont have sea outlets.
In 2011 Chinas Vice Premier Wang Qishan announced plans to build a new high-speed railway link within Kazakhstan, linking the cities of Astana and Almaty, to be ready in 2015. The Astana-Almaty line, with a total length of 1050 kilometers, employing Chinas advanced rail-building technology, will allow high-speed trains to run at a speed of 350 kilometers per hour.
DB Schenker Rail Automotive is now transporting auto parts from Leipzig to Shenyang in northeastern China for BMW. Trains loaded with parts and components depart from DB Schenker's Leipzig trans-shipment terminal in a three-week, 11,000 km journey to BMW's Shenyang plant in the Liaoning province, where components are used in the assembly of BMW vehicles. Beginning in late November 2011, trains bound for Shenyang departed Leipzig once each day. "With a transit time of 23 days, the direct trains are twice as fast as maritime transport, followed by over-the-road transport to the Chinese hinterland," says Dr. Karl-Friedrich Rausch, member of the management board for DB Mobility Logistics' Transportation and Logistics division. The route reaches China via Poland, Belarus, and Russia. Containers have to be transferred by crane to different gauges twicefirst to Russian broad gauge at the Poland-Belarus border, then back to standard gauge at the Russia-China border in Manzhouli.
In May 2011 a daily direct rail freight service was launched between the Port of Antwerp, Europes second-largest port, and Chongqing, the industrial hub in Chinas southwest. That greatly speeded rail freight transport across Eurasia to Europe. Compared to the 36 days for maritime transport from east Chinas ports to west Europe, the Antwerp-Chongqing Rail Freight service now takes 20 to 25 days, and the aim is to cut that to 15 to 20 days. Westbound cargo includes automotive and technological goods, eastbound shipments are mostly chemicals. The project was a major priority for the Antwerp Port and the Belgian government in cooperation with China and other partners. The service is run by Swiss inter-modal logistics provider Hupac, their Russian partner Russkaya Troyka and Eurasia Good Transport over a distance of more than 10,000km, starting from Port of Antwerp through to Germany and Poland, and further to Ukraine, Russia and Mongolia before reaching Chongqing in China.
The Second Eurasian Land Bridge runs 10,900 kilometers in length, with some 4100 kilometers of that in China. Within China the line runs parallel to one of the ancient routes of the Silk Road. The rail line continues across China into Druzhba where it links with the broader gauge rail lines of Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is the largest inland country in the world. As Chinese rail and highways have expanded west, trade between Kazakhstan and China has been booming. From January to October 2008, goods passing through the Khorgos port between the two nations reached 880,000 tons - over 250% growth compared with the same period a year before. Trade between China and Kazakhstan is expected to grow 3 to 5 fold by 2013. As of 2008, only about 1% of the goods shipped from Asia to Europe were delivered by overland routes, meaning the room for expansion is considerable.
From Kazakhstan the lines go on via Russia and Belarus over Poland to the markets of the European Union.
Another line goes to Tashkent in Uzbekistan, Central Asias largest city of some two millions. Another line goes west to Turkmenistans capital Asgabat and to the border of Iran. With some additional investment, these links, now tied to the vast expanse and markets of China could open new economic possibilities in much-neglected regions of Central Asia. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) could provide a well-suited vehicle for coordination of a broad Eurasian rail infrastructure coordination to maximize these initial rail links. The members of the SCO, formed in 2001, include China, Kazakhstan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikstan, Uzbekistan with Iran, India, Mongolia and Pakistan as Observer Status countries.
Russias Land Bridge
Russia is well positioned to benefit greatly from such an SCO strategy. The First Eurasian Land Bridge runs through Russia along the Trans-Siberian Railway, first completed in 1916 to unify the Russian Empire. The Trans-Siberian remains the longest single rail line in the world at 9,297 kilometers, a tribute to the vision of Russian Sergei Witte in the 1890s. The Trans-Siberian Railway, also called the Northern East-West Corridor, runs from the Russian Far East Port of Vladivostok and links in Europe to the Port of Rotterdam some 13,000 kilometers. At present it is the less attractive for Pacific-to-Atlantic freight because of maintenance problems and maximum speeds of 55 km.
There are attempts to better use the Trans-Siberian Land Bridge. In January 2008 a long distance Eurasian rail freight service, the "Beijing-Hamburg Container Express" was successfully tested by the German railway Deutsche Bahn. It completed the 10,000 km (6,200 miles) journey in 15 days to link the Chinese capital to the German port city, going through Mongolia, the Russian Federation, Belarus and Poland. By ship to the same markets takes double the time or some 30 days. This route, which began commercial service in 2010 incorporates a section of the existing Trans-Siberian Railway, a rail link using a broader gauge than either Chinese or European trains, meaning two offloads and reloads onto other trains at the China-Mongolia border and again at the Belarus-Poland border.
Were the Trans-Siberian railway passage across Russian Eurasian space to be modernized and upgraded to accommodate high-speed freight traffic, it would add a significant new economic dimension to the economic development of Russias interior regions. The Trans-Siberian is double-tracked and electrified. The need is minimally to improve some segments to insure a better integration of all the elements to make it a more attractive option for Eurasian freight to the west.
There are strong indications the new Putin presidency will turn more of its attention to Eurasia. Modernization of the First Eurasian Land Bridge would be a logical way to accomplish much of that development by literally creating new markets and new economic activity. With the bond markets of the United States and Europe flooded with toxic waste and state bankruptcy fears, issuance of Russian state bonds for modernization or even a new parallel high-speed rail Land Bridge linking to the certainty of growing freight traffic across Eurasia would have little difficulty finding eager investors.
Russia is currently in discussion with China and Chinese rail constructors who are bidding on construction of a planned $20 billion of new high-speed Russian rail track to be completed before the 2018 Russian hosting of the Soccer World Cup. Chinas experience in building some 12,000 km of high speed rail in record time is a major asset for Chinas bid. Significantly, Russia plans to raise $10 billion of the cost by issuing new railroad bonds.
A Third Eurasian Land Bridge?
In 2009 at the Fifth Pan-Pearl River Delta Regional (PPRD) Cooperation and Development Forum, a government-sponsored event, the Yunnan provincial government announced its intention to accelerate construction of needed infrastructure to build a third Eurasian continental land bridge that will link south China to Rotterdam via Turkey over land. This is part of what Erdogan and Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao discussed in Beijing this April. The network of inland roads for the land bridge within Yunnan province will be completed by 2015, said Yunnan governor Qin Guangrong. The project starts from coastal ports in Guangdong, with the Port of Shenzhen being the most important. It will ultimately go all the way through Kunming to Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Iran, entering Europe from Turkey.
The route would cut some 6,000-km from the sea journey between the Pearl River Delta and Rotterdam and allow production from Chinas eastern manufacturing centers to reach Asia, Africa and Europe. The proposal is for completing a series of missing rail and modern highway links totaling some 1,000 Km, not that inconceivable. In neighboring Myanmar a mere 300 km of railways and highways are lacking in order to link the railways in Yunnan with the highway network of Myanmar and South Asia. It will help China pave the way for building a land channel to the Indian Ocean.
The third Eurasian Land Bridge will cross 20 countries in Asia and Europe and have a total length of about 15,000 kilometers, which is 3,000 to 6,000 kilometers shorter than the sea route entering at the Indian Ocean from the southeast coast via the Malacca Straits. The total annual trade volume of the regions the route passes through was nearly US$300 billion in 2009. Ultimately the plan is for a branch line that would also start in Turkey, cross Syria and Palestine, and end in Egypt, facilitating transportation from China to Africa. Clearly the Pentagons AFRICOM and the US-backed Arab Spring unrest directly impacts that extension, though for how long at this point is unclear.
The geopolitical dimension
Not every major international player is pleased about the growing linkages binding the economies of Eurasia with western Europe and Africa. In his now famous 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives, former Presidential adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski noted,
In brief, for the United States, Eurasian geo-strategy involves the purposeful management of geo-strategically dynamic states To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geo-strategy are to prevent collusion and to
maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.
The barbarians that Brzezinski refers to are China and Russia and all in between. The Brzezinski term imperial geo-strategy refers to US strategic foreign policy. The vassals he identifies in the book as countries like Germany, Japan and other NATO allies of the US. That Brzezinski geopolitical notion remains US foreign policy today.
The prospect of an unparalleled Eurasian economic boom lasting into the next Century and beyond is at hand. The first sinews of binding the vast economic space have been put in place or are being constructed with these rail links. It is becoming clear to more people in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Eurasia including China and Russia that their natural tendency to build these markets faces only one major obstacle: NATO and the US Pentagons Full Spectrum Dominance obsession. In the period prior to World War I it was the decision in Berlin to build a rail land link to and through the Turkish Ottoman Empire from Berlin to Baghdad that was the catalyst for British strategists to incite the events that plunged Europe into the most destructive war in history to that date. This time we have a chance to avoid a similar fate with the Eurasian development. More and more the economically stressed economies of the EU are beginning to look east and less to their west across the Atlantic for Europes economic future.
*F. William Engdahl is author of several books on contemporary geopolitics including A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order. He is available via his website at http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.netMuch of the speech goes about the technical achievements, about putting down any Japanese'machines of war' and 'have started all of this'...I always wondered how a president can announce something like this. I thought it'd be more likeAnyways, all sarcasm aside, I stumbled upon an excellent article called. It features the video atop this post. A chillingly cold documentary of the bombs' impact on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. 22 minutes well spent to commemorate the 65th birthday of this shameful event. And to contemplate what this really was: Mass murder.Most of the video concentrates on the material damage, and not so on the human suffering, the short and longer term effects of the radiation on humans and the environment both on the immediate surroundings and larger areas. At the time the documentary was made, it was probably too early to truely understand the impact of radioactivity.One thing I found really... eh.. how should I say this... It really stroke me how, in a documentary made in the 40'ies, they called the spot where the atomic bomb fell... I am not too sure how to say this, but I am a true believer of good and bad karma: Spread good and better will come to you. Act evil and worse will be your return...Kodi is the most popular sideloaded app for the Fire TV. Its media playing abilities are unmatched by any other app. While many are perfectly happy with its default interface, Kodi has a large skin library that can completely change the look and feel of the app to match your personal preference. The release of Hitcher’s Fire TV skin last week can even make Kodi mimic the Fire TV’s defualt interface. This guide will show you how to install a custom Kodi skin on your Fire TV or Fire TV Stick. It also goes a step further and shows you how to configure Hitcher’s Fire TV skin to better replicate the Fire TV interface.
Guide
Be sure the version of Kodi you have installed on your Fire TV or Fire TV Stick is compatible with the skin you wish to install. Kodi v15 “Isengard” has added new skinning features that some skins, like the Fire TV Skin by Hitcher, require. If you need to update Kodi, you can follow my guide here.
There are many Kodi skin resources online. Once you’ve found a skin you like, download it and transfer the skin as a ZIP file to your Fire TV or Fire TV Stick’s /sdcard/ directory by running the following ADB command: adb push skin.ftv.zip /sdcard/
(Note: Be sure to change skin.ftv.zip to the full path of the skin file you downloaded)
Launch Kodi and navigate to “SYSTEM”.
Select “Add-ons”.
Select “OK” if you get a “First run help…” message.
Select “Install from zip file”.
Select “Root filesystem”.
Select “sdcard”.
Select the skin ZIP file you want to install.
Your skin will begin to install. Depending on the skin, this could take several minutes and you may see additional add-on messages appear in the lower right. There are add-ons that the skin requires being installed. Just wait for a popup message to appear. When the message “Would you like to switch to this skin?” appears, select “Yes”
Select “Yes” to confirm that you want to keep the skin.
Your skin should now be installed. If the pop up does not appear, you can navigate to:
Settings > Appearance > Skin
and select the skin you installed from the top menu item, once it appears in the list of available skins.
Additional Steps for Hitcher’s Fire TV Skin
If you’re installing Hitcher’s Fire TV Skin for Kodi, you should perform the following additional steps to better simulate the Fire TV’s interface.
After installing Hitcher’s Fire TV Skin, navigate down to Kodi’s Settings.
Under “Appearance” select “Skin”.
Select “- Settings”.
Select “Enable Wide TV Show and Season Icons”.
Note: Enabling wide icons changes the images used for TV shows from box art to ones that better match the Fire TV’s interface.
Select “Click to download TV Show logos”.
Note: Downloading TV show logos places the title of the show on the wide icon in the TV sections.
Lastly, you may want to change the way Kodi behaves with the Fire TV remote because Hitcher’s Fire TV skin removes some of the on-screen buttons, like the stop button. You can find more about how to do that here.
Follow AFTVnews on Twitter / Facebook and subscribe via email to be the first to learn when new articles go live. Follow me, Elias Saba, on Twitter and Instagram to see what I'm working on before it's posted here.
ShareTweetShare+1For perspective, that $80 price tag is where Nokia's Asha program was at a year ago. It's a big achievement for Microsoft to get the price this low this quickly, but what exactly do you get for your dollars? Something very similar to the Lumia 530. The 435 has the same 4-inch WVGA display and 1.2GHz Snapdragon, but it does contain 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage, which doubles the 530's offerings. Another change between the handsets is the return to capacitive keys -- the 530 has on-screen buttons instead. This being Windows Phone, Microsoft points out that your $80 also gets you its full Office suite. That's really the point here -- Microsoft doesn't particularly want to sell you a phone, it just wants to make sure you're using its services.
Microsoft's Lumia 532, a 4-inch version of the 535.
In addition to the 435 -- the first "400 series" device -- Microsoft is also giving its 500 series an update. The Lumia 532 is almost identical internally to the company's 535, but with a 4-inch WVGA in place of a 5-inch display. That means you'll get a the same 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon, 1GB of RAM, 5-megapixel camera and 8GB of storage. It'll cost €79 (roughly $93) before tax. Both will be available in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa starting February -- no word on a North American launch yet.FAR from being a puppet of party apparatchiks, Julia Gillard is the federal government's reluctant heroine.
KEVIN Rudd's lasting legacy to the Labor Party is that he has united its national right faction. A grouping that has been at war for years has come together and helped to install a left-winger in the prime ministership.
That's quite an achievement, something only a person who
Read Next
has rubbed a large quantum of people up the wrong way could make happen.
This reality from the parliamentary week, perhaps the final one before the election, says so much about Rudd, the way he chose to govern and why his fall from grace has been so hard.
Rudd did not consult, he did not make use of his cabinet and he arrogantly shut out advice from senior party figures who had built knowledge about politics through many decades of engagement in the dark arts.
Rudd liked to style himself as a bureaucrat who was defined by process. It was the lack of proper processes that was his biggest failing, however.
But it wasn't just a dislike of Rudd that made this week's events happen. It was a belief that he had become electoral poison. Much has been said about how quickly the Labor Party acted to knock off Rudd. But the caucus took longer than the voting public did to change its mind about Rudd.
According to the opinion polls, voters decided some time ago that they disliked him; Rudd's net satisfaction rating had been in free fall for months.
Rudd had been refusing to see ALP national secretary Karl Bitar even though doing so would have given him access to the research that could have helped him save his image.
Rudd was no longer freely taking meetings with NSW senator Mark Arbib, the man in the ministry whose numbers gave him the leadership in the first place.
Defence Minister John Faulkner had been shut out a long time ago, even though he had more political experience than anyone else in the caucus.
One senior cabinet member has been telling colleagues that he had not had a phone call from the former prime minister in three years.
Towards the end, even the three members of the gang of four who had worked with Rudd so closely - Julia Gillard, Wayne Swan and Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner - started to be shut out of decision-making.
Rudd retreated into his office and listened only to his young, inexperienced advisers, not all of whom were prepared to tell him what he needed to hear.
The ousted prime minister had so many opportunities to change his ways and that was always the preferred option of even the most ruthless of the powerbrokers who plotted his downfall.
There was never going to be a downfall without Gillard's imprimatur. Without her there was no viable candidate to replace Rudd. But she wanted to know for certain that Rudd wouldn't change his ways before changing the prime ministership.
A coup just ahead of an election is risky.
When Rudd wouldn't change, he had to go. It was a vicious and gut-wrenching spectacle to watch.
By that point he was in such denial that he didn't see the execution coming. His hubris in office meant he lost sight of just how weak his support structures inside the Labor Party actually were.
He had no power base other than his popularity, which had faded long ago.
He truly was the emperor with no clothes and he fronted the media for his final press conference as prime minister as a man diminished and shattered by the realisation, not of what had been done to him, but what he had done to himself.
Although I do wonder whether Rudd's awareness was heightened enough to understand his own role in his downfall.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott was right when he said in parliament that no Australian prime minister should have to suffer the embarrassment that Rudd had suffered just a few hours earlier. But where Abbott was wrong was in blaming Rudd's colleagues for what happened. The only person who is responsible for the events of the past week is Rudd. Just as provocation is a defence in law, it is a defence in politics too.
The war of words is now under way between the government and the opposition, between conservative commentators and the left-wing intelligentsia. Is Gillard a patsy of the labour movement's so-called "faceless men" who threw their support behind her to allow her to become Prime Minister?
Let's get this sorted out with two simple words: absolutely not.
Abbott said on Perth radio yesterday that Gillard "has harnessed the faceless men to rise to the top".
For a start, in the modern media age the faceless men aren't all that faceless. Bill Shorten, Arbib and David Feeney are all parliamentarians who make regular media appearances and are by definition elected to public office.
The Australian Workers Union's Paul Howes does more media than all three of them and, while he is not elected by the community at large (not yet, anyway), you could never accuse him of being some backroom operator who tries to wield influence out of public view. He has been one of the Labor government's most vocal critics on issues ranging from nuclear power to the treatment of asylum-seekers.
Gillard did not play a lead hand in plotting Rudd's downfall. In fact, she was a very cautious starter for the challenge that ensued.
It was not a matter of her going to the powerbrokers to lobby for backing. They came to her to plead with her to step up and challenge Rudd for the good of the government. They needed her more than she needed them.
The modern media means that we get to watch politics as it is playing out, not only once the events have passed.
It can be a brutal business. It was brutal when Rudd and Gillard decided they had to knife one of Labor's favourite sons, Kim Beazley, a year out from the 2007 election and it is brutal now that Rudd is on the receiving end.
But what makes the tragedy of Rudd all the more dramatic, as if it had been torn from the pages of a bestselling fiction based on human frailty, is that he set himself up as the person who was going to change the way federal politics is conducted.
He had it all planned. He had knocked off a Liberal Party hero, turning himself into a Labor hero in the process.
Prime ministers never seem to depart at a time of their own choosing. That was Howard's failure and Rudd intended to learn from it. He intended to hand over to Australia's first female prime minister at some point in the future, a final symbolic gesture to be applauded by the party faithful.
An orderly transition ensures the preservation of the departing leader's legacy. A hostile takeover means, to justify the shift, that legacy needs to be questioned.
Rudd has become a lesson in how not to act as a prime minister, the exact opposite of what he set out to achieve.
He didn't get to choose the timing of his departure. He didn't even get to finish his first term in office.
Read NextPart 1: Introduction / Where is the Soul Hiding?
Central to many religions, both Eastern and Western, is the doctrine of dualism: that there is a non-material essence called the soul that inhabits and animates our bodies and is the cause and the source of consciousness, personality, free will, thoughts, ideas, feelings, emotions, memories, the sense of self – in short, everything a person thinks of as “I”. Theists typically believe that the soul survives the physical death of the body and goes on to whatever comes after death, be it an afterlife in Heaven or Hell or reincarnation in a new body.
I am an atheist because I have found no evidence that leads me to believe that the supernatural claims of any religion are true, and the notion of the soul is no exception. In fact, as this essay will demonstrate, there is strong evidence against the existence of a soul in humans, pointing instead to the alternative of materialism – that the mind is not separate from the brain, but that it arises from and is produced by neural activity within the brain. Simply stated, the mind is what the brain does.
As a practical matter, it should be easy to judge between dualism and materialism, because unlike most religious doctrines, the notion of the soul is an idea that would seem to have testable consequences. Specifically, if the human mind is the product of a “ghost in the machine” and not the result of electrochemical interactions among neurons, then the mind should not be dependent on the configuration of the brain that houses it. In short, there should be aspects of the mind that owe nothing to the physical functioning of the brain.
Until recently, this prediction was difficult to test, but modern scientific innovations have thrown light on the subject. Medical techniques such as CAT scans (short for computed axial tomography), PET (positron emission topography), and MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) allow the structure and function of the living brain to be studied. Scientists can see which areas of the brain “light up” with activity when a healthy person performs a mental task, or they can examine patients who have suffered injury or disease to see which parts of the brain, when damaged, correspond to which deficits of neural function.
And already, a disappointing result for theists has emerged. Some mental functions are localized, while others are more diffuse, but there is no aspect of the mind that does not correspond to any area of the brain. In fact, we know precisely which brain regions control many fundamental aspects of human consciousness.
The image of the brain that is familiar to most people – the organ of convoluted gray matter, about the size of two fists held together – is actually an image of just the cerebrum, the outermost and topmost area of the brain. In humans, the cerebrum takes up about 80% of total brain volume, and is responsible for most higher-order cognitive functions. The thin outer layer of the cerebrum, only a few millimeters thick, is called the cerebral cortex or simply cortex for short, and it is this which has the distinctive wrinkled, folded and convoluted gray appearance (“cortex” is Latin for “bark”).
The cerebrum is divided into two hemispheres, the left and the right, which are basically symmetrical in structure, mirror images of each other. There is some specialization of function between the two; for example, in most people language is controlled entirely by the left hemisphere. However, to a large extent the two hemispheres do similar jobs. For example, each one receives sensory input from, and sends motor commands to, one side of the body.
Each hemisphere is divided into four main regions, called lobes: the frontal lobe, the temporal lobe, the occipital lobe, and the parietal lobe. Roughly speaking, the occipital lobes are located in the rear of the brain, the temporal lobes on the bottom, the parietal lobes on top of the brain, and the frontal lobes, as their name implies, toward the front, behind the forehead (Austin 1998, p. 150).
Each lobe performs a variety of functions. The temporal lobes, for example, play an important role in emotional response, memory, and hearing (and therefore language). A set of structures in the brain collectively called the limbic system, which is responsible for the former two functions, lies chiefly within the temporal lobes. The occipital lobes are concerned primarily with vision, though the parietal lobes also play a part in this; the parietal lobes also process information from other senses, especially touch. Finally, the frontal lobes seem to be responsible for many of the qualities we think of as distinctively human, including personality and what is called “executive” behavior: judgment, motivation, planning and goals, regulating and inhibiting actions, making decisions, controlling attention, and responding appropriately to external events and stimuli, among other things. The functions of the frontal lobes, and the changes that can be produced by damaging them, will be discussed in much more detail later in this essay.
With this basic framework in mind, we can examine more specific aspects of brain function. For example, a section of the brain called Broca’s area, usually within the left frontal lobe (in left-handed people it may sometimes be on the right side instead), controls the ability to produce speech. When this area is damaged by a stroke or other injury, the result is a condition called Broca’s aphasia, which renders the victim mute, able to understand speech but unable to speak himself. A nearby section called Wernicke’s area, in the left temporal lobe, performs the opposite role: it gives us the ability to understand speech by storing the memories of how words sound. Damage to this area produces Wernicke’s aphasia, in which the sufferer cannot understand speech, either his own or others’, and speaks only in meaningless babble. (Since the victim has lost all memory of what words are supposed to sound like, he is usually unaware that there is anything wrong with him, and does not understand why he cannot be comprehended by others.) While this jargon often sounds very much like a language and indeed is often mistaken for a foreign language by someone unfamiliar with the condition, it conveys no meaning (Heilman 2002, p. 4). There are evident implications for the sects that believe in glossolalia (“speaking in tongues”).
Other sections of the brain’s left hemisphere are essential to other aspects of communication. The structure known as the left angular gyrus contains the memories of how words are spelled, while the supramarginal gyrus converts speech sounds into letters (Heilman 2002, p. 49). Damage to these systems, both of which are within the parietal lobe, can result in inability to read or write, respectively known as alexia and agraphia. (Bizarrely, some people with specific types of damage to these regions can write but not read.) The left angular gyrus also seems to play a role in mathematical ability, since people who suffer damage to it sometimes become unable to do even the simplest calculations (Ramachandran 1998, p. 19). Damage to the entire language area of the left hemisphere produces a condition called global aphasia, in which the sufferer is completely unable to communicate; this syndrome will be discussed in more detail later on.
The ability to synthesize sensory input into a coherent picture of the world is associated with physical regions of the brain. Most critical of all our senses is vision, and the brain devotes more resources to visual perception than to any other sense. The occipital lobes receive input from the eyes; cell groups within them are specialized to process specific aspects of vision such as color, edge, shape and motion (Heilman 2002, p. 183, 184). Information from the visual system then splits into two streams: the superior parietal lobe’s “where” system, which helps us form spatial coordinates of objects and navigate in our environment, and the inferior occipital and ventral temporal lobes’ “what” system, which tells us what it is we are looking at (p. 100). Other regions, such as the right parietal lobe, control sensory perceptions of our own body; damage to this region produces a truly bizarre disorder called asomatognosia, in which the sufferer is unable to recognize his own body as belonging to him (p. 119). Electrical stimulation of the right angular gyrus, a substructure of the right parietal lobe, can cause out-of-body experiences (Blanke et al. 2002).
Still other brain regions control aspects of consciousness more fundamental than the ability to communicate or navigate. While the left hemisphere is typically responsible for understanding language per se, the right hemisphere mediates emotional aspects of communication, such as the tone of someone’s voice or the expression on their face. Damage to the parietal and temporal lobes of the right hemisphere can leave a person unable to comprehend emotional displays in others (Heilman 2002, p. 56).
Our emotions also arise from the functions of the brain. The left hemisphere seems to govern the expression of positive emotions such as happiness and joy, while the right hemisphere primarily governs negative ones such as anger and sadness. Those who suffer damage to their left hemisphere (leaving the more volatile right hemisphere “in charge”) often become severely depressed, but right hemisphere damage can leave a person emotionally indifferent, even constantly euphoric (p. 75-76). Electrical stimulation of one part of the brain, a part of the limbic system called the amygdala, can produce intense fear (Heilman 2002, p. 74), while stimulation of other regions can cause uncontrollable laughter and feelings of mirth (Ramachandran 1998, p. 201), and stimulation of yet a third region, the insula, can produce feelings of nausea and disgust (Glausiusz 2002, p. 33). Electrical stimulation of a fourth region, the septum, produces consistent sensations of pleasure, and frequently causes a sudden shift in mood from depression to optimism (Austin 1998, p. 170).
Memory, a fundamental aspect of consciousness, is strongly tied to brain function as well. A small brain region called the hippocampus, among other structures in the limbic system, is critical for forming new factual memories (Heilman 2002, p. 150); the effects its destruction has on a person are nothing short of profound.
The question now arises, where in all of this is the soul? Which brain lobe does it inhabit? Where is it hiding in this tangle of neurons and synapses?
In the seventeenth century, the philosopher Rene Descartes proposed that the soul interacted with the brain through the pineal gland, based on his observations that it is located near the center of the brain and is the only brain structure that is single, not paired. Unfortunately for Descartes, today we know the pineal gland is merely part of the endocrine system; its main function is to produce melatonin, a hormone that regulates sleep-wake cycles and influences the immune system, among other things (Heilman 2002, p. 3).
So where is the soul hiding? Area after area of the brain has yielded up its secrets to the probing of neuroscience, and not a trace of it has been found. The more our knowledge advances, the less reason we have to suppose that it exists, and the less sustainable the dualist position becomes. All the evidence we currently possess suggests that there is nothing inside our skulls that does not obey the ordinary laws of physics.
This is not to imply that there is nothing wondrous or amazing about the brain. On the contrary, it has been called, with some justification, the most complexly organized form of matter in the universe. The average human brain has over one hundred billion neurons, connected by hundreds of trillions of synapses. So immense is the complexity of this system, it has been calculated that the number of theoretically possible brain states exceeds the number of elementary particles in the known universe (Ramachandran 1998, p. 8). The brain’s raw computational power has been estimated to be between 10 trillion and 10 quadrillion operations per second (Merkle 1989). (By way of comparison, one of the fastest supercomputers in the world, the Earth Simulator in Yokohama, Japan, can perform 36 trillion calculations per second.)
That our minds arise from the workings of our brains is nothing to be dismayed about. On the contrary, the fires of evolution have spent over four billion years forging the brain into an engine of staggering complexity and computational power only to bequeath it to us. We have been given a unique and priceless privilege, a gift unlike anything else in the known universe. To understand this heritage can only uplift us, and those who would assert that this organic marvel can accomplish nothing on its own without the help of fading shadows of superstition, are only cheating themselves by replacing a greater wonder with a far lesser one.
But in the end, it is the evidence that must decide the question, and so it is to the evidence I shall |
you are an ordinary guy who wants to live a long and healthy life, avoid capitalist countries which are all about the survival of the fittest. However, even this theory struggles in the face of reality.
To find out if markets really translate to poor social outcomes, let’s look at the United Kingdom. According to the Index of Economic Freedom, the country has the 13th freest economy in the world. Since the UK is amongst the more market oriented countries we should expect – assuming the socialist critique to be true – that the country has appalling levels of human progress. To test this theory, we can turn to the Human Development Index. This United Nations project has for long examined how good countries fare in terms of equality, educational opportunities, health and other welfare measures. A quick glance at the latest data shows that the UK is a country with a high rate of human development – more precisely ranked at 14th place internationally. This means that the UK is a place where the great majority live long and prosperous lives, with widespread access to health, education and social services. Good social outcomes and capitalism is, at the very least, not an impossible mix.
Perhaps this is not surprising, since the UK combines free markets with a relatively large welfare state. Places which have a higher economic freedom ranking that the UK tend to have much slimmer welfare states. What happens if we instead of the UK look at the 5 most capitalist places on the planet? According to the Index of Economic Freedom four former UK colonies are the most market oriented places in the world, namely: Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand and Australia. In fifth place comes Switzerland. These free-market Meccas have low levels of taxation and correspondingly limited frame of public services offered to citizens. Of course, societies with small welfare services can ill afford generous social security and other social goods such as universal health care. Surely the most capitalist places on the planet fit the leftist critique, having systems that rewards the rich and the rich only?
The Human Development Index is all about the welfare opportunities for ordinary people. It is therefore telling that the 5 most capitalist places in the world have good rankings in this global welfare index. Australia has the second highest ranking in the human development index (after oil-rich Norway). Capitalist Switzerland ranks at an impressive global 3rd place. Also New Zealand (7th ranking) and Singapore (9th) outpace the UK. Hong Kong ranks only one spot (15th) below the UK. On the other hand, super-capitalist Hong Kong has the highest life expectancy at birth in this group (an impressive 83.4 years, second only to Japan globally). As shown in the comparison below, the UK has a lower life expectancy than all of the 5 most capitalist places in the world. Stunningly, even the inequality in life expectancy is lower in Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland and Australia than the UK. New Zealand has only a slightly higher rate than the UK.
Economic Freedom Index* HDI Rank** Life expectancy at birth (2013)** Inequality in life expectancy** Hong Kong 1 15 83.4 2.8 Singapore 2 9 82.3 2.8 New Zealand 3 7 81.1 4.8 Australia 4 2 82.5 4.2 Switzerland 5 3 82.6 3.9 United Kingdom 13 14 80.5 4.5
Sources: *Index of Economic Freedom; *Human Development Index. In all cases the latest available data is given.
Clearly, the idea that capitalism goes hand in hand with social marginalization doesn’t really fit reality. To further illustrate this point, let’s look at the 10 countries with the highest Human Development ranking
10 countries with highest Human Development Score
Human Development Index** Economic Freedom Score* 1 Norway 27 2 Australia 4 3 Switzerland 5 4 Netherlands 17 5 United States 12 6 Germany 16 7 New Zealand 3 8 Canada 6 9 Singapore 2 10 Denmark 11
Sources: *Index of Economic Freedom; *Human Development Index. In all cases the latest available data is given.
As shown above, all of these countries share a common feature – they are amongst the most market oriented places in the world.
And if we look at the 10 countries with the lowest Human Development ranking?
10 countries with lowest Human Development Score
Human Development Index** Economic Freedom Score* 187 Niger 127 186 Congo 168 185 Central African Republic 166 184 Chad 165 183 Sierra Leone 147 182 Eritrea 174 181 Burkina Faso 102 180 Burundi 132 179 Guinea 144 178 Mozambique 125
Sources: *Index of Economic Freedom; *Human Development Index. In all cases the latest available data is given.
Again the pattern is clear: all of them share a common feature – they are amongst the least capitalist countries in the world. To sum up, the myth as capitalism as a system that rewards the rich, and the rich only, lives on – in a world where the least capitalist countries struggle with very low human welfare, and the most capitalist countries combine prosperity with good social outcomes.
Dr. Nima Sanandaji is a Swedish author and researcher. He has amongst others written the book "Scandinavian Unexceptionalism - Culture, Markets and the failure of Third-Way Socialism" (IEA).
ShareSkin gels said to contain aloe vera at Walmart, Target, and CVS were found to have no evidence of the plant, according to a Bloomberg News investigation. The store-brand products were tested in a lab for aloe’s chemical markers; the chemicals were absent, indicating that no actual aloe plant is in the skin gels.
Aloe vera is a plant that’s been used for medicinal purposes for thousands of years. Today, aloe is used in products purporting to treat skin burns and cold sores, as well as constipation, although there’s no conclusive evidence aloe vera helps for most of these things. (There’s some evidence it’s a laxative!) The US market for products that say they contain aloe accounts for $146 million, an 11 percent increase in the past year, Bloomberg News reports. The US Food and Drug Administration, however, doesn’t approve cosmetic products before they’re sold, so the agency doesn’t check whether claims on packaging are accurate.
Several law firms have filed lawsuits
The aloe gel samples analyzed by Bloomberg News all listed aloe leaf juice as their main ingredient, or the main one after water. However, when they were tested for the plant’s three chemical markers — acemannan, malic acid, and glucose — the products were found to have no evidence of aloe. None of the samples contained lactic acid, either, which would indicate degraded aloe vera. Instead, they contained maltodextrin, a sugar used as a food additive that is sometimes used to imitate aloe and is much cheaper. (Bloomberg News also analyzed an aloe gel from Walgreens; it contained one aloe marker, meaning that the plant’s presence can’t be confirmed or ruled out.)
Several law firms have filed lawsuits against Walmart, Target, CVS, and Walgreens, after separate tests also found that no aloe is present in the retailers’ store-brand gels. “No reasonable person would have purchased or used the products if they knew the products did not contain any aloe vera,’’ attorneys wrote in a complaint filed in September, according to Bloomberg News.
Target declined to comment, while Walmart Stores Inc., CVS Health Corp., and Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. all told the news organization that their suppliers had told them their products were authentic. The products Bloomberg tested are Walmart’s Equate Aloe After Sun Gel with pure aloe vera; Target’s Up & Up Aloe Vera Gel with pure aloe vera; CVS Aftersun Aloe Vera Moisturizing Gel; and Walgreens Alcohol Free Aloe Vera Body Gel.This is why you don’t date coworkers.
1st generation male idol group K’Pop debuted in January 2001 with five members – Donghwa, Jumin, Youngwon, Yoobin, and Woohyun.
Their debut song “Shadow”, from their self-titled album, was a hit and they gained “flower boy” status, releasing two more albums to relative success before disbanding in 2004.
Their last album, “Memories“ was released in September 2004, with the title track “Scent of Memory” making it into the top 10.
While most groups disband due to creative differences or major public scandals, K’Pop reportedly disbanded because of complications stemming from a homosexual relationship between two members.
According to reports, two of the K’Pop members were in a romantic relationship, until one of the two cheated with a male idol from a different idol group. His partner discovered the infidelity and assaulted him.
The infidelity and assault caused a rift between the members, and the group subsequently disbanded.
When Korean fans discovered the reason K’Pop disbanded, no one could believe it. To this day, nothing similar has occurred in the Korean entertainment industry.
Kim Bum Suk, aka Donghwa, returned to the entertainment industry in 2011 as an actor, citing “conflicts with the management company” as the official reason the group disbanded when asked.
Earlier this year, the group returned for a guest appearance on Sugarman 2 with Yoo Jae Suk and Yoo Hee Yeol (also called Two Yoo Project), which brings back artists whose songs were once hits on major music charts.
So bygones must be bygones!ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos, who for 15 years expertly navigated his re-invention from tough Clinton operative to respected television journalist, has finally—and perhaps inevitably—slipped up.
His mistake, by any definition, is a beaut—no doubt prompting a blush of shame and putting the network news division on the defensive.
It turns out that the 54-year-old Stephanopoulos—who served as a top aide in Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign and first White House term before leaving to teach, write an acclaimed memoir and join ABC—failed to disclose to his ABC News bosses $75,000 in contributions he made to the Clinton Foundation.
Worse, he didn’t tell viewers, keeping silent about the potential conflict of interest even as he conducted a contentious interview April 26 on his Sunday panel show, This Week With George Stephanopoulos, with Clinton Foundation critic Peter Schweizer, author of Clinton Cash.
In an interview with Politico media columnist Dylan Byers, who broke the story Thursday morning, Stephanopoulos apologized profusely to his viewers and ABC News colleagues for his misstep, announced that he would no longer moderate the scheduled ABC-sponsored Republican primary debate next February, promised to address the embarrassing issue on Sunday’s program, and expressed regret that he had given the Clinton Foundation money in the first place.
ABC initially said he’d donated a total of $50,000, but Stephanopoulos later corrected that figure, saying he’d written $25,000 checks in each of 2012, 2013, and 2014.
"In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have, even though I did it for the best reasons," Stephanopoulos said about his donations.
In a statement earlier Thursday, he had said: "I made charitable donations to the Foundation in support of the work they’re doing on global AIDS prevention and deforestation, causes I care about deeply. I thought that my contributions were a matter of public record. However, in hindsight, I should have taken the extra step of personally disclosing my donations to my employer and to the viewers on air during the recent news stories about the Foundation. I apologize."
Schweizer, meanwhile, was unimpressed and accused Stephanopoulos of a "massive breach of ethical standards," writing in an email to Bloomberg Politics that he was "really quite stunned by this...He fairly noted [during the This Week appearance] my four months working as a speechwriter for George W. Bush. But he didn't disclose this?”
Stephanopoulos—who is also the network’s chief political correspondent and cohost of Good Morning America—also told Byers that he will stay away from the February debate, which he had been scheduled to moderate.
"I won't moderate that debate,” he said. “I think I've shown that I can moderate debates fairly. That said, I know there have been questions made about moderating debates this year. I want to be sure I don't deprive moderators or viewers of a good debate."
That assessment is not universally shared, however, and shortly after the donation was revealed, presidential candidate Rand Paul, the Republican junior senator from Kentucky, declared that Stephanopoulos should be barred from moderating any GOP debates next year.
The communications director for Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah announced on Twitter: “I’m not letting my boss go on @ABC until @GStephanopoulos recuses himself from all 2016 coverage.”
After that tweet from his aide, Sen. Lee said in a statement to The Daily Beast: “I will ultimately make the final decision about each interview request we receive. But I am very concerned about how George’s donations to the Clintons calls into question his journalistic objectivity. You don’t give $75,000 to an organization and then forget to mention it when you interview a person who is questioning that organization. This fact will weigh heavily as I consider future media requests from ABC News."
It was unclear if other Republican office-holders would also protest, but Stephanopoulos—who didn’t respond to an email seeking comment—told Byers he will continue to cover the campaign.
“It’s a mistake, and it’s a dumb one, but it’s not a criminal offense,” said Columbia University Journalism School professor Dick Wald, a former vice president and “ethics czar” of ABC News. “Other people have done other dumb things.”
Wald told The Daily Beast that if Stephanopoulos had disclosed his contributions to viewers, there would have been nothing wrong with his doing the Schweizer interview.
“Audiences aren’t dumb,” Wald said. “They are perfectly capable of making decisions about whether or not this was a reasonable series of questions and answers.”
Asked if it wouldn’t have been better if Stephanopoulos had recused himself and delegated the interview to another correspondent, Wald answered: “They could have switched, but that’s not necessary. It might have been a smart thing to do in retrospect.”
An ABC News statement Thursday morning reiterated Stephanopoulos’s explanation, and noted that “he’s admitted to an honest mistake and apologized for that omission. We stand behind him.”
The spokesperson declined to address the question of whether ABC News President James Goldston, had he known of the $75,000 donation, would have permitted Stephanopoulos to conduct the Schweizer interview.
“I don’t want to talk about a hypothetical situation,” the spokesperson told The Daily Beast. “He apologized. He recognizes his mistake. We accept that apology. We believe it was an honest mistake.”
While on-air personalities at other news outlets have been punished for similar mistakes—MSNBC suspended hosts Keith Olbermann and Joe Scarborough for making political contributions without first obtaining permission—Stephanopoulos will face no disciplinary action, the ABC News spokesperson said.
Wald, meanwhile, said Stephanopoulos has proven to viewers, over many years, that he can be skeptical and dispassionate when reporting on his former employers. Indeed, in 1998, after Stephanopoulos was among the first political analysts to suggest on the air that the then-exploding Monica Lewinsky scandal could lead to impeachment, the Clintons and their loyalists were said to be enraged.
“George Step-on-top-of-us,” Clinton pal Harry Thomason dubbed him at the time.
“Nobody is under the false impression that George and the Clintons have never met,” Wald said. “Everybody knows that George was an important political operator for them. But he has demonstrated over the years—now quite a large number of years—that he is independent of the politics of the Clintons.”
While Clinton Cash’s sensational charges have received respectful attention from the The New York Times and other media outlets, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has worked hard to debunk Schweizer’s thesis that the Clinton state department and former president Clinton did favors for business people who donated generously to the family foundation.
“We’ve done investigative work here at ABC News, found no proof of any kind of direct action,” Stephanopoulos told Schweizer on the air. “An independent government ethics expert, Bill Allison, of the Sunlight Foundation, wrote this. He said, ‘There’s no smoking gun, no evidence that she changed the policy based on donations to the foundation.’ No smoking gun.”
Stephanpoulos also pushed back on Schweizer’s assertion that there should be a criminal investigation of how Hillary Clinton’s actions at the State Department, which endorsed a lucrative uranium deal that benefited foundation contributors, might be connected to that largesse.
“That—that is an issue for them, but it's not a criminal—it's nothing that would warrant a criminal investigation,” Stephanopoulos declared, according to the ABC News transcript.Just one day after the Scottish referendum on independence, mayor of London Boris Johnson grabbed his chance. Now that the decentralization of power had been made a topic of discussion, he announced that it was about time for the government of the United Kingdom to grant greater sovereignty to the city of London. Especially when it comes to the generation and expenditure of tax income, Johnson thinks that the capital of Britain needs a bigger say.
Margaret Hodge, Labor’s member of parliament for the London constituency of Barking, made it clear that she agrees with Johnson. In an opinion piece published in the London Evening Standard, she observed that the mayor of New York is allowed to spend 50% of the city’s own tax income, while the Mayor of London can only keep 7%.
Johnson and Hodge have a point. Considering the constant battle to keep up with rival global cities and the costly nature of tackling local issues, London is in desperate need of more autonomy.
Take the future of London’s public transport, for example. According to London First, a not-for-profit organization representing various commercial stakeholders, fiscal devolution would hugely simplify the process of funding infrastructure projects such as Crossrail 2. Plans for the realization of Crossrail 1—a new, partly underground railway line that will connect Maidenhead and Heathrow in the west to Shenfield in the east via central London, due to be completed in 2019—took almost 35 years to come to fruition, partly because of the uncertainties over the funding.
Then there’s London’s housing crisis. Earlier this week, the council of the borough of Croydon in South London announced plans for 8,300 new homes and 2.8 million square feet of offices, meant to provide the city with 23,600 new jobs. To implement its plans, however, the council will need to free up around £5.25 billion ($8.5 billion), a sum of money they want to raise through further devolution of fiscal power. Croydon isn’t alone. Their call was backed up by the Society of London Treasurers, a group made up of the senior finance officers of every London borough.
Stephen Syrett, professor of Local Economic Development at Middlesex University London, has a similar view. “There is a very strong argument to be made for granting London more autonomy,” he says. “London has a number of particular problems. The city is growing very strongly and has various particular issues. The need for London to have more control over its tax-raising powers, so that it can invest in areas it needs to invest in, is a very strong argument for devolution.”
There’s more to it though. Not only does London’s lack of power make it harder for the city to finance its plans for growth and development, it also has repercussions on the governance of the city. According to Kathleen Scanlon, a researcher for the London School of Economics who specializes in urban policy and housing finance, this status quo is bad for democracy. “At the moment, nobody wants to be a local politician,” she says. “The best and most ambitious people stay away from it.”
Earlier this year, an opinion poll carried out by surveyor Censuswide showed that one in five Londoners—and almost half of all 25-34-year-olds—would favor a complete breakaway from the UK. According to one columnist in The Independent, London’s GDP as a sovereign state would be twice as high as Singapore’s, the Asian city state that the capital is so often compared to and ranked against.
Syrett calls the idea of London as a modern day city-state “faintly ludicrous” and neither feasible nor desirable. “London is heavily interdependent with the rest of the country. Yes, you can focus on the global economy, but all the talent that settles in London comes from the rest of the United Kingdom. Furthermore, London continues to benefit massively from national public spending.”
While urban autonomy might be a pipe dream, devolution of power to the Mayor of London and the city’s councils seems unavoidable. The capital of Britain needs its own money to face the future, and it needs to be governed in a well-functioning, democratic manner. So while Scotland’s call for a certain degree of independence from Westminster might sound the loudest, the United Kingdom’s government would be wise to listen to the plight of Johnson and other London politicians as well.
This article is part of Quartz Ideas, our home for bold arguments and big thinkers.Get the biggest Daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Bristol City and Leeds United look set to battle it out for Exeter City wonderkid Ollie Watkins.
Watkins has been linked with a move to the Championship after a string of impressive performance at St James Park that saw him named the EFL Young Player of the Year.
The 21-year-old has impressed at Exeter to the extent that Premier League giants Arsenal and Manchester United have watched the forward.
Lee Johnson was spotted at Exeter’s match with Carlisle United on Saturday and was rumoured to have been scouting Watkins, who has scored 14 goals in 49 appearances this season.
But he could face stiff competition from Leeds United, with Garry Monk keen to bolster his attacking options after a disappointing end to the season that saw his side fail to reach the play-offs.
With Leeds likely to lose loan trio Hadi Sacko, Mo Barrow and Alfonso Pedraza, they are in need of strengthening in wide areas.
Whether any other clubs join the race for the highly rated youngster remains to be seen, but Watkins is likely to be at the centre of a flurry of activity in the coming weeks.Saudi Arabia has quietly signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with South Korea, according to The Wall Street Journal, reigniting fears that U.S. nuclear negotiations with Iran might drive a Middle East nuclear arms race.
The Saudi deal with South Korea will explore the feasibility of building two nuclear reactors in Saudi Arabia over the next 20 years, according to the report.
Saudi Arabia has consistently voiced worry over the U.S. negotiations with Iran, and has been sending signals that it will seek to develop its own nuclear technology should Iran continue with its nuclear program.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Saudi Arabia might even seek to “buy an atomic bomb…if it sees an agreement with Iran as too weak.”
Some believe that Pakistan has already made nuclear weapons for Saudi Arabia. The BBC reported in 2013 that such weapons are “ready for delivery” to the Saudis should Iran cross the nuclear threshold.
The Obama Administration is working to quell Saudi worries about its negotiations with Iran. Secretary of State John Kerry even flew to Saudi Arabia earlier in the month to convince the Sunni nation that the current nuclear negotiations will not lead to Iranian hegemony over the Middle East.The robot dog you see above is a mystery. [Daneil Dennet], a professor of philosophy at Tufts University found this in an antique shop in Paris. Apparently it has no identification and no one has been able to tell him anything about it. It was made in the 50s, and that seems to be all he knows. He’s offering a reward to whomever can reveal its secrets. There’s a full gallery of pictures to browse through that reveal some of the construction, but not a whole lot of the function.
We are just blown away by the construction here. Look at all those switches! Can you imagine how easy to reverse engineer things would have been back then? Surely in the right hands, someone could get this thing working again. Then again [Daniel] might like it kept completely original. If you know something about this robot, you can find [Daniel]’s contact information here.
Oh, and yes, we realize it looks just like k-9.Aaron, Mark and Doug McCambridge from the Good Times, Great Movies podcast discuss this early work of Michael Haneke’s recently released on The Criterion Collection. We discuss the famous tracking shot, the way he explores culture, and of course the incomparable Juliette Binoche. We also discuss Haneke’s body of work, exploring how he works as a filmmaker, what he is trying to say, and why he is so often provocative. #ParisIsAboutLife
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Show notes:
Outline:
0:00 – Intro, Housekeeping
20:00 – News
38:40 – Code Unknown
1:22:50 – Michael Haneke
Intro
Doug – iTunes | Twitter
#CriterionBlogathon preview.
News
Ryan Gallagher’s tweet about The Manchurian Candidate
Emir Kusturica
Dont Look Back packaging from Criterion Forum
The Rainer Werner Fassbinder Collection from Arrow
Code Unknown
Photo Album on Facebook.
One of the most impressive scenes in CODE UNKNOWN was the long tracking shot. pic.twitter.com/Cd47fpy5cG — Aaron West (@awest505) November 14, 2015
Where to Find Us:
Mark Hurne: Twitter | Blog | Letterboxd
Aaron West: Twitter | Blog | Letterboxd
Criterion Close-Up: Facebook | Twitter | EmailYou Are Not So Smart podcast 020: The Future - James Burke and Matt Novak
You are Not So Smart is hosted by David McRaney, a journalist and self-described psychology nerd. In each episode, David explores cognitive biases and delusions, and is often joined by a guest expert.
If you love educational entertainment - programs about science, nature, history, technology and everything in between - it is a safe bet that the creators of those shows were heavily influenced by the founding fathers of science communication: Carl Sagan, David Attenborough, and James Burke.
In this episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast we sit down with James Burke and discuss the past, the present, and where he sees us heading when we arrive in a future where scarcity is rare and home manufacturing can produce just about anything you desire.
James Burke is a legendary science historian who created the landmark BBC series Connections which provided an alternative view of history and change by replacing the traditional “Great Man” timeline with an interconnected web in which all people influence one another to blindly direct the flow of progress. Burke is currently writing a new book about the coming age of abundance, and he continues to work on his Knowledge Web project.
This episode of You Are Not So Smart is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create you own professional website or online portfolio. For a free trial and ten percent off go to Squarespace.com and use the offer code DUMDUM.
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We also sit down with Matt Novak, creator and curator of Paleofuture, a blog that explores retro futurism, sifting through the many ways people in the past predicted how the future would turn out, sometimes correctly, mostly not.
Together, Burke and Novak help us understand why we are to terrible at predicting the future and what we can learn about how history truly unfolds so we can better imagine who we will be in the decades to come.That was a hell of a ride!
Wow… The support we had on this was astonishing! 1950 contributors and more than $5M raised (at current ETH price). And not only that, the community that has grown around us in our social channels is outstanding, incredibly supportive and keeps growing every day!
A little history: I was part of the founding team of RSK. Since I first learned about Bitcoin I was looking to building a solution on top of blockchain related to films and, having met great minds and gathered them together, we finally developed the game-changer smart contracts platform on top of Bitcoin. Still, my passion was in movies, so I started advising some blockchain based entertainment companies. Then on August of 2016, I had my first beer with Federico Abad — creator of Popcorn Time — and decided to leave RSK to follow this vision. In November, we meet Pablo Carbajo at LaBitConf in Buenos Aires and spread the enthusiasm on him. By January, with the addition of Javier D´Ovidio to the team, we´ve begun developing the alpha version of the platform.
We´ve started the ICO road back in May, in New York. We were young and naive, and arrived to the Big Apple with a demo of our product and a backpack filled with illusions, expectations and misconceptions. And also a bunch of Flixxo stickers.
By July having a crowd sale was more than just an idea. It started to become a reality. At Coinagenda, Barcelona, we partnered with Wings and Icofunding, and also found out that there was a real interest from VCs and funds to be part of our project.
September, the big trip. The roadshow. First time premiering our platform, speaking to a crowd — in English! — at a full-house Amsterdam´s Bitcoin Wednesday. About 200 people in the room, and a lot of time to pitch. Then traveling to China right after the Chinese government announced the ICO ban… Beijing, Hangzhou. Sleeping in airports after unsuccessfully trying to sleep in a hotel room — damn jet lag. Making friends and partners with other ICO-people, improving public relation skills with a glass of beer in the hand. Making AmaZix and Forklog join our team. Back then, our Flixxo Telegram group had only 34 people…
There is a moment, after pitching that much, after having been asked the right questions, after having received a lot of feedback, in which you feel confident enough to deal with any audience, when you know that you can answer all the questions. We´ve started to perceive that in the road to the airport in Beijing, when the taxi driver blew out a tire and stopped the car in the middle of a highway. I was trying to explain to him that I was running late to take a plane, he was trying to tell me that I shouldn´t worry. Looking at the cars running next to me at 100km/h in a country I´ve never visited before, where all the signs were written… well, in Chinese, I found out that we were on the right path.
Zurich, Kiev, Athens, London again in New York. Pitch, pitch, pitch. PR with a beer. Uber, Airbnb. Pitch and beer. Partnering with AdEx, celebrating our first 1000 followers on Twitter, in Telegram. Adding Olha Rymar to our team.
We came back with the same bag, still filled with illusions and expectations, but we had a better understanding of our product, of our token model. We had developed a full token economy, a model in which a token had a justification and in which that token could not be replaced with BTC or ETH. Even better: in our token economy, Flixx had circulation (circulation=circle, have you thought on that?) and anyone was able to earn the token that would spend later.
Presale and ICO contract were developed and audited by Coinfabrik. Everything was ready to take Flixxo to the moon.
Presale was a really stressful moment. For long days we watched at our empty wallet, wondering what was wrong. Bitcoin price was raising at a fast pace with the promises of many new forks, and some big ICO fails had made contributors buy tickets out of ICO-Land. Then the first contribution showed up in our wallet: and this guy happened to be a YouTuber. That was the most auspicious foretoken ever! By the end of that week, more than 6500 ETH were raised.
Probably you know the rest of the story. You would have been around by then if you were one of our contributors. We´ve partnered with Bancor, iex.ec, Coinomi. We raised more than 11500ETH (much more than our soft cap of 5000ETH), which is amazing. And we are ready to work hard to deliver a platform that could disrupt video distribution forever.
If you have been part of this journey, we really appreciate your support. If you just happened to find out about Flixxo you´re more than welcome to join us. This is a community based video platform and we aim at building this together with our community.
What´s coming next?
It was surprisingly awesome to see the trading stats at EtherDelta, in which Flixx was traded at 2x–3x ICO price. In our token model anyone will be able to trade their tokens within the platform (advertisers need tokens!), however there are secondary markets and they´re liquidity resources for Flixxo users. We are glad to announce that the following exchanges listing Flixxo will be Gatecoin, KuCoin and Livecoin. Yes, we are in conversations with some of the biggest exchanges but due to NDA, we would not state them until we reach an agreement.
We´ve been reached out by some of the biggest media and communication companies in the world! Everybody has heard of blockchain and we are in the right moment at the right place. We´ve been invited to USA and India, and we are pretty sure we will be able to announce incredible partnerships soon!
But first, we need to go back to the platform. To the protocol. We are already re-designing the whole UX and have started the conversations with RSK to further cooperate developing Lumino protocol for scaling the blockchain and being able to process thousands of transactions per second. We´ve been digging into BitTorrent protocol and have started rethinking it, looking for better interactions with a blockchain and looking for ways of improving the quality of video distribution, even the long-tail content that is not very popular and is not streamed by many seeders.
In the upcoming weeks we will be traveling to Los Angeles, starting the quest for gathering great quality content from unsatisfied YouTubers.
We will do our best to keep the communication you´re used to on our social channels, but we will have to work very hard in the next months for bringing up an awesome platform. We are taking into consideration many of the suggestions of our community, so let´s keep the conversation alive!
Looking forward to disrupting video distribution forever! And together ;)
Join the conversation in our main Telegram Group
If you´re a content creator join the Creators Group
If you´re into trading join Trading GroupAt the very beginning of last year, I decided to track my reading habits and share the best stuff here, on Baeldung. Haven’t missed a review since.
Here we go…
1. Spring and Java
A quick followup to the survey Brian Goetz ran to take the pulse of the community on the best way to implement type inference in Java. Looks like a pretty decisive yes.
Jing looks like a clean, nice way to access your SQL data – here’s just a quick example to show you what the library can do.
Very quick and to the point way to run your tests in a more predictable order – which makes a lot of sense.
I personally actually like the unpredictable nature of tests – it’s a quick and nice way to flush out any unforeseen connections between them – but I can certainly see the appeal of running them in a clear order.
A very practical and useful guide to using stored procedures with Hibernate. A bit annotation-heavy, but if you’re using JPA, you’re already used to that.
Also worth reading:
Webinars and presentations:
Time to upgrade:
2. Technical
Having a solid understanding of CSRF attacks well beyond the basics – can save your bacon when taking your system to production. Definitely have a look at this one.
I enjoy reading through the details of these attacks. I’m saving this one for the weekend but it looks promising, so I’m including it here as well.
API documentation is the new hotness, yes, but it’s also necessary. And while I’m using Swagger myself, I’m keeping a close eye on the other tools available out there.
A very quick and to the point set of questions to ask yourself before deciding if Event Sourcing makes sense for the architecture of your system.
Also worth reading:
3. Musings
Removing “dead” code is critical to keep the sanity of your system (and your own while you work on that system).
One of the cleanest and easiest to work with codebases that I ever touched early on in my career – was one where the team lead was ruthless with cutting code that wasn’t used immediately.
Passion is one thing, and allowing it to put you in unhealthy, one-side type of work is another.
This piece is definitely worth the read, especially if you’re relatively new to working as a developer.
Some solid advice if there ever was any – think through those little, day to day decisions to keep your system and your codebase clean and nimble.
If you ever asked the monitoring question for the system you’re working on, you’ve asked yourself this exact question more than once.
My only gripe about this one is that it doesn’t include the other major player in the space – New Relic. Other than that – some solid information over here.
Also worth reading:
4. Comics
And my favorite Dilberts of the week:
5. Pick of the Week
Every year I run a survey to find out how the adoption of new technologies is going. Here are the new numbers for Spring and Spring Boot:The current “core curricula” of public schools in the US are comprised of the following subjects: (sciences) biology, physics, chemistry; (mathematics) arithmetic, algebra, pre-calculus, basic statistics; (language) literature, humanities, composition, foreign languages; (social sciences) history, government, economics, basic political science; (physical education) baseball, basketball, football, general exercise
Here are ten other subjects that all students from the ages of six to eighteen should be required to study:
10 Fiction Writing
Ask any elementary school student, and he or she will affirm that making up stories is fun. And since Stephen King is quite wealthy from doing so, education and practice in fiction composition is not irrelevant to society. College students across all majors admit that fiction writing courses, whether electives or required, are among their very favorite. After all, you finally get to write what you want to write, not some tedious, insipid essay about how Holden Caul |
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RICHMOND, Va. -- Virginia lawmakers who support the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Virginians spoke out in favor of a bill that would address an issue raised on a billboard seen along Interstate 95 in Richmond.
The billboard supports conversion therapy. Conversion therapy is based on the notion that therapy can prevent or stop a person's homosexual feelings.
House Bill 1385 would outlaw conversion therapy in Virginia.
Opponents of the bill argue putting a limit on the options a child has for dealing with sexual confusion is wrong.
"Proponents of legislation prohibiting counseling for kids with gender confusion have to answer the question why they believe it is okay to allow a child to change their behavior or body to match their feelings but it is bigoted to consider helping someone change their behavior or feelings to match their body," Family Foundation President Victoria Cobb said. "Virginia law is clear that parents have a fundamental right to make decisions concerning the care of their children, a right this legislation clearly violates."
Mathew Shurka has a different take on the issue.
Shurka said after he came out about his sexuality to his father, he had to undergo years of conversion therapy.
"My father believed that there was a chance that this could just be a phase, maybe this is just something I'm going through," Shurka said.
He said one therapist prescribed him Viagra to help him have sex with women, another therapist told him to no longer speak with his mother and sister.
"My grades started to fall in school. I went to a straight a student to a failing student. I was having depression," Shurka added.
There are laws on the books in California, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C. that bans the practices in those places.
"Today, more than ever, it is clear that state legislatures need to step up to the plate to protect LGBT youth from the dangerous and discredited practices of conversion therapy," National Center for Lesbian Rights Staff Attorney and #BornPerfect Campaign Coordinator Samantha Ames said in a statement.
Other LGBT-related bills in the 2015 Virginia General Assembly include:I’ve just finished uploading a few packages compiled with Ghc 7.8.0 rc1. Please try it out and report how it goes!
Just add the following and start the download:
[haskell-testing]
Server = http://xsounds.org/~haskell/testing/$arch
SigLevel = Never
The packages included are
Crypto 4.2.5.1
Diff 0.3.0
FileManipCompat 0.18
GLURaw 1.4.0.0
GLUT 2.5.1.0
Glob 0.7.3
HTTP 4000.2.10
HUnit 1.2.5.2
IfElse 0.85
MonadCatchIO-mtl 0.3.1.0
MonadCatchIO-transformers 0.3.1.0
ObjectName 1.0.0.0
OpenGL 2.9.1.0
OpenGLRaw 1.4.0.0
QuickCheck 2.6
SHA 1.6.4
StateVar 1.0.0.0
Unixutils-shadow 1.0.0
X11 1.6.1.1
X11-xft 0.3.1
abstract-deque 0.2.2.1
abstract-par 0.3.3
alex 3.1.3
anansi 0.4.5
ansi-terminal 0.6.1
ansi-wl-pprint 0.6.7.1
async 2.0.1.5
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base16-bytestring 0.1.1.6
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blaze-html 0.7.0.1
blaze-markup 0.6.0.0
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cereal 0.4.0.1
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colour 2.3.3
conduit 1.0.13
cpphs 1.17.1
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curl 1.3.8
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AdvertisementsAnother Bitcoin Embassy meetup has come and gone and I must say, they keep getting better and better every time I go. After a brief networking session where you could discuss Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies with your peers, the Embassy presented their team members and provided updates regarding their future plans to open up a Bitcoin store on the lower level of the Embassy. Introductions where made and new start ups were presented. BitCredits.io aims to revolutionize Bitcoin payment processing with a smooth and streamlined process moving away from 3rd party plugin type processing and offering a direct integration with your store’s brand offering a unique shopping experience for your customers. Bylls is a system that will allow you to pay most of your standard bills using Bitcoin and should be launched shortly.
Once the introductions were over, you could either continue networking or, if you were so inclined, the Embassy offered 2 different information sessions that you could attend. One as an introduction and to Bitcoin where beginners could get a brief overview of Bitcoin and how it could benefit them. The team would assist users in setting up their wallets and obtaining their very first Bitcoin address. People could either sit and learn or ask open questions to a team of very knowledgeable staff that were ready to assist at every opportunity.
Another session offered an overview of the Bitcoin mining process. Discussing how transactions are formed, inputs and outputs, block heights, network difficulty fluctuations and retargets. Not to mention a very informative overview of hashing algorithms and nonces and how they are stored on the block chain as well as the mathematical probabilities of “mining” a transaction block.
Once the sessions were over, the Bitcoin Embassy proceed with their very first version of Satoshi Square where users could trade and barter for Bitcoins as well as buy and sell from each other using cash. You could place your bid and ask prices and if they were accepted, the friendly staff were on hand to assist with the transaction process.
Overall, this even was a great success. I really enjoyed meeting new people in the crypto community and making new friends. It’s also a very different atmosphere to discuss crypto related issues as a face to face conversation cannot compare to a simple forum thread. The Bitcoin Embassy is about building a community and embracing regulatory issues in the hopes of bringing Bitcoin to the masses. We can’t argue with that! Congratulations and thank you to the Bitcoin Embassy team for another wonderful and successful event. You can get more information about the Embassy on their website (http://bitcoinembassy.ca/). Below are some photos from the event:Getty Images American and British spying agencies were intercepting phone and internet data of foreign dignitaries attending the G20 Summit in 2009, according to The Guardian.
The paper revealed top-secret documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, which talked about "recent successes" in surveillance from GCHQ —Britain's NSA equivalent.
From The Guardian:
There have often been rumours of this kind of espionage at international conferences, but it is highly unusual for hard evidence to confirm it and spell out the detail.
The documents — prepared by the NSA and briefed to officials in Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand — reveal some surprising details, including the eavesdropping of phone calls of Russia's then-President Dmitry Medvedev, and the monitoring of emails and calls from other attending delegates' Blackberrys. The spy agency also reportedly set up fake internet cafes to intercept emails and install software to record keystrokes.
Released on Sunday, the new documents are the latest in nearly two weeks of revelations — from the collection of millions of Verizon phone records to Snowden's claim that he had the ability to wiretap anyone in the country from his desk.
The details are sure to mark a tense opening to the G8 Summit scheduled to start Monday in Ireland, with all nations who were present at the London G20 set to attend, RT reports.During Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine claimed that Indiana Governor Mike Pence said that Russian President Vladimir Putin was “inarguably a better leader than Barack Obama.”
In truth, Pence said Putin was a “stronger leader” than Obama, which is very different from Kaine’s characterization of his remarks.
“I think it’s inarguable that Vladimir Putin has been a stronger leader in his country than Barack Obama has been in this country. And that’s going to change the day that Donald Trump becomes president,” Pence said during an interview with Dana Bash of CNN, responding to a question about Donald Trump making a similar comment the previous evening at the Commander-in-Chief forum.
Pence also noted Trump “said last night he doesn’t particularly like the system” in Russia.By Angela Chan
BBC Trouble at the Top
When Hoover's free flights promotion was launched to a wide-eyed British public in August 1992, it seemed too good to be true. Over the next 21 months, many Hoover customers discovered it was.
About 220,000 people did eventually fly with Hoover
The promotion was simply too generous. Spend just £100 on any Hoover product and two free return flights - initially to Europe - could be yours - though only if you were determined enough to make it through the maze of small print and Hoover's travel agents' attempts to sell you profitable extras designed to offset the cost of the promotion.
Reminders
As a marketing exercise it may have been flawed from the outset, but Hoover were slow to realise just how much trouble they were in and soon set about making matters worse for themselves.
One day a judge would phone up, next day a professor, the next minute it was a pig farmer from Gloucester.
Harry Cichy
Hoover Holiday Pressure Group
The tag-line was: "Two return seats : Unbelievable."
Soon Hoover were inundated. The numbers just didn't add up and as the press started to dig Hoover found themselves drowning under a deluge of bad publicity. Ironically this made the offer still more popular.
Customers were given another timely reminder to send in their applications and things went from bad to worse.
Idiot
Before long, disgruntled customers began to take matters into their own hands. Not liking to be done out of a bargain, the British public took up the cause with a vengeance.
David Dixon, a horse trainer from High Seaton in Cumbria became a national hero overnight by kidnapping a Hoover van. To add insult to injury, the washing machine he'd bought to get the flights had broken down.
"There comes a time when you've got to make a stand, when you've got to say enough is enough, he said.
When a Hoover engineer came to fix the machine, a careless comment got him more than he'd bargained for.
"He said 'If you think buying a washing machine's going to get you two tickets to America, you must be an idiot'," Mr Dixon recalled.
"Huh! That was like a red rag to a bull. I thought to myself; 'an idiot am I?'
"I said; 'I'm not as stupid as you are. I'm not going to have to walk home'."
Film crew
BBC Watchdog sent researcher Hilary Bell to secretly film in one of the travel companies with rudimentary equipment.
Hoover has reinvented itself after the disaster
But the equipment was hidden in an Adidas bag that was so large it threatened to give the game away.
"I might as well have just worn a T-shirt saying Film Crew," said Ms Bell.
What she uncovered would see resignations from Hoover's top management.
Lengthy case
Questions were asked in parliament as, across the country, others banded together, and the Hoover Holiday Pressure Group was formed.
To my astonishment, the Royal mail van would turn up every day," said the group's founder Harry Cichy.
"One bag to start with, then two bags, then three bags. We ended up with about 8000 members.
"One day a judge would phone up, next day a professor, the next minute it was a pig farmer from Gloucester."
The campaign dominated Mr Cichy's life for 6 years and took him to Iowa, the headquarters of Hoover's US parent.
With the help of the pressure group, hundreds of customers began taking Hoover to court. Soon the company found itself fighting legal battles up and down the country in the small claims courts.
The cases continued for six years after the promotion first started. About 220,000 people did eventually fly, but it went down in history as one of the greatest marketing disasters of all time.
Trouble at the Top: Hoover Flights Fiasco was broadcast on BBC Two on Wednesday 12 May at 9:50 pm.CLOSE Young grizzlies bears are expanding the range of the population in northcentral Montana. Wochit
A track left by a grizzly bear near the Missouri River northeast of Great Falls earlier this year. (Photo: Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks)
Grizzly bears are inching closer to Great Falls, Montana's third largest city, where two centuries ago they chased members of the Lewis and Clark expedition and vice versa.
“It’s just a matter of time before bears are on the outskirts of Great Falls,” says Mike Madel, a grizzly bear management specialist with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.
On June 1, a plucky pair of young grizzlies turned up at the mouth of Box Elder Creek, where it enters the south side of the Missouri River, between Ryan and Morony dams.
That’s 12 miles northeast of Great Falls, a city of 60,000 residents – and the same vicinity where Pvt. Hugh McNeal, a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition, ran into a grizzly bear in July 1806, when the expedition passed through the area on its homeward journey.
The expedition also portaged around a series of "great falls" on the Missouri River on its way west in 1805. Today, those water falls are the location of hydroelectric dams.
“Oh wow, so that’s very close,” Norman Anderson said of the locations of the historical and modern-day bear sightings.
Anderson is a Lewis and Clark expert who plays Meriwether Lewis in reenactments of the expedition’s portage around the falls.
McNeal, who was traveling on horseback from the expedition’s upper and lower portages to check a cache, was forced to scramble up a willow tree after he was thrown from the horse and broke the butt of his gun over the bear’s head, Anderson said.
His encounter was documented in Lewis’ journal.
The return of the pair of young grizzly bears to the Great Falls vicinity a week ago was documented by a landowner who took pictures of the bears running across a grassy green hillside.
“Each year it’s more likely bears will be close to town,” Madel said.
Where the bears were seen also is in the vicinity of bike and walking trails that are part of the River’s Edge Trail system centered in Great Falls.
One of the system's stops along the north trail is “Box Elder Creek Scenic View.”
FWP says the presence of the young grizzly bears just downstream from Great Falls drives home the importance of making rural residences safe.
The animals can be attracted by unprotected food,including grain, livestock feed, beehives, livestock, garbage and pet food.
In the olden days, bison brought bears to Great Falls, Anderson said. “The buffalo came across by the tens of thousands every year."
Back then, the great falls of the Missouri River was a major bison crossing.
One shallow section of the river is located near the current railroad crossing over the river near the Great Falls Tribune building, Anderson noted.
In the 1960s, Anderson recalled, a guy drove a Jeep across that shallow section of river and a local auto dealership had him do it again so they could film a commercial.
Bison weren’t always as successful in making it to the other side. If they crossed when the river was flowing high, some would be swept down the river and be injured or killed on the water falls, Anderson said.
As a result, there were a lot of dead buffalo around.
And dead bison attracted hungry grizzly bears.
“There’s bears all over,” Anderson said.
Bison are long gone. Anderson wonders what's bringing the bears back.
"What' they're doing out here now on the prairie I don't know," he said.
It's just the natural expansion of a healthy, growing grizzly bear population that's putting them in closer proximity to people, FWP's Madel said.
“I think these bears are searching for areas to develop new home ranges," he said.
Historically, grizzly bears occupied grasslands like Great Falls all the way to the Mississippi River but they’ve been gone for more than 100 years.
In recent years, grizzly bears have been traveling river corridors like the Sun, Marias, Dearborn and Teton rivers east of the Rocky Mountain Front to the high plains.
The expansion onto the plains has come as the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem population of grizzly bears of northwestern and northcentral Montana continues to recover.
The population, currently listed as threatened, is more than 1,000 bears and growing at about 2 percent a year.
Sub-adult bears are the dispersing mechanism for grizzly bear population expansion, Madel said.
Most often it’s young males, which don’t take on a portion of the mother’s home range, that really travel.
“They go off far and wide, and they are exploring new places,” he said.
Right now, several groups of sibling bears are traveling together without their mother, he said.
Two young bears also were seen the last week of May along the Teton River near the vicinity of Floweree 24 miles northeast of Great Falls, and Carter, which is 5 miles northeast of Floweree, Madel said.
The bears that showed up just northeast of Great Falls are likely the same bears as those seen near Floweree and Carter, Madel said.
Monte Giese, who lives on the Teton seven miles north of Carter, was outside when he saw two bears 200 yards away from his house. He shot video of them walking across a field.
“I may not be in the majority, but I think the fact we live in a landscape that can support those kind of animals is pretty neat,” Giese said.
Eventually, they took off down the Teton River, and presumably headed south toward the Missouri River and Great Falls.
To reach Box Elder Creek northeast of town, the bears would have had to cross the Missouri River, a formidable obstacle when it’s flowing high in the spring.
Grizzlies are good swimmers, but Madel doubts they would have attempted to swim the Missouri at the rate it’s flowing now.
However, the reservoir area above the Morony Dam is calm.
“It’s really possible they got down to the river and they got to the still water of Morony Reservoir, and they swam the reservoir,” Madel said.
On the west side of the Continental Divide, Madel noted that bears have crossed sections of Flathead Lake.
“In this case, I wouldn’t say it’s unusual, but it’s certainly a first in recent history a bear has made it across the Missouri River that we know of,” Madel said.
Box Elder Creek, where the 21st Century grizzlies were seen, is too steep to farm and hasn’t changed much since the Lewis and Clark Days, Anderson said.
“If they swam the river, then they could go up Box Elder Creek,” Anderson said.
On June 14, 1805, a grizzly bear chased Lewis into the Missouri River. Today, an iron grizzly bear sculpture in West Bank Park marks the approximate location.
Adam, a 450-pound grizzly bear, is coaxed into a fierce display as actor Norman Anderson portrays Meriwether Lewis while filming a scene in the Missouri River in Great Falls in 2004. The re-enactment was part of a film highlighting the Lewis and Clark expedition's portage around the Great Falls of the Missouri, when one grizzly chased Lewis into the Missouri River. Now grizzlies are returning to the Great Falls area after a long absence. (Photo: Robin Loznak)
The encounter probably occurred closer to where the Albertson’s grocery store parking lot is today because the river was wider 200 years ago, Anderson said.
In 2004, Anderson played the role of Lewis in a reenactment of that encounter for a short film on the expedition. A 450-pound, 6-foot-8 young grizzly named Adam was brought in for the part of the wild grizzly, roaring and swatting his big paw. At some point, Anderson recalled, Adam got bored and jumped a fence set up to keep him in like it wasn't there.
"He takes off running across there, because it's pretty shallow," Anderson said. "When he hit the current on the north side of the river, it swept him a way like he was a twig."
Adam pulled himself out of the river at Steamboat Island downstream.
Another location where expedition members clashed with bears came at the upper portage camp on the banks of the river off of what is now Lower River Road.
“They had bear trouble all around there,” Anderson said. “They actually went and hunted bear a couple of times on White Bear Island to try to get rid of them because they were having bears raid their camp at night.”
Lewis and Clark hunted the bears and used the oil for cooking, Anderson said.
Historical accounts of the Crow and Blackfeet also document grizzly bears being close to their camps on the high plains, Madel said.
“Certainly Great Falls must have been a favorite area,” Madel said.
Obviously, people get concerned about grizzly bears being around, but in general the bears are wary of people, Madel said.
“They usually run,” Madel said of the sub-adults that are searching out new territory. “But they are learning and dispersing and exploring new habitat and that brings them into close proximity to people.”
FWP has received no reports of the young bears since they were seen June 1 northeast of Great Falls.
“It will be interesting to see where the next observation of those two are,” Madel said.
With areas east of the mountains dominated by cropland, there is less suitable habitat available for grizzly bear occupancy, Madel says.
There is one place in northcentral and central Montana where grizzly bears might be able to make a go of it, and that's the Missouri River Breaks, Madel said. That's because it includes vast areas of public land such as the Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument and the Charles M. Russell National Widlife Refuge.
“If a bear makes it out there, it might actually stay there and all of a sudden you have the creation of an island population,” Madel said.
Secure food, FWP advises
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks is advising homeowners in areas where grizzly bears are now showing up to take down bird feeders, secure garbage inside a closed garage or secure shed, feed pets inside, clean up chicken and livestock feed and remove all odorous substances such as hummingbird feeders.
FWP also advises ranchers and farmers to use some form of aversive conditioning if they see a grizzly in their yard. That could be firing cracker shells provided by FWP. Firing the shells creates a loud noise and is meant to scare the bears off. It is legal to escort a bear off private property in a vehicle, but it’s considered illegal harassment to chase them for a long time, FWP says.
Read or Share this story: http://gftrib.com/2s94qesImage caption Mr Goodwill said the UK wanted reciprocal guarantees from the other 27 EU members
There is no reliable data to identify EU nationals in the UK or the length of their stay in the country, immigration minister Robert Goodwill has said.
He told MPs this lack of detail would not affect Brexit negotiations as he could not foresee a situation in which all EU nationals were told to leave.
Ministers say they cannot guarantee EU nationals living in the UK the right to stay without reciprocal assurances.
But Labour's Chuka Umunna said this stance was now just a "pretence".
Prime Minister Theresa May has said she would expect to guarantee all EU citizens currently living in the UK the right to remain after the UK leaves the EU but this will depend on other EU countries offering similar assurances to British citizens living there.
'In limbo'
Campaigners say this means the two million EU citizens estimated to be living in the UK have been effectively "left in limbo" and they must not be used as "bargaining chips" in Brexit discussions over issues such as free movement and access to the single market.
Image copyright PA Image caption Removing all the EU nationals living in the UK would be a mammoth task
Giving evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee for the first time since he was appointed in July, Mr Goodwill said EU nationals made a major contribution to the UK economy and society - in areas such as the health service and agriculture - and he could not envisage a circumstance in which they were told to go home.
Pressed by Mr Umunna, he said the government did not have the means of tracking down all EU nationals were it deemed necessary to remove them.
"No we are not in a position and I could not foresee a circumstance where we would want to be in that position," he said.
"I can't see a situation in which we would even think of that."
Citizens of other EU countries living in the UK who are not working do not necessarily have national insurance numbers, resulting in gaps in the official records.
Concrete guarantee
Mr Umunna said the disclosure that the UK government "did not have a clue" about the number or identity of EU nationals undermined the government's whole public position and ministers should stop "carrying on with the pretence" that they had the ability to ask all EU nationals to leave.
"If you can't identify all the EU nationals in our country and be in a position to remove them, what on earth is the point carrying on with the pretence that somehow if you weren't to guarantee them the right to stay, you could get rid of them," he said.
Mr Goodwill replied: "I can see the sort of route you are trying to take me down but it is not a route I think we are ever going to be going down."
The unwillingness of the government to offer a concrete guarantee to EU nationals was not a "bargaining ploy" but a reflection of "how things are" pending the start of official negotiations, he said.
But he added that he couldn't see countries like Poland clamouring "to have their nationals returned" as part of the Brexit deal.
Earlier, Mr Goodwill said the government had not decided yet whether to introduce a cut-off point after which any automatic right to stay would no longer apply.
He said a number of options existed, including the date of the EU referendum, the day on which Article 50 was triggered or the day on which the UK actually left the EU.
Officials have said that anyone who has been living in the UK for five years would have a virtual guarantee as they would be able to apply for permanent residence.Share. Yet, the open-world zombie game finds success. Yet, the open-world zombie game finds success.
Despite having a "terrible" name and being pulled from Steam for misleading buyers, Infestation: Survivor Stories (formerly called "The War Z") has sold 2.8 million copies.
In a postmortem on Gamasutra, Infestation's producer, Sergey Titov, explains the mistakes he and the development team made when launching their open-world zombie game, and the success that came in spite of them.
Exit Theatre Mode
"...The War Z was a terrible choice of name, as it naturally invited comparisons between our game and DayZ. We made a big mistake in not listening to the vocal minority of our community who thought the name was terrible... Beyond not listening to the community, we were also very arrogant in our public communications. We should have taken more care to communicate how and why this was not a DayZ clone, citing specific differences in both design and conception. Instead of saying to ourselves 'Oh well, haters gonna hate!' we should have tried to understand where the hate was coming from and address it."
Titov adds that when he heard Dean Hall, leader of the DayZ team, was aiming to have his game on Steam by Christmas, he pushed to have The War Z on Steam sooner to win the "arms race."
Exit Theatre Mode
The War Z was pulled from Steam because it advertised features that weren't yet in the game, leading to intensely negative press and word of mouth.
"What we had basically done is taken a game that was still in beta (and advertised as such on our website) and made it available on Steam without a “beta” tag (which wasn’t even an option on Steam at that time). In addition to the misleading game description, this move meant that press were free to consider it a completed title and review it, leading to poor review scores. Interestingly, just eight or nine weeks later, Steam introduced the early access program; if we hadn’t been in such a rush and had waited for that, launching our beta on Steam could have been perceived much differently."
Check out Gamasutra for the full story.
Brian is an associate editor at IGN. You can follow him @albinoalbert on Twitter.Sometimes, there’s no mistaking the fact that my children are being raised by two gay men, like when we go to Barnes & Noble and the first thing they want to do is jump up on the kiddie stage and belt out the new Madonna song. “L-U-V! Madonna!”
It’s happened more than once.
It’s not like we encourage it. Maybe they were born that way.
Still, we weren’t too surprised when we took them to the park and they made a raised platform into a stage for their latest singing and dancing extravaganza.
“Y-O-U! You wanna!”
What did surprise us was how we ended up in the emergency room twenty minutes later.
It all happened very fast. Sutton stepped in front of Bennett, Bennett got annoyed and, like Nomi Malone in Showgirls (a reference they will surely come to appreciate someday), he gave Sutton a very deliberate and fateful shove.
Drew and I both saw her fall, but she was just out of our diving distance. We dove anyway, and then we heard it…
THUNK.
More than the horrifying image of Sutton tumbling head-first off the “stage”, what I’ll remember most is the sound. My daughter’s skull against the hard brick walkway below it.
THUNK.
Then, a scream. The scream started instantly, which I knew was a good sign from when we were afraid Bennett had a concussion. There was no debating, though. This merited a trip to the ER.
I raced back to our minivan with our hysterical daughter in my arms. I tried to feel her legs. Were they moving? Did she react when I touched them? Geez, was I crazy for having such horrific thoughts? The fall had uprooted significant chunks of her hair, which were coming out in my hands, covered in tears and snot.
Thankfully, though, no blood. Everyone says head injuries bleed an unfathomable amount. How was it that she was not bleeding at all?
It had been a huge fall. Drew and I both guessed it was about two and a half feet, roughly the entire length of her fragile little body. It was bad.
I sat on the floor of the van, holding Sutton’s hand, as Drew sped down the Bronx River Parkway. We knew just how to get to the hospital because it had only been two weeks since Bennett was there. Our second trip in less than a month for a possible concussion. We fully expected a social worker to interrogate us in a dimly lit room.
After about ten minutes, Sutton calmed down. I wiped her nose and dried her tears. I tucked the loose strands of hair into the seatback pocket so she wouldn’t see them and panic. She was moving all her limbs, and she said her head didn’t hurt now.
“Bennett pushed me off the stage,” she said, over and over. She didn’t seem angry. She was just recounting the story, the way she might say, “I saw four gooses” or “My donut was chocolate” after a happier trip out of the house.
I reassured her anyway. “It was |
:17 PM] embermark: [Oh I hate you so much right now.] [11:17 PM] georgio154: suna respect - 10 [11:17 PM] sunasmine: [lol worth it] [11:18 PM] joeshmo101:.......................... [11:18 PM] joeshmo101:....... [11:18 PM] georgio154: [table flip smilie] [11:18 PM] joeshmo101:.......................................................................................... [11:18 PM] sammiepie_brb: "I did say JOIN me big boy. C'mon in the water's fine" You say to him as you flutter your [11:18 PM] sunasmine: [http://i.imgur.com/DmHUh.png] [11:18 PM] embermark: [Anyways, it's late, Ima sleep. Been fun. Don't overexert yourselves.] [11:19 PM] georgio154: later ember [11:19 PM] sunasmine: [night and pony drams] [11:19 PM] embermark left the room. [11:19 PM] joeshmo101: (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻ [11:19 PM] joeshmo101: I DIDN'T EVEN GET TO SAY GOODBYE! [11:19 PM] georgio154: let sammie speak [11:19 PM] joeshmo101: (now back to the show) [11:19 PM] sammiepie_brb: eyelashes at him. He slowly approches the bank and lower himself in face first so you get [11:20 PM] sammiepie_brb: a first class look at his glorious plot. [11:20 PM] guest-53934 entered the room. [11:20 PM] guest-53934 changed nickname to capt_lazeraze [11:20 PM] capt_lazeraze: I came buckets. [11:21 PM] georgio154:? O,o [11:21 PM] sunasmine: [heyam were in the middle of crpg] [11:21 PM] capt_lazeraze: (8 days of no clopping then I came tiny little buckets) [11:22 PM] sammiepie_brb: You both swim around for a bit and you keep your ponybutt up as you swim. You notice him [11:22 PM] georgio154: [lol ponybutt] [11:22 PM] capt_lazeraze: [synopsis?] [11:23 PM] sammiepie_brb: staring out of the corner of your eye so you fegin washing yourself to ask Big Mac to come [11:23 PM] georgio154: its entitle "applefucking season" go figure [11:23 PM] georgio154: *entitled [11:23 PM] joeshmo101: [we banged AJ while looking for apples, we got apples, stumbled on big Mac playing in a st [11:23 PM] sammiepie_brb: over to help you reach the "tricky spots". [11:23 PM] joeshmo101: ream, decided to kjoin him] [11:23 PM] capt_lazeraze: [Big mac, No thanks] [11:23 PM] capt_lazeraze left the room. [11:23 PM] georgio154: he hates pony dicks [11:23 PM] georgio154: uMADbro? [11:23 PM] joeshmo101: [we is mare, though] [11:24 PM] georgio154: oh and joe: http://johnjoseco.deviantart.com/gallery/29033906?offset=48#/d49pn0r [11:24 PM] georgio154: what do sammie? [11:24 PM] guest-54105 entered the room. [11:24 PM] guest-54105 changed nickname to hermocrates [11:24 PM] sammiepie_brb: [sorry] [11:24 PM] hermocrates: [Good evening] [11:24 PM] georgio154: lol [11:24 PM] sunasmine: [heya] [11:24 PM] georgio154: hola hermo [11:24 PM] hermocrates: [Are we CRPGing?] [11:24 PM] georgio154: eeyup [11:25 PM] sunasmine: [yup sammir is doing part 2] [11:25 PM] hermocrates: [Sweet!] [11:25 PM] georgio154: courtesy of sammie here [11:25 PM] joeshmo101: how does Big Mac respond to our "request"? [11:25 PM] sunasmine: point him in the direction of our back, and them our jumping cutiemark [11:25 PM] sammiepie_brb: He slowly and unassueredly starts rubbing your back. what do? [11:26 PM] georgio154: fake moan in pleasure [11:26 PM] sunasmine: fake moan? [11:26 PM] sunasmine: how about real moan [11:26 PM] joeshmo101: [also, we are a mare earthpony who's special talent is jumping/acrobatic] [11:26 PM] georgio154: yea a real moan but give it more oomph [11:26 PM] hermocrates: [Thanks] [11:26 PM] sammiepie_brb: ham it up? [11:26 PM] georgio154: yea that one [11:27 PM] joeshmo101: w/ sunasmine and a little bit of georgio [11:27 PM] sunasmine: try to direct him to our jumping cutie mark [11:27 PM] joeshmo101: It's a TRAMPOLINE [11:27 PM] hermocrates: What joe said [11:28 PM] sunasmine: we are *JUMPING PONY* with a *JUMPING CUTIEMARK* [11:28 PM] sunasmine: =D [11:28 PM] georgio154: ^ [11:28 PM] joeshmo101: I disagree [11:28 PM] georgio154: but what would symbolise jumping? [11:28 PM] sammiepie_brb: Big Mac's about to stop when you start to fake moan to encourage him to keep going. He [11:28 PM] georgio154: a trampoline is lots of flexi bending and shite [11:28 PM] sunasmine: [we can pick up the debate after ammie] [11:29 PM] georgio154: ^ [11:29 PM] sammiepie_brb: obliges and keeps rubbing down until he grazes your cutie mark which causes you to moan [11:29 PM] sammiepie_brb: sexily for real. [11:29 PM] sammiepie_brb: what do? [11:30 PM] georgio154: sexily for real, me gusta [11:30 PM] sammiepie_brb: {go to group document maybe?} [11:30 PM] sunasmine: blush, and ask him to keep going [11:30 PM] hermocrates: "Oh, right there!" [11:30 PM] joeshmo101: Flip mane, look ovewr shoulder all sekylike [11:30 PM] georgio154: nah if we go to group doc you wont be able to pastebin as easily [11:30 PM] joeshmo101: and hermocrates [11:30 PM] sunasmine: herm w/ blush [11:30 PM] georgio154: turn head, wink, raise tail [11:30 PM] hermocrates: ^ [11:30 PM] sammiepie_brb: {no i mean the debate} [11:30 PM] sunasmine: cause blush is sexy [11:30 PM] sunasmine: lol debate [11:31 PM] sunasmine: w/e [11:31 PM] sammiepie_brb: so do all? [11:31 PM] georgio154: we'll just say cutie mark, instead of what it actually is [11:31 PM] joeshmo101: all except look over shoulder [11:31 PM] georgio154: herm + [11:31 PM] georgio154: me [11:32 PM] georgio154: herm while me [11:32 PM] joeshmo101: flip mane and then georgio's latest [11:32 PM] joeshmo101: (wet mane is sexy mane) [11:32 PM] sunasmine: i dunno, maybe we;re raising tail too soon [11:32 PM] joeshmo101: ^ [11:32 PM] georgio154: turn head, chessy line, wink, turn back [11:32 PM] joeshmo101: I forgot about that, don't raise tail [11:33 PM] sunasmine: doesn't need ot be cheesy, jsut like encorage [11:33 PM] georgio154: by cheesy line i meant herms line... [11:33 PM] sunasmine: ah [11:33 PM] sunasmine: good show [11:34 PM] sammiepie_brb: You moan "Oh sweet celestia RIGHT THERE!" and blush. You flip your mane like one of [11:35 PM] sammiepie_brb: photo finish's models and tell Big Mac to keep going. [11:36 PM] sammiepie_brb: {listen i just got a text and i gotta go pick up my sister. ill be back in 20 minutes, ok? [11:36 PM] sammiepie_brb: } [11:36 PM] georgio154: best. back rub. ever. of all time. [11:36 PM] sunasmine: lol kk [11:36 PM] georgio154: and ok [11:36 PM] georgio154: time for debate? [11:36 PM] sammiepie changed nickname to sammiepie_brb [11:36 PM] sunasmine: there nothing to debate [11:37 PM] georgio154: i was waiting for a baywatch reference [11:37 PM] georgio154: and yea i guess so suna [11:37 PM] joeshmo101: oh no! Our CM left... [11:38 PM] georgio154: not for long though [11:38 PM] georgio154: go have a clop [11:38 PM] sunasmine: meh using the magic ofthe backspacekey we will edit this out of the transcrpt [11:38 PM] sunasmine: no one will know [11:38 PM] sunasmine: also have aclop [11:39 PM] georgio154: ^ [11:40 PM] georgio154: so how are you guys? [11:40 PM] joeshmo101: I feel that I need to have an OC, and she needs to have Rarity's wet mane [11:41 PM] guest-213 entered the room. *Type /help for a list of commands.* Dash is fucking hot [11:41 PM] guest-240 entered the room. [11:41 PM] guest-258 entered the room. [11:41 PM] guest-306 entered the room. [11:41 PM] guest-345 entered the room. [11:41 PM] guest-360 entered the room. [11:41 PM] guest-366 entered the room. [11:41 PM] guest-366 changed nickname to georgio154 [11:41 PM] sunasmine: chat got reset [11:41 PM] guest-360 changed nickname to equius_zahhak [11:41 PM] georgio154: random disconnect is random [11:42 PM] georgio154: joe go and make an oc with pony creator [11:42 PM] georgio154: i have 3 oc's [11:42 PM] georgio154: with back storys n everything [11:42 PM] guest-345 changed nickname to cereal_killer [11:42 PM] guest-240 changed nickname to joeshmo101 [11:42 PM] sunasmine: i've only got one OC i'm writing her story at the moment XD [11:42 PM] joeshmo101: Pony creator doesn't have Rarity's wet mane in it... [11:43 PM] georgio154: its either: deal with it or learn to draw [11:43 PM] georgio154: or learn to photoshop [11:43 PM] joeshmo101: I CAN draw [11:43 PM] georgio154: lol [11:43 PM] georgio154: ah [11:43 PM] georgio154: then draw dammit [11:44 PM] guest-306 changed nickname to rozzak [11:44 PM] rozzak: Huh [11:44 PM] joeshmo101: http://i.imgur.com/BZBpP.jpg [11:44 PM] rozzak: i drew her all wet today [11:44 PM] joeshmo101: I drew that, bitch [11:44 PM] rozzak: o_o [11:44 PM] georgio154: i retract my previous statement [11:45 PM] guest-258 changed nickname to hermocrates [11:45 PM] joeshmo101: dontmakemesnapmyfingahsinthe zee fo' ma shun [11:45 PM] georgio154: only person we're missing is sam and shes brb [11:46 PM] joeshmo101: Did swhe say she was female? [11:46 PM] georgio154: who the character or sam? [11:46 PM] joeshmo101: sam [11:46 PM] sunasmine: sammie [11:46 PM] sunasmine: i dunnno [11:46 PM] georgio154: no clue [11:46 PM] hermocrates_making_rice: Rarity's whiny voice is too sexy. [11:46 PM] georgio154: im guessing she is a she [11:46 PM] sunasmine: i only know of two femaless [11:46 PM] joeshmo101: we should probably ask her [11:46 PM] sunasmine: miss and katie [11:46 PM] georgio154: sammie is more affemenate [11:47 PM] georgio154: sam is more male [11:47 PM] hermocrates_making_rice: Hey, I go by Matty generally. [11:47 PM] joeshmo101: but it could be that Sam relates very well to Pinkie Pie [11:47 PM] georgio154: yea but thats different [11:48 PM] georgio154: people dont usually say sammie to people called sam, jus sayin [11:48 PM] georgio154: matt and mattie go well together [im guessing matt or matthew?] [11:48 PM] hermocrates_making_rice: Matthew, yes. [11:48 PM] joeshmo101: Watch it be matteo [11:49 PM] joeshmo101: I knoe a Matteo [11:49 PM] joeshmo101: *know [11:49 PM] georgio154: mattie is a much easier and quicker way to say your name, you need to go out of your way [11:49 PM] georgio154: to say sammie [11:49 PM] georgio154: but anyway, my bets is on her being....well a her [11:50 PM] georgio154: she'll come back, read this and be like O.O [11:50 PM] hermocrates_making_rice: I suppose with Sammie it's pronounced /sam/-/mie/, while Matty is pronounced /ma/-/ty/ [11:50 PM] hermocrates_making_rice: Longer /m/ sound. [11:50 PM] hermocrates_making_rice: Or rather, /ma/-/dy/ [11:51 PM] hermocrates_making_rice: My name has two morae, Sammie's would have three [11:51 PM] sunasmine: for a sec i thought you said your name has two moans [11:52 PM] georgio154: well im just gonna chill and listen to pony music while we wait for sammie [11:52 PM] hermocrates_making_rice: ¬ [11:52 PM] hermocrates_making_rice: ¬ [11:52 PM] hermocrates_making_rice: ¬_¬ [11:52 PM] hermocrates_making_rice: Dammit, keep hitting enter by mistake [11:52 PM] joeshmo101: what is that alt code for that stmbol? [11:52 PM] joeshmo101: *symbol [11:52 PM] sunasmine: which would make an interesting name by the way [11:52 PM] guest-1254 entered the room. [11:53 PM] joeshmo101: hola [11:53 PM] guest-1254 changed nickname to viz [11:53 PM] hermocrates_making_rice: I don't know the al code, using a compose key. For me, it's compose-hypen-comma [11:53 PM] joeshmo101: wassup, viz? [11:53 PM] viz: Not much [11:53 PM] hermocrates_making_rice: *alt [11:53 PM] hermocrates_making_rice: God e'ening [11:53 PM] viz: Good evening to you too [11:54 PM] hermocrates_making_rice: You know what the problem with MLP is? [11:54 PM] viz: What? [11:54 PM] joeshmo101: not enough plot [11:54 PM] hermocrates_making_rice: My roommates put on an episode, and all of a sudden I can't get any work done :) [11:54 PM] joeshmo101: lol [11:55 PM] viz: lol [11:55 PM] joeshmo101: Tell your roommate the cloppers say hi [11:56 PM] hermocrates_making_rice: My roommates have come to accept that I chat with cloppers [11:56 PM] viz: Lol [11:56 PM] rozzak left the room. [11:57 PM] joeshmo101: tell them to get on chat [11:57 PM] hermocrates_making_rice: They say "hi" back, by the way [11:58 PM] hermocrates_making_rice: I don't think they'll be joining us here on chat, though. [11:58 PM] joeshmo101: Why not? [11:58 PM] viz: My friends from another chat have come to except that I clop to ponies [11:58 PM] georgio154: they aren't happy to be cloppers but they are happy with you being one, muthafuckin bronys [11:59 PM] georgio154: love and toleance for every bronie [11:59 PM] hermocrates_making_rice: They aren't cloppers, and they're still /slightly/ horrified by clop, although they accept [11:59 PM] hermocrates_making_rice: its existence [11:59 PM] joeshmo101: It's officially midnight [11:59 PM] hermocrates_making_rice: eenope [11:59 PM] viz: Not here it isn't [11:59 PM] georgio154: joe didnt you have to wake up to something today? [11:59 PM] viz: Central time zone and shit [11:59 PM] georgio154: its officially 4am [12:00 AM] joeshmo101: Sleep is for the weak [12:00 AM] georgio154: suck on that [12:00 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: Now it's midnight [12:00 AM] sunasmine: lol [12:00 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: I wonder how much time varies between different computers, and if there's more uniformity [12:01 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: with certain time-keeping daemons [12:01 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: Within regards to UTC, of course [12:01 AM] guest-213 changed nickname to sammiepie [12:01 AM] georgio154: i think the time is universal, if you are connected to ze internets i think it updates [12:01 AM] georgio154: from the internet [12:01 AM] georgio154: yay sammie :D [12:01 AM] georgio154: sammie is out CM viz [12:02 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: But then how do you explain joe's and my disparity? [12:02 AM] viz: Hello [12:02 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: Oh, welcome back sammie! [12:02 AM] viz: Oh? [12:02 AM] joeshmo101: wb, Sammie [12:02 AM] sammiepie: so what do my fair cloppers? [12:02 AM] georgio154: lemme scroll up [12:02 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: Talking abou the most interesting of topics [12:02 AM] joeshmo101: ^ [12:03 AM] sunasmine: [we were getting out cutie makrs rubbed by mac in the river] [12:03 AM] georgio154: keep him going, subtly guide him lower (cutie mark etc) [12:03 AM] sammiepie: {my sis got hammered at a cast party and needed a ride home without my parents knwing [12:03 AM] sammiepie: } [12:03 AM] georgio154: lol [12:03 AM] joeshmo101: what drink? [12:03 AM] joeshmo101: I likes me a good vodka and coke [12:04 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: ^ sans the coke [12:04 AM] georgio154: vodka straight [12:04 AM] georgio154: like me [12:04 AM] joeshmo101: Russian Mimosas are good too [12:04 AM] georgio154: *men [12:04 AM] viz: Vodka and Monster energy [12:04 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: Stolichnaya [12:04 AM] georgio154: offtopic but i now have 10001 emails [12:04 AM] joeshmo101: so what was she drinking? [12:04 AM] sammiepie: {idk, probably winecoolers and jungle juice. ah the joys of being 16} [12:04 AM] sunasmine: from cutie mark, ask for between thighs [12:04 AM] joeshmo101: Jungle juice [12:04 AM] guest-1815 entered the room. [12:04 AM] joeshmo101: good stuff [12:04 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: What? [12:04 AM] guest-1815 changed nickname to rozzak [12:04 AM] georgio154: im 16 and i shoot vodka shots like a pro [12:05 AM] viz: I used to [12:05 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: [Hey rozzak!] [12:05 AM] viz: But shit got fucked up [12:05 AM] georgio154: hola roz [12:05 AM] joeshmo101: http://i.imgur.com/lGeKU.jpg [12:05 AM] sunasmine: [i'm 23 and a cheap ass drunk] [12:05 AM] viz: Hello [12:05 AM] sammiepie: {hiya} [12:05 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: [25, and a reasonably priced drunk] [12:05 AM] joeshmo101: My first time drinking was with my sister's friends and a 175 of vodka [12:06 AM] georgio154: i only get drunk at partys where i dont have to pay for the booze [12:06 AM] joeshmo101: since then vodka and coke has been my drink of choice [12:06 AM] viz: [16 and ex/drunk pot head] [12:06 AM] sunasmine: [also once sammie starts can we quiet down? between sammiewe can chat however] [12:06 AM] georgio154: it takes TOO much to get me hammered [12:06 AM] georgio154: ^suna [12:06 AM] joeshmo101: getting hammered can be expensive, but I go to college [12:06 AM] sammiepie: Big Mac keep rubbing your cutie mark and you guide his hoof to between your legs. You [12:07 AM] sammiepie: Smile as he gets the idea and tenderly starts rubbing your candyvag with his hoof. [12:08 AM] sammiepie: You feel Big Mac's little mac rising and getting rigid against your plot. [12:09 AM] sammiepie: what do? [12:09 AM] georgio154: iseewhatyoudidthere.jpg [12:09 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: Continue moaning, slightly louder and higher pitched. Reach hoof towards BM's member [12:09 AM] sunasmine: [wow hes eagar] [12:09 AM] joeshmo101: (I was at a party two weeks ago with six kegs) [12:09 AM] georgio154: stroke his member while he strokes yours [12:09 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: "Jumpy little thing" [12:09 AM] georgio154: ^hermo [12:10 AM] joeshmo101: How is his member already pressin against our plot if he's massaging it?? [12:10 AM] joeshmo101: *pressing [12:10 AM] georgio154: ^ [12:10 AM] sunasmine: like i said hes eagar [12:10 AM] guest-2025 entered the room. [12:10 AM] sunasmine: let shuffle out from under him, and take his member in our hoof [12:10 AM] guest-2025 left the room. [12:11 AM] sunasmine: clop him a little [12:11 AM] sammiepie: like your floating in the water so you're kinda spooning. he's hotdogging against the top [12:11 AM] sammiepie: *you're [12:11 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: [Ooh, one of my roomies is coming on] [12:11 AM] sunasmine: ah [12:11 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: [Or, both] [12:11 AM] georgio154: they are already in the herd, they are now in the barn [12:11 AM] joeshmo101: fun [12:11 AM] georgio154: muahaha [12:12 AM] joeshmo101: http://i.imgur.com/TcISu.gif [12:12 AM] georgio154: assimilation complete [12:12 AM] sunasmine: okay is he on top of us? [12:12 AM] joeshmo101: ^ unrelated [12:12 AM] viz: Lol [12:12 AM] sunasmine: or are we on outsides? [12:12 AM] sunasmine: our sides [12:12 AM] guest-2106 entered the room. [12:12 AM] guest-2106 changed nickname to miss_logic [12:12 AM] sammiepie: he's the big spoon [12:12 AM] sunasmine: [heya miss] [12:12 AM] georgio154: i agrre with this joe [12:12 AM] miss_logic: hello [12:12 AM] sammiepie: hiya [12:12 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: [Hey miss] [12:12 AM] georgio154: *agree [12:12 AM] viz: Hello [12:12 AM] georgio154: hola miss [12:13 AM] miss_logic: who's a spoon? [12:13 AM] sunasmine: us + mac [12:13 AM] guest-2127 entered the room. [12:13 AM] guest-2127 changed nickname to veldon [12:13 AM] georgio154: were female btw [12:13 AM] sammiepie: to the wipeboard! [12:13 AM] georgio154: *we're [12:13 AM] sammiepie: joined the group whiteboard. [12:13 AM] sunasmine: joined the group whiteboard. [12:13 AM] miss_logic: i see [12:13 AM] joeshmo101: joined the group whiteboard. [12:13 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: joined the group whiteboard. [12:13 AM] miss_logic: joined the group whiteboard. [12:13 AM] rozzak left the room. [12:14 AM] viz: joined the group whiteboard. [12:14 AM] georgio154: joined the group whiteboard. [12:14 AM] sunasmine: if we wern't in the water i'd propose a bj, but water sex is hawt [12:14 AM] guest-2163 entered the room. [12:14 AM] veldon: joined the group whiteboard. [12:14 AM] guest-2163 changed nickname to rozzak [12:14 AM] rozzak: bow [12:14 AM] rozzak:.....bo wow [12:14 AM] georgio154: whiteboard roz [12:14 AM] rozzak: joined the group whiteboard. [12:15 AM] viz: joined the group whiteboard. [12:15 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: joined the group whiteoppression. [12:15 AM] sunasmine: i get it [12:15 AM] miss_logic: so why are we lines [12:15 AM] guest-2199 entered the room. [12:15 AM] viz: I can't get this thing to work [12:15 AM] sammiepie: because i'm a shit artist [12:15 AM] viz: Oh thar we go [12:16 AM] sammiepie: so what do? [12:16 AM] guest-2199 changed nickname to djpon3 [12:16 AM] sunasmine: okay so once it comes up between our legs gve it some hoof love i say [12:16 AM] djpon3: i'm hermocrates' roomie [12:16 AM] guest-2250 entered the room. [12:16 AM] veldon: Me too [12:16 AM] sunasmine: [heya] [12:16 AM] miss_logic: hello [12:17 AM] miss_logic: AH IM BLUE [12:17 AM] djpon3: nice to meet ya'll [12:17 AM] guest-2250 changed nickname to rarity_times_two [12:17 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: [Hey rarity!] [12:17 AM] miss_logic: fixed it. [12:17 AM] sunasmine: [so many ponies] [12:17 AM] miss_logic: hello [12:17 AM] rarity_times_two: [hello ponies!] [12:17 AM] veldon: joined the group whiteboard. [12:17 AM] viz: Hello [12:17 AM] joeshmo101: slide up against BM [12:17 AM] joeshmo101: pony penis sandwich! [12:17 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: [rozzak, showing off his actual skills of an artist] [12:17 AM] djpon3: peniswich is best wich [12:17 AM] sammiepie: [hiya. we're doing a CRPG where we're a mare earth pony who's sexing up Big Mac] [12:18 AM] miss_logic: (BM sounds like bowel movement) [12:18 AM] joeshmo101: joined the group whiteboard. [12:18 AM] joeshmo101: welcome, djpon3 [12:18 AM] djpon3: joined the group whiteboard. [12:18 AM] joeshmo101: joined the group whiteboard. [12:19 AM] sammiepie: So hoof him from between our legs? [12:19 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: Yeah [12:19 AM] sunasmine: yup [12:20 AM] joeshmo101: penis sandwich, yo! [12:20 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: peniswich [12:20 AM] joeshmo101: press acrobat pony's body next to his and slide [12:20 AM] sammiepie: You slide Big Mac's huge, throbbing ponydick between your legs and start slowly rubbing [12:20 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: I'm sure we can do something freaky with out flexibility [12:20 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: 8our [12:20 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: *our [12:21 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: [Blech! FML] [12:21 AM] joeshmo101: stfu and re-read [12:21 AM] miss_logic: [its okay ] [12:21 AM] miss_logic: joined the group document. [12:21 AM] viz: joined the group document. [12:21 AM] miss_logic: joined the group whiteboard. [12:22 AM] guest-2442 entered the room. [12:22 AM] sammiepie: your hooves along his shaft. You also start rubbing your candyvag against the base of it. [12:23 AM] guest-2442 changed nickname to reahidru [12:23 AM] equius_zahhak: hey [12:23 AM] reahidru: I NEED A CANADIAN [12:23 AM] sammiepie: He starts gruffly whinnying at your actions. [12:23 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: [Heya, reahidru!] [12:23 AM] miss_logic: hello [12:23 AM] sunasmine: [heay dru] [12:23 AM] sammiepie: what do? [12:23 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: Yo! [12:23 AM] reahidru: [Oh sorry] [12:23 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: I'm a Canadian [12:23 AM] sunasmine: [i am canadian] [12:23 AM] sammiepie: {hiya} [12:23 AM] miss_logic: ( im a canadian) [12:23 AM] miss_logic: ( WE ARE CANADIAN!!) [12:23 AM] djpon3: i am canadian [12:23 AM] joeshmo101: I am the 99% [12:23 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: [So many Canadians....] [12:24 AM] miss_logic: (HIM TOO) [12:24 AM] georgio154: i am the 1% [12:24 AM] miss_logic: kill him [12:24 AM] georgio154: britain is lonely this time of day [12:24 AM] reahidru: [canadian's do you know of a canadia store called carlton cards?] [12:24 AM] djpon3: yes [12:24 AM] georgio154: at 4:24 am [12:24 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: [yeah] [12:24 AM] sunasmine: [heard of it] [12:24 AM] viz: [Whoa lots of canadians] [12:24 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: [Standard card store] [12:24 AM] reahidru: [They allegedly have pinkie pie ornaments there] [12:24 AM] miss_logic: ( think i've heard of it ) [12:24 AM] hermocrates_making_rice: [!_!] [12:24 AM] miss_logic: (OMG) [12:24 AM] reahidru: [And I need one for my friend [12:25 AM] sammiepie: Big Mac's going to ponyjizz if you keep going. [12:25 AM] sunasmine: [O.O] [12:25 |
Petraeus supplied this information for a fawning book about himself.
Additionally, the FBI informed neither the Congressional Intelligence Committees nor the White House, even though by law the intel committees are supposed to be apprised of significant developments in the intelligence arena, which would certainly include a potential compromise of the CIA director's personal Gmail.
These are matters that should be investigated, rather than spending millions of taxpayer dollars trying to destroy the men who helped expose two of the biggest scandals of the Bush administration, namely secret surveillance (Drake) and torture (Kiriakou).
UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal reports that Broadwell
or someone close to her had sought access to his e-mail
and that the e-mail account was apparently Petraeus' personal Gmail, not his official CIA e-mail. ABC's Martha Raddatz reported that Petraeus' associates had received "anonymous harassing emails" that were then traced to Broadwell, which suggests Broadwell may have found their names or addresses in his e-mail. I AM TRYING TO PUT IN LINKS, BUT AM HAVING TROUBLE DOING SO AS I AM IN BRASILIA. FOR TWEEPS, I HAVE BEEN PUTTING LINKS ON TWITTER.
UPDATE 2: The New York Times says the FBI investigation began several months ago with a complaint about "harassing" e-mails from Broadwell to another woman. When the FBI began to examine Broadwell's e-mails, they discovered exchanges between her and Petraeus that revealed the affair. The affair didn't set off alarm bells, but the possibility of security breaches stemming from his use of a personal e-mail account did because of vulnerabilities to hacking.The US State Department says it has been issuing guidelines for US citizens stuck in Yemen on how to leave the war-torn country, but the 20 Americans evacuated by Russian planes say they haven't heard a word.
“Well, we have been collaborating for many, many weeks now,”saidUS State Department spokesperson, Marie Harf.
According to Harf, the US has been “talking to other countries, other organizations…who may have ways of getting American citizens out.”
She commented on the recent evacuation of American citizens who were among the 200 taken from war-stricken Yemen by two Russian planes on Wednesday night. The planes’ first stop was Djibouti, a tiny African country just across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen, that also happens to host the biggest US military base in Africa.
Plane 1 fully loaded. Russian, Ukrainian, Spanish, American citizens abroad - even the Cuban ambassador to #Yemen! pic.twitter.com/YU9PPQilNr — Murad Gazdiev (@MuradoRT) April 22, 2015
Harf claimed that Washington actually has been letting US citizens in Yemen know “when there are other opportunities, talking to other countries, including the Indians and others, about how our citizens can get out."
“We also have been warning for many, many years now that people should not travel to Yemen, so we are working with other countries, but at this point, no plans to use US Government assets to do so.”
READ MORE: No man left behind? US citizens fleeing Yemen tell RT of abandonment (VIDEO)
But reality turned out to be slightly different than as portrayed in Harf’s fiery speech. On Wednesday these 20 Americans on Russia-bound flights from Yemen told RT that they had been left to their own devices and had had to resort to help from private organizations and foreign governments in order to flee the country.
“My cousin contacted us from the US. He got hold of the Russians and then contacted us. We only heard about it yesterday. We went from the village. It’s a five-hour ride. We crossed that bridge. Twenty minutes later a missile hit the bridge we crossed,” Mouhammed Nasser told RT’s Murad Gazdiev.
Others spent a lot of time desperately trying to find a way out of Yemen.
“I couldn’t make it out. I had to wait. It took me weeks to find a flight out of [the capital] Sanaa. I started calling airlines, agencies, the UN, the Russian embassy,” said Ismail Alafash, “Americans, they just kept sending us emails. They said basically: find your way out.”
One more American Yemeni Kaled Alamarie said that he has been trying to evacuate his family for the last month and a half. He tried contacting the US State Department and the White House. “Nobody really helped until recently I was contacted by one of our community members that Russian plane is evacuating American citizens. I got lucky,” he added.
READ MORE: US, UK thank Russia for evacuation of their citizens from Yemen
In early April, the US State Department said that “there are no plans for a US government-coordinated evacuation of US citizens at this time” in an official travel warning.
“We encourage all US citizens to shelter in a secure location until they are able to depart safely. US citizens wishing to depart should do so via commercial transportation options when they become available.”
Department spokesman Jeff Rathke explained that the people trapped by Yemeni violence were there because they had ignored the US government’s warnings.
“For more than 15 years the State Department has been advising US citizens to defer travel to Yemen. We have been advising those US citizens who are in Yemen to depart,” he said.
In total, Russia has evacuated more than 1,700 people from the war-torn country, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Friday. About 400 of them have been Russian while others came from former Soviet republics like Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Armenia and Kazakhstan, as well as other countries including France, Cuba, Serbia, Colombia and Lebanon.AJ’s “The Dark Knight Rises” Review
Oh boy.
There comes a time in a person’s life when what could be described as a simple everyday activity transcends and becomes an experience, just like an ordinary man can become a symbol. I didn’t grow up in the 70s or 80s, so by the time I was born, “Star Wars” was already out, and the prequels meant nothing to me. I never paid attention to “Lord of the Rings” when I was younger so they meant nothing to me either.
In 2008, I saw “The Dark Knight”. It changed the way I looked at movies and for the first time in my life, I knew films would be my passion. “The Dark Knight” created a fire within me, and mutual love for it found me friends in my life too. For all intents and purposes, Christopher Nolan’s conclusion, “The Dark Knight Rises” is my “Star Wars”.
I went into the theatre at 6pm last night to start on “Batman Begins”, and got out at 3am after seeing what now has to be called one of the true triumphs of our generation. Writing a review on such a movie is very… difficult because I really don’t want to spoil anything, but to fully explain what I loved about the movie, I would have to give away everything. BUT NO. I will not spoil a thing. NO SPOILERS. Merely opinion.
In what has to be one of the most astonishingly pressured moves ever, Nolan and team took on the challenge of creating a film that had to top it’s brilliant predecessors. A while ago I wrote a Rated AJ blog called “4 Reasons why “The Dark Knight Rises” might suck, and 1 reason why it won’t”, and in it I wrote that Nolan would deliver, no matter what, and it is with immense happiness and victory that I can proclaim that “Rises” is by all means an amazing movie. Everything on my secret “Rises” wish list came true, everything I wanted to happen, happened, and it was satsfying to say the least.
So… The elephant in the room needs addressing. Yes it was great, yes it delivered but… is it better than “The Dark Knight”? Well, I have to start with the lame answer here, and say it is VERY different. I think the best way to make a better sequel is just to make it so utterly incomparable to the original. “Batman Begins” is different from “The Dark Knight” in so many ways, and as such is “Rises”. I would split “Rises” up into three parts, the first part resembles “The Dark Knight”’s aesthetic and style. The second part then resembles “Batman Begins”, taking a far more spiritual approach which may be hard to swallow for those who don’t like Nolan’s break-out Bat movie(and by the way, what the hell don’t you like about it?). The third part is something else entirely. The third part(which makes up the second half of this almost 3 hour epic) shows you a film that has never ever been made before. I have never seen a film like this. So after much consideration and retrospect I’m going to lock in my option of “The Dark Knight Rises” being the greatest Batman movie ever made.
Watching a movie with a dorky grin over your face the entire time is a weird experience.
A lot of critics are saying the film sort of falls a little flat during some of the earlier segments, and I’d tend to agree, but why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up. Batman’s voice is also still as silly and at sometimes inaudible as it was in “The Dark Knight”, and the new villain Bane also has some pieces of dialogue come out pretty unclear, though at times it actually makes him cooler, and what a cool character he is… But I shall say no more.
Basically, almost everything people were worrying about ruining the film don’t ruin it at all. No character is wasted, no plot point out of place. The title is still stupid, but relevant to the story(I say begrugingly). It’s not PERFECT, but it’s damn near close, and regardless, remember that neither of the other 2 movies are COMPLETELY flawless anyway.
As the credits rolled, I stood to my feet and clapped in the theatre. I turned to my friends and proclaimed the film’s glory in a raspy 3am voice. “The Dark Knight Rises” is exciting and everything in it has been crafted with story-telling precision. It’s downright record breaking how consistently great this director is, but this his coup de grace. If you’ll allow me to describe the film in one word, I would say “Big”, and the drastic change in narrative may take a little getting used to if you were expecting “The Dark Knight 2”. But once the film finds itself, once it sits you down and says “Okay so uh.. Here’s what we’re gonna be doing for the rest of the movie” you understand, and you appreciate it. You become lost in the universe more than ever, and it blows you away.
There will always be people who say that nothing can beat “The Dark Knight” and some who ever insist that the third instalment sucks. “Rises” is a lot more like the graphic novels than the other two, and some die hard “TDK” fans will probably fight it until the ends of the earth. But the best way to enjoy it is to look at it as it’s own movie, not just a sequel.
Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight Rises” is sad, tragic, lonely and sorrowful, yet at the same time it is beautiful in every way. It takes a movie like this to make you see how awful some other half-assed superhero films are. Next time you tell someone “Thor” is a pretty good movie, or even “Iron Man”…. or yes, even “The Avengers”, just remember how amazing the final chapter of the dark knight trilogy is. Because it’s not just a great superhero movie, it’s a great movie, and it’s not just a movie, it’s an experience, and as much as Bruce Wayne’s ideals stand immortal, Team Nolan’s triumph rises above all that could have been expected.
But really, what did you expect?
AdvertisementsThey’re not real human beings, but they are our new heroes. Meet Yooka and Laylee, the buddy duo set to adventure in our aptly named debut project Yooka-Laylee, coming to Kickstarter this Friday!
Dreamed up by character artist Steve ‘don’t call me Steven’ Mayles – the man behind Banjo, Kazooie and the rebooted Donkey Kong family – we think the bat ‘n chameleon (we’ll let you guess their sexes) are our most inventive protagonists yet, and we’ll tell you just why we’ve deemed that over the next 24 hours.
Starting right now IGN has the ‘scoop’ (we’re assured that term is still used) on the first ever Yooka-Laylee gameplay footage and feature details. Head over there for ‘the skinny’ and when you’re done visit our brand new game page to see some beautiful artwork.
Tomorrow we’ll publish loads more Yooka-Laylee media (will there be David Wise and Grant Kirkhope tunes? You bet your pedigree gerbil there will be) alongside an interview with their father, Mr. Steven… sorry, Steve Mayles himself.
And then at 5pm BST on Friday it’s the big one, the launch of our Yooka-Laylee Kickstarter campaign. When we first discussed this project the reaction was immense. You flocked to our shop doors like eager amiibo scalpers, and your mouths were full of requests.
You told us you wanted Yooka-Laylee (or whatever it was called back then) to be the best game it could possibly be. You said you wanted sprawling, gorgeous worlds to explore, tons of smartarse characters to meet and inventive moves to learn… and you wanted to do it all on your gaming platform of choice.
When we launch our Kickstarter in less than 24 hours, you can help us tick all of those boxes and more. Together you can help our team create the game they’ve dreamed of making – and you might pick yourself up some cool swag in the process.A soldier patrolling at the famed Louvre museum in Paris shot and seriously injured a machete-wielding man who yelled “Allahu Akbar!” – “God is great!” – Friday in what was described as a terrorist attack.
The assailant, who was carrying two machetes, whipped one out in the underground Carousel du Louvre shopping complex after four soldiers barred him from entering with two backpacks, authorities said.
“That’s when he got the knife out and that’s when he tried to stab the soldier,” police official Yves Lefebvre said.
The soldiers first tried to fight the unidentified man off before opening fire, said Benoit Brulon, a spokesman for the military force that patrols Paris and its tourist attractions. He was shot five times and listed in serious condition.
“The man is on the ground and is not moving,” a police source told Le Parisien newspaper.
The backpacks contained no explosives, police Chief Michel Cadot said.
President Francois Hollande praised the soldiers – one of whom suffered a minor scalp wound – for their “courage and determination.”
“We are dealing with an attack from an individual who was clearly aggressive and represented a direct threat, and whose comments lead us to believe that he wished to carry out a terrorist incident.,” Cadot said, The Guardian of the UK reported.
Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve called the attack “terrorist in nature,” Agence France-Presse reported.
A second person was detained but there did not appear to be a link between that person and the attack,” Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said.
An anti-terrorism inquiry has been opened, the public prosecutor said in a statement, Reuters reported.
President Trump fired off a tweet is response to the attack.
“A new radical Islamic terrorist has just attacked in Louvre Museum in Paris. Tourists were locked down. France on edge again. GET SMART U.S.,” he wrote.
Olivier Majewski was just leaving his scooter in the parking lot beneath the Louvre when he saw about 30 or 40 people running and screaming, “There’s been a terror attack!”
The 53-year-old, who hid for about 15 minutes before making his way upstairs, said people were “panicked.”
Hector Clark, a visiting Londoner, was locked inside the Louvre along with other tourists.
“It was intense and everyone was scared at first because the situation was unclear, but people settled down after we heard from the head of security that it was safe,” he told The Local.
The attack at the Louvre — home of Leonardo da Vinci’s world-famous “Mona Lisa” — sparked fresh jitters in a country beset by tourism woes and still reeling from a series of terror attacks that have left it under a state of emergency since November 2015.
The attack’s timing was poor for the City of Light, which planned to submit its official bid to host the 2024 Olympic Games on Friday with a launch show at the Eiffel Tower. It is competing against Los Angeles and Budapest.
Speaking outside the Louvre, Mayor Anne Hidalgo said terrorism threatens all of the world’s big cities and “there is not a single one escaping that menace.”
The incident also came three months before presidential and parliamentary elections that had been forecast to confirm the country’s shift right after five years under Socialist rule.
Some witnesses described scenes of panicked people fleeing after learning about the attack via loudspeaker.
Olivier Majewski was just leaving his scooter in a parking when he saw about 30 or 40 people running and screaming, “There’s been a terror attack!”
The 53-year-old, who he hid for about 15 minutes before making his way upstairs, said people were “panicked.”
Hector Clark, a visiting Londoner, was locked inside the Louvre along with other tourists.
“It was intense and everyone was scared at first because the situation was unclear but people settled down after we heard from the head of security that it was safe,” he told The Local.
Restaurant worker Sanae Hadraoui, 32, was waiting for breakfast at the Louvre’s restaurant complex when she heard gunshots.
“I hear a shot. Then a second shot. Then maybe two more. I hear people screaming, ‘Evacuate! Evacuate!’” she said. “They told us to evacuate. I told my colleagues at the McDonald’s. We went downstairs and then took the emergency exit.”
About 1,250 visitors were kept inside the museum for a while before being ushered out.
“There were announcements, then the security guards started running all over the place and after a short period they started gathering everybody up and getting them to one side of the building,” Albany resident Lance Manus, 73, told Reuters.
“They pulled the shades, they didn’t want anybody to sit by the windows,” said Manus, who was visiting Paris with his wife, Wendy, to mark
their 50th wedding anniversary. “I guess they were concerned that something would be coming from outside.”
A few children cried during the frantic moments, the couple said.
“The very young children, the teachers kept them busy playing games,” said Wendy Manus. “They were singing and trying to keep the children calm and quiet.”
Asked if they had been scared, Lance Manus said: “We come from the US — we have our scares just like you have.”
The soldiers had been taking part in Operation Sentenelle, foot patrols around French landmarks that have been in place since the deadly January 2015 attack on the magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket.
Jihadist gunmen slaughtered 17 people in three days of bloodshed in retaliation for publishing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
On Nov. 13 that year, ISIS jihadists attacked bars, restaurants, a concert hall and the national stadium in Paris, killing 130 people.
In Jan. 7, 2016, a Tunisian man brandishing a butcher knife assaulted cops in front of a police station.
Six months later, another Tunisian extremist rammed a truck through crowds celebrating Bastille Day in Nice on France’s south coast, crushing 86 people to death.
And in November, French police broke up an alleged jihadist terror ring that was believed to be planning to attack Paris.
The Louvre was already suffering from a fall in visitor numbers in the wake of the terror attacks. Last year, numbers dropped 15 percent from 2015 to about 7.3 million, the Guardian reported.
With Post wiresIn everyday life, people commonly have to decide quickly between multiple alternatives, the potential consequences of which are often unpredictable. Thus everyday-life decisions are often made on the basis of incomplete stimulus information, and usually within time limitations. Such “decisions under uncertainty” stand in contrast to so-called “decisions under risk,” in which all possible alternatives and outcomes, as well as their probabilities, are known (Knight, 1921). In order to deal with decisions under uncertainty in real-life situations, an individual needs to have rapid judgmental abilities that do not depend on a conscious thought process moving through all the steps of reasoning. These kinds of rapid judgments have been termed intuitive (e.g., Evans, 2008; Kruglanski & Gigerenzer, 2011).
An empirically fruitful working definition for intuitive processes has been put forward by Bowers, Regehr, Balthazard, and Parker (1990), who conceive of intuition as a preliminary perception of coherence that guides further thought and action toward a hypothesis on the nature of the coherence in question. This framework suggests that intuition is a continuous process of accumulating clues of coherence from incomplete stimulus input. This accumulation, in turn, activates related mnemonic networks. In a first stage, which Bowers and colleagues termed the guiding stage, the accumulation of clues of coherence eventually leads to a feeling of coherence. The feeling of coherence is already strong enough to trigger subsequent decision and action, despite the fact that, in the guiding stage, it is not—or not yet—possible to explicitly report what makes the stimulus coherent. Decisions based on such initial feelings of coherence are termed intuitive. In a second stage, called the integrative stage, cues are further accumulated, and the initial hunch of coherence evolves into an explicit representation. This explicit representation “occurs when sufficient activation has accumulated to cross a threshold of awareness” (Bowers et al., 1990, p. 74), thereby making it possible for the individual to consciously reason out the decision made or action taken in the guiding stage.
Bowers and colleagues (1990) created several paradigms to investigate intuition in the context of coherence judgments. In the present study, we used a paradigm based on their Waterloo Gestalt closure task (WGCT) in order to operationalize intuitive processes in the domain of visual detection. In the WGCT, participants have to judge the coherence of incomplete line drawings that are either fragmented or scrambled. For fragmented line drawings, a certain amount of pixel information (randomly spread across the entire stimulus) is taken away, making the recognition of the originally displayed object more difficult but not impossible. In scrambled line drawings, the pixel information of the resulting fragments are, on top of that, randomly mixed up, which makes the original displayed object unrecognizable. Studies applying WGCT-like paradigms (Bolte & Goschke, 2008; Bowers et al., 1990; Luu et al., 2010; Topolinski & Strack, 2009; Volz & von Cramon, 2006) have revealed that participants discriminate between fragmented and scrambled line drawings over chance; that is, they are significantly more likely to rate fragmented than scrambled line drawings as coherent. This is true even for those coherence judgments after which participants cannot explicitly name the objects displayed but solely report having had a “feeling of coherence.” Such findings support the existence of a guiding stage, in which an initial intuitive feeling of coherence is strong enough to trigger a judgment, even if its basis cannot yet be explicitly reported.
2009 2006 1990 1 Open image in new window Different neural regions and networks have been suggested to be related to intuitive processing. Satpute and Lieberman (), for example, reviewed such literature and, on its basis, proposed a broad neurocognitive model. Regarding research on intuitive judgments related to an initial perception of coherence, however, the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) sticks out as a crucial structure. In a study combining magnetoencephalography (MEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Bar et al. () found the OFC to be involved in the early stages of object recognition. Presenting their participants with hard-to-recognize drawings of nameable objects, they found that OFC activation early after stimulus onset is linked to participants' recognition performance. Furthermore, they found a higher OFC activation for stimuli with low spatial frequency (LSF), in contrast to activation for stimuli with high spatial frequency. LSFs represent the global information about the shape, such as general orientation and proportions, and thus this representation can be thought of as reflecting mostly the gist of the information. On the basis of their results, the authors have suggested that the OFC serves as an initial integrator of incomplete stimulus information and facilitates object recognition by encoding an initial coarse representation containing solely the gist or core idea of the percept. In a top-down process, such a coarse representation may then be signaled onward to structures enabling actions, as well as further, more detailed processing. This conceptualization fits in very well with Bowers et al.’s () framework of intuition, and in the present study, we use it as a preliminary neural model for intuitive processing, as displayed in Fig.
The coarse representation hypothesized to evolve in the OFC would then, on a subjective level, be experienced as an initial hunch or gut feeling that can trigger a coherence judgment, even if the basis of coherence cannot yet be explicitly reported. Studies specifically investigating the neural basis of intuitive processing using WGCT-like paradigms underline such an essential role of the OFC. In one fMRI study, Volz and von Cramon (2006) found activation in the left OFC for the contrast between incomplete stimuli rated as coherent and those rated as incoherent. The authors showed that this activation increase is a function of the probability of a preliminary perception of coherence. Furthermore, the OFC’s role as a detector and predictor of potential content has been suggested to be domain independent, since OFC activation has also been observed for coherence judgments in a WGCT-like task adapted to the auditory domain (Volz, Rübsamen, & von Cramon, 2008). Further supporting evidence for the OFC’s involvement in the representation and top-down processing of gist or meaning has been reported by Luu and colleagues (2010), who used a WGCT-like task with electroencephalography and found that reentrant OFC activation was linked to the judgment of fragmented line drawings as coherent.
The above-mentioned studies provide strong evidence for assuming that the OFC is in some way involved in intuitive judgments of coherence—that is, when the detection of meaning is difficult to grasp and no other, more unambiguous features can be used to help. However, it remains unclear exactly what the role of the OFC is in such judgments. The present study approached this question by testing the plausibility of interpreting OFC activation for intuitive judgments in the framework of the described two-stage model of intuition. Thus, the core research question was: Is it empirically plausible to interpret OFC activation in a WGCT-like task as reflecting the initial intuitive perception of coherence that precedes later stimulus processing geared toward a more explicit understanding?
For this question to be answered in the affirmative, the following five conditions concerning the OFC activation recorded in the present study must be met. (1) To replicate former results and form the basis of the proposed model, an increased OFC activation must appear when participants perceive coherence—that is, when stimuli are judged as coherent (subsequently referred to as coherent stimuli), but not when stimuli are judged as incoherent (subsequently referred to as incoherent stimuli). (2) As suggested by the results of Bar and colleagues’ (2006) research, but until now not seen in a coherence judgment task, this differential increase in OFC activation must be temporally observed before a differentiation in object recognition areas occurs. Only if condition 2 holds true can one assume that OFC activation reflects an intuitive perception of coherence that, temporally, comes before explicit object recognition. (3) In accordance with Volz and von Cramon’s (2006) results, a significant OFC activation difference must not appear between the different stimulus types as determined objectively (i.e., fragmented and scrambled stimuli). In the performance-dependent contrast (coherent vs. incoherent), we collapse over objective stimulus categories (fragmented and scrambled), aiming to disentangle neural correlates specifically linked to the subjective feeling of coherence. Condition 3 therefore is necessary to remove the concern that OFC activation found for the perception of coherence may be confounded with physical stimulus characteristics—that is, explicable via differential aspects of the two stimulus types that are unrelated to the subjective coherence judgment. (4) A significant OFC activation difference must not be found between scrambled stimuli in experimental versus control trials, with the latter differing only in the preceding task instructions. The control trials, introduced in the present study next to the experimental trials, were marked by a red fixation cross displayed in advance of the stimulus. The red fixation cross indicated that a stimulus did not display a meaningful object and, thus, that no judgment had to be made. Condition 4 is necessary to ensure that OFC activation is not prompted by a participant’s intention—in other words, a participant’s serious attempt to recognize coherence in the line drawings. Such attempts might be assumed to bias participants to judge stimuli as coherent and therefore, like physical stimulus characteristics, influence the contrast between subjectively coherent and incoherent stimuli. However, for control trials, they are completely absent. (5) A final but crucial point that has also not been considered in previous studies is that the differential in OFC activation between subjectively coherent and incoherent stimuli should not depend solely on conscious object recognition. According to Bowers and colleagues’ (1990) model, it is assumed that conscious object recognition is always preceded by a guiding stage—that is, the stage of intuitive processing. If this is correct, time courses of activation in regions related to intuitive processing should be found to be very similar for stimuli for which an object name is given (subsequently referred to as explicitly coherent stimuli) and those for which the object cannot be named (subsequently referred to as implicitly coherent stimuli). Certainly, to demonstrate that activation in a region is actually representing intuitive processing stages, it is important to show that this activation cannot only be found when implicitly and explicitly coherent stimuli are taken together, but also when explicitly recognized stimuli are not included in the contrast. Proposing the OFC to be involved particularly in the intuitive aspects of stimulus processing, we therefore expect to find no significantly differential activation in the contrast between implicitly and explicitly coherent stimuli. More important, there must be a significant difference in activation of implicitly coherent versus incoherent stimuli. This condition is necessary to rule out the possibility that the OFC may play a role only in explicit recognition, rather than in the early intuitive perception of coherence. Whether these five conditions in support of the proposed model were met was tested with a modified version of the WGCT. MEG was used to record brain activation, because of its high temporal resolution, which is necessary for determining an early involvement of the OFC in coherence judgments.Jun 07, 2017 at 11:34 // Price
Nina Lyon Author
In the previous article about Bitcoin price trends at Coinidol.com, the experts predicted that the price of Bitcoin could hit $3,000 by the end of December 2017.
However, on June 6, the Bitcoin price hit an all-time high of $2,987. Almost $3 k per BTC. But then, the price fell down and now moves around $2,830-2,850.
We contacted cryptocurrency experts for comment on the possible future of the Bitcoin price and whether inevitable corrections will drive the price down.
Kangmo Kim, a Founder at ScaleChain.io, a company developing protocols for Blockchain implementations, that are written from scratch, but compatible with Bitcoin, and developer of altcoin dist.ai, that realizes distributed neural networks on blockchain, and co-founder and investor at the digital currency exchange Korbit in Korea, commented to Coinidol:
“I am not able to predict the future price of Bitcoin. But it can drop quickly like it did back in 2014. So I would not suggest to invest more money in Bitcoin. I also suggest to sell half of Bitcoins that people own, as I expect the price to drop. What I can say is the BTC dominance in the total market capital of cryptocurrencies will drop over time as most of crypto-currencies are unable to solve scalability issues limiting the number of transactions to process per hour per altcoin. This will result in the increased demands for altcoins as their fees are cheaper than expensive cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum. So I would suggest to sell 25% of Bitcoin/Ethereum/Ripple you own to buy altcoins that are cheaper now. And to sell another 25% and keep fiat currencies such as USD or EUR. With the rest of 50% you can enjoy the rise of Bitcoin. (By the half kelly from Kelly's formula)”
Avi Mizrahi, former expert at FXCM Trading Station, MT4, Mirror Trader, Ninja Trader and currently Blockchain Editor at FinanceMagnates.com, also commented:
“It was only at the start of March 2017 that the price of Bitcoin surpassed that of an ounce of gold for the first time ever, and it has now reached considerably more than double the value of the precious metal which has been used as currency since the beginning of history.
Trying to rationalize this irrational exuberance, bitcoin holders list a number of reasons. One is that Japan is to stop applying consumption taxes on cryptocurrencies in July. Another is that mainstream adoption seems closer than ever with established companies jumping on the bandwagon. The Chinese are also said to be protecting themselves from an expected economic downturn that might devalue their RMB holdings. And lastly, the agreement announced in May to end the Bitcoin civil war by companies representing over 80% of the hashing power.
I am not a betting man, but I can’t see how this can go on while the network itself is no longer usable as a payment method. The issues of a huge backlog of orders and crawling confirmation speeds have only become worse and worse recently. I am afraid this is Tulipmania all over again.”
Miguel Schweizer, a Bitcoin Trader for Quantia Capital, an asset management and financial services company from Argentina, believes that corrections of the Bitcoin price will soon take the lead. He stated:
"We are long-term bullish on Bitcoin, but we see the price has gone too far, too fast. Markets that experience this exponential growth in such short periods get severe corrections when euphoria is over. We've seen this in Bitcoin many times, when the market reverses, it usually falls between 30 and 40%, as we saw last week too.
As regards targets for the rest of the year, I think bitcoin could easily reach 3500 before the end of 2017, as bitcoin is gaining popularity and getting the attention in the media.
However, we think bitcoin needs a correction before hitting that target. As I mentioned before, the price has gone too far, too fast, and that's not a healthy growth for any market.
We can see that in the volume of the market, there's a huge divergence between price and volume. In a solid rally, price should be followed by high volume, and we are getting higher prices with lower volume, with suggests the market is about to get a correction before we continue to the upside."
Richard Schultz, a cryptocurency trader at the Poloniex exchange:
“I believe this run up to $3,000 is a carbon copy of the last all time high above $1,000 which then subsequenty crashed. I think the same result will occur here after the price goes fully parabolic, I think there will most likely be a dip buying opportunity if the price crashes below $1,000 as the $1,000 area will most likely be the level of support at which the price collates to after the crash. As far as reasons that's always very difficult to tell, I wrote a thesis about bitcoin price that's available here.”
However, Richard Schultz added that people around the world are seeing bitcoin as an alternative to the fiat cash system in order to protect the value of their money. He continued:
“I believe there is a tremendous amount of distrust of traditional financial and governmental institutions. You can point to recent elections worldwide to see that many people are looking for alternatives to the status quo. I think bitcoin and more broadly cryptocurrency are an exact alternative to these institutions as something completely new is being built that will go beyond just currency. It's always important to mention the price, people are always looking to make money and there have been no better markets to so so then the crypto markets. I think the combination of those two main aspects are really what's driving bitcoin up to the price we currently see.”
J. Bradley Hall, a Founder, Chairman and CEO at ICON CAPITAL RESERVE SA, said:
“Expert predictions are always an interesting topic and a bit like predicting the weather. Candidly a question on value instead of price would elicit an entirely different response. There is a small but growing community that believe that Bitcoin represents new protocols for allocating scarce resources. In context, the HTTP protocol at the backbone of the internet is what can be described as a thin protocol where the cost of utilizing it was largely embedded and companies like Google created their fortunes building applications on top of it without having to contribute any vig to the house.
The Proof of Work (POW) required to create Bitcoin, suggests that investing the time and energy in so called mining to update the hash creates and rewards scarcity. It is however artificial scarcity, as it is not governed by physics but rather just by the design of the protocol. In this case the 'fat 'protocol suggests that instead of being 'free' like HTTP, the value of the blockchain or network lies not in the apps that are created on top of the blockchain but is instead embedded in the Bitcoins themselves.
While there is certainly scarcity and that may offer mixed signals in the price discovery process. Those on the other side of the bet (and at these levels it is a big wager) would argue that a significant portion of the BTC tokens have been lost or destroyed and 90% of the trading is manipulated on exchanges in China and now Japan which is difficult to dispute, as is the obvious hoarding that is going on.
BTC fanboys argue that the 'Network Effect' and 'Social Scalability' are driving prices but neither are unique to BTC tokens or even the blockchain for that matter, as Ethereum and several other chain protocols are emerging as potentially compelling alternatives.”
He further noted that Bitcoin is, and will be, a volatile currency and that we should expect both rises and falls:
“So is bitcoin going higher? Yes. Is bitcoin going lower? Yes. The directional moves will be violent. Although disruptive technologies tend to be revolutionary, they have evolutionary phases and it would be tough to debate the fact that we are in one now. On December 31, Bitcoin could be USD$5,000 or USD$5.00 or anywhere in between. Caveat Emptor.”Seattle is making its case to |
America, and contains more than its fair share of adult jokes and references. Most are masturbation jokes, with “Chokey Chicken” being a regularly featured restaurant and one of Rocko’s core hobbies being “jacking” (which means the use of a jackhammer, obviously, so you can attend a “big jack-a-thon” without anybody getting the wrong idea). One of the worst references comes in the form of a shop in the background called “Felch Donuts,” which is so rude that you’ll have to look it up for yourself if you don’t know what it means.
\#10 – Adventure Time references drug-fuelled novel (Adventure Time)
In the episode Guardians of Sunshine, Finn and Jake want to be transported into a computer game they’re playing, but BMO refuses to do it for them because going inside the game is too dangerous. They decide to do it anyway, tricking BMO into pressing the button by tickling it with a colourful feather Jake pulls out of his mouth. It works (obviously), and the “Main-Brain-Game-Frame” is activated, sending them into the virtual world. Why a feather? Well, the writers of Adventure Time saw fit to reference Vurt by Jeff Noon, a Philip K. Dick-esque novel were the protagonists take drugs by tickling the backs of their throat with multi-coloured feathers, sending them into a virtual world that’s like a computer game-turned-interactive TV programme. The parallels are pretty strong, but the reference stands out as a particularly adult one, given that much of the novel is composed of borderline pornographic descriptions of drug-feathers being forced down people’s throats.
\#11 – Spongebob gets caught watching porn (Spongebob Squarepants)
Spongebob Squarepants is widely-known to be riddled with these sorts of jokes, but among the most adult moments comes when Spongebob is watching an innocent-looking sea-life documentary. Gary – his cat-like pet snail – comes into the room to see him wide-eyed and leant forwards on his chair. Spongebob is startled, quickly switching over to the sports channel and pretending that he was watching it all along. Yes, Spongebob watches ocean porn. Of course, when you have a kids cartoon with references to “dropping the soap,” and even a possible cheeky, subtle use of the c-word (Spongebob telling Miss Puff “see you next Tuesday”), porn references aren’t so surprising.
\#12 – Rocko gets a job as a phone sex operator (Rocko’s Modern Life)
While the felching reference could have been missed, in an episode where Rocko loses his job, he starts working as a phone sex operator. This is pretty impossible to miss, with the only saving grace being that it would just simply be lost on kids. Beside his desk is a sign reading, “Remember: be hot, be naughty, be courteous,” and he is featured repeatedly saying “oh baby” down the phone to a customer. It’s not particularly rude in terms of what’s shown, but the implied level of sheer sleaze is pretty significant.
\#13 – Helga writes Arnold a poem (Hey Arnold!)
Hey Arnold! is a cartoon about a boy with a weird-shaped head navigating the various trials and tribulations of growing up. It frequently features a bully named Helga, who torments Arnold as a way to hide her intense love for him. At one point, she pens a secret poem for Arnold, and in amidst the Shakespearean style and comparatively only slightly unsettling lines like “Arnold my love, my sultry preteen,” it features the line “Arnold you make my girlhood tremble.” Different episodes also include a porn reference and a few phallic jokes, but the eerily descriptive and explicit nature of Helga’s line makes it stand out as particularly inappropriate.
Although the show featured people who’d go on to work on things like the Simpsons, Animaniacs and Futurama, the controversy surrounding this one particular joke was enough to get Mighty Mouse: the New Adventures cancelled. In the episode, Mighty had crushed a flower into a pink powder, and a little later he proceeds to snort it. The entire thing only lasts a couple of seconds, but first it got John Kricfalusi fired (who went on to create Ren and Stimpy), and the complaint lodged by a high profile minister who campaigned against “immoral” TV programmes led to the entire show being took off the air. It doesn’t deserve to be cancelled, but for once the crazy campaigner sort of has a point – if you’re denying the cocaine reference, should you really be grinding up and snorting strange multicoloured plants in the first place? Probably not, especially if you’re on Saturday morning TV.The New Jersey Devils on Tuesday signed forward Damien Brunner to a multiyear contract. Brunner's agent, Neil Sheehy, wrote on his Twitter account that the contract is two years for a total of $5 million.
Brunner was invited to Devils training camp on a professional tryout and had two assists playing on a line with Patrik Elias and Jacob Josefson in the Devils' preseason win against the New York Islanders last Saturday at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
"He came to camp without a contract and showed us what he can do," Devils general manager Lou Lamoriello said.
The challenge for Lamoriello now is to pare the roster to 13 or 14 forwards, which he called "a good problem" to have.
Brunner won't have to worry. He'll have a role in New Jersey for at least the next few years.
"I'm real happy we were able to make the deal a little earlier than Oct. 1. Now it's a little bit easier for me to focus on the start of the season," Brunner said. "I'm really excited about being a Devil. Now [I can] stick around.
"I think you have to be confident, otherwise it makes no sense. There is no point in coming over to try. I believed I could come over, prove myself and get a contract. That's what happened and I'm very happy about it. I think both sides are happy about it."
Born in Oberlunkhofen, Switzerland, Brunner, 27, played 12 seasons in his home country before signing a one-year, entry-level contract with the Detroit Red Wings in 2012. Following another stint with EV Zug during the lockout, Brunner finished with 12 goals and 14 assists in 44 games for the Red Wings, and added five goals and four assists in 14 Stanley Cup Playoff games.
"I think they pretty much knew what they get with me," Brunner said. "It was about them seeing how I react when I came to this organization."“What fills me with doubt and dismay is the degradation of the moral tone,” wrote the American poet James Russell Lowell in 1876, in a letter to his fellow poet Joel Benton. “Is it or is it not a result of democracy? Is ours a ‘government of the people by the people for the people’, or a kakistocracy rather, for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools?”
Is there a better, more apt description of the incoming Trump administration than “kakistocracy”, which translates from the Greek literally as government by the worst people? The new US president, as Barack Obama remarked on the campaign trail, is “uniquely unqualified” to be commander-in-chief. There is no historical analogy for a President Trump. He combines in a single person some of the worst qualities of some of the worst US presidents: the Donald makes Nixon look honest, Clinton look chaste, Bush look smart.
Trump began his tenure as president-elect in November by agreeing to pay out $25m to settle fraud claims brought against the now defunct Trump University by dozens of former students; he began the new year being deposed as part of his lawsuit against a celebrity chef. On 10 January, the Federal Election Commission sent the Trump campaign a 250-page letter outlining a series of potentially illegal campaign contributions. A day later, the head of the non-partisan US Office of Government Ethics slammed Trump’s plan to step back from running his businesses as “meaningless from a conflict-of-interest perspective”.
It cannot be repeated often enough: none of this is normal. There is no precedent for such behaviour, and while kakistocracy may be a term unfamiliar to most of us, this is what it looks like. Forget 1876: be prepared for four years of epic misgovernance and brazen corruption. Despite claiming in his convention speech, “I alone can fix it,” the former reality TV star won’t be governing on his own. He will be in charge of the richest, whitest, most male cabinet in living memory; a bizarre melange of the unqualified and the unhinged.
There has been much discussion about the lack of experience of many of Trump’s appointees (think of the incoming secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, who has no background in diplomacy or foreign affairs) and their alleged bigotry (the Alabama senator Jeff Sessions, denied a role as a federal judge in the 1980s following claims of racial discrimination, is on course to be confirmed as attorney general). Yet what should equally worry the average American is that Trump has picked people who, in the words of the historian Meg Jacobs, “are downright hostile to the mission of the agency they are appointed to run”. With their new Republican president’s blessing, they want to roll back support for the poorest, most vulnerable members of society and don’t give a damn how much damage they do in the process.
Take Scott Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general selected to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Pruitt describes himself on his LinkedIn page as “a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda” and has claimed that the debate over climate change is “far from settled”.
The former neurosurgeon Ben Carson is Trump’s pick for housing and urban development, a department with a $49bn budget that helps low-income families own homes and pay the rent. Carson has no background in housing policy, is an anti-welfare ideologue and ruled himself out of a cabinet job shortly after the election. “Dr Carson feels he has no government experience,” his spokesman said at the time. “He’s never run a federal agency. The last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency.”
The fast-food mogul Andrew Puzder, who was tapped to run the department of labour, doesn’t like... well... labour. He prefers robots, telling Business Insider in March 2016: “They’re always polite... They never take a vacation, they never show up late, there’s never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex or race discrimination case.”
The billionaire Republican donor Betsy DeVos, nominated to run the department of education, did not attend state school and neither did any of her four children. She has never been a teacher, has no background in education and is a champion of school vouchers and privatisation. To quote the education historian Diane Ravitch: “If confirmed, DeVos will be the first education secretary who is actively hostile to public education.”
The former Texas governor Rick Perry, nominated for the role of energy secretary by Trump, promised to abolish the department that he has been asked to run while trying to secure his party’s presidential nomination in 2011. Compare and contrast Perry, who has an undergraduate degree in animal science but failed a chemistry course in college, with his two predecessors under President Obama: Dr Ernest Moniz, the former head of MIT’s physics department, and Dr Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist from Berkeley. In many ways, Perry, who spent the latter half of 2016 as a contestant on Dancing with the Stars, is the ultimate kakistocratic appointment.
“Do Trump’s cabinet picks want to run the government – or dismantle it?” asked a headline in the Chicago Tribune in December. That’s one rather polite way of putting it. Another would be to note, as the Online Etymology Dictionary does, that kakistocracy comes from kakistos, the Greek word for “worst”, which is a superlative of kakos, or “bad”, which “is related to the general Indo-European word for ‘defecate’”.
Mehdi Hasan has rejoined the New Statesman as a contributing editor and will write a fortnightly column on US politicsComedian Howard Kremer does a little bit of it all. He’s appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live and Comedy Bang Bang, he co-host the Who Charted? podcast on Earwolf, raps under the name Dragon Boy Suede, has had his own half-hour Comedy Central special, and has written for several television shows. His latest project is the release of his new album Summahtology (his fourth in the series!), as part of his lifestyle movement where he encourages people to “Have a summah.”
I’m new to this whole “Have a Summah” thing. It’s great! Tell me more about it.
Oh wow, thanks! It’s a lot to take in. I was having this debate in my head about five years ago, “Should I get some work done or should I go to the beach?” Even when I went to the beach I was still having the debate in my head. I just thought, “Hey, I got to talk about this.” So I started kind of doing the debate on stage. I was telling people to, “Have a Summah” and was acting like they didn’t want to have a summah. I don’t know, the idea really struck a chord with me. It felt like it had emotional resonance, which is weird, because usually you just do standup and its just jokes. People were really feeling this, so I thought, “This is cool. I’m gonna keep going with this.”
I don’t know if it’s just from the “Have a Summah” vibe, but are you always this much of a upbeat, happy guy?
I try to be. It takes a lot of work. You got to definitely work on your brain every day. I am quiet and morose when I’m alone. It’s fun at night when you get out and you get to see your friends and do standup. I guess if that’s the side of me people see, I’m glad they like it.
You were saying how people don’t know who you are, but you have a fan video and Zooey Deschanel did a short with you. People know about it more than you’re giving yourself credit.
Yeah, they do. I just think it’s because I do so many things like standup, podcasts, music, “Have a Summah,” Dragon Boy Suede, it’s hard to get the word out about all of it. That’s one thing that’s been good about doing the podcast, my podcast Who Charted? with Kulap Vilaysack, is that everything kind of comes under one umbrella. Once I’m on the podcast I can kind of talk about all of it. So, that’s been great.
Talk to me about more about Who Charted?
So, Who Charted is a podcast with me and my co-host Kulap Vilaysack. I’ll spell that for you later if you like. (Laughing) She’s an American of Laotian decent. Anyway, we count down the top five of music and movies and more every week. It’s been a great podcast that we’ve been doing on Earwolf for like five years now.
Would you say podcasting is your favorite to do?
What I love about podcasting is that it takes an hour to create an hour-long podcast. Where if you want to make an hour-long standup album, you need at least a year, probably. If you want to make a music album you need a long time. That’s what I love about podcasting is we just go and record and people want to consume the whole thing. I thought in the beginning we’d have to edit out stuff and cut out dead time, but people want the whole thing as is, and that’s great.
Do you think you appreciate summer because you’re from New Jersey and the weather out here in LA is always wonderful?
(Laughing) Yes. Absolutely. That was a tough thing in New Jersey. Summah finally comes around and then it’s only sunny like every ten days or something. So, coming out here you do feel that sun all the time, and it’s a great thing, but there’s also this undercurrent in LA of, “You’ve got to work. You’ve got to push.” The sun can take a backseat sometime, so I thought, “Hey, let’s put it back in the front seat!”
How long have you been out here?
I actually moved from Austin. I started in Austin. We did this show on MTV called Austin Stories in ’97. I think I moved here in late ’98 or ’99, so long time.
What’s changed since then? Because you’ve written for a ton of shows and you’ve done standup on late-night TV and all over the place, so what have you noticed in the industry?
Well, the two biggest things have been social media. When I did that first show on MTV, there was no social media. There was nothing. There was no, “Hey, get the word out about my show!” None of those channels existed. So that’s been huge, just the onslaught of all the internet stuff. There’s just so many more ways now to get comedy out there. Then I think the other thing was that the “alt scene” became the main scene. Back in the day when I first came here, we’d always do shows and it’d be Patton Oswalt, Bob Odenkirk, Louis CK, Mitch Hedberg, all kinds of people. It was just off to the side, it was college radio. I think now when you look at it, with UCB that came around and everything else, it’s completely mainstream.
Where did the name Dragon Boy Suede come from?
Yeah, that’s just my rap name. I had come up with a character that was half superhero half porn star. It was just a script I was going to write. Then I think the guys from South Park they had a porno superhero thing, so I scrapped the idea. Then I started rapping and thought, “I’ll just take that. That’s my rap name.”
What parts of him are different than Howard Kramer?
Umm… boy… You know when you get drunk with your friends and you’re just rapping like an idiot and you think they’re the only ones who are going to hear it? That’s Dragon Boy Suede to me. It’s me having fun. That’s it. It’s like it’s for me, and a bunch of friends. It was odd when I started to do it and it was part of my Comedy Central special. My mom came to that special, and my little nephews, and my cousin, and here I am rapping about my dick up there. It was odd and it was awkward.
What’s your mom say about it?
My mom is just supportive to a fault, so she just loved it and loved that I was on TV. I don’t know if she registers the dirty stuff. She probably just blocks it out or something.
Were you surprised the first time a “Summah Says” fan video came out?
Yeah, I was really surprised, because we had spent a long time making our own videos. I can’t tell you how great it is just to wake up one morning and just find out that there’s a whole other video that you didn’t have to spend one second producing. The video is fantastic. This family of four made it. They did a great job. That’s not my wheelhouse at all. I love making and writing songs, but I’m terrible with the visuals, so it was fantastic. I loved it.
Tell me about how you write, what’s your process? Because you have, what is this, your fourth album of Summahtology?
Yeah, there’s four for Summahtology and four for Dragon Boy Suede.
That is so many! Are you that guy that’s constantly singing and making up songs or how does that work for you?
It’s like Ishtar. Did you ever see Ishatar?
No. Sorry.
It’s just this movie about bad song writing. I started off in bands. I’ve been in bands since I was in third or fourth grade. I was always compelled to write songs, even when I started to do standup and deciding I was going to go that route. I was never able to shut off writing songs. As the years go by you realize, “I can’t let go of this. I’ll just have to do both, even if it splits my focus” and that’s where it’s at.
Comedy songwriters can get a little bit of a bag rap, do you ever run into that?
Absolutely. Even what I do sounds terrible on paper. “Oh comedic songs” or “comedic rap songs” or “comedic songs about the summer time,” all of it sounds like a mess. I don’t try to really explain it too hard to people who haven’t heard it. It’s mostly just people hear it and then they get it. It’s hard to convert people through just talking about it.
You’ve clearly been doing this for a long time. Do you remember what you considered your first big break?
It was in Austin. We heard there was going to be an MTV audition. They sent these scouts down from MTV and a whole bunch of standups went up. They picked four of us and said, “Hey, start coming up with an idea for a show.” There were sketches. There was like a home video camera and we just shot it ourselves. I think we got $1,000 for the first year, each one of us. That was our contract. We got $1,000 and it took three and half years to get Austin Stories on the air. It was pretty crazy. But that was a big break, and we had a show on TV, and we were in the national media. We got to move to LA and get managers and agents and start selling more shows.
And then it took off from there!
Yeah and it’s a slow steady build for years and years and years. It’s pretty crazy. You never know how the career’s gonna go. It’s unpredictable. Look at Marc Maron, you know. All those years of standup, and then the podcast, and then that’s the thing that blows up, and then he’s got the President in his garage. It’s just the things you’d never think of when you start out.
You’re also a writer for and are featured in a Nat Geo show?
Oh yeah, there’s a new show coming out on National Geographic called Now We Know and it’s their first ever comedy show. It’s a sketch comedy show with history and stuff in it. So, it’s a whole new horizon. You know comedy is big when Nat Geo is trying it. So, hopefully we won’t screw that up and it’ll become yet another outlet for comedy.
Is there anything else upcoming that you’re excited about?
Well, I’ve got a couple more Dragon Boy Suede albums coming out. They’re all written, they’re just not recorded yet. And I’ve been doing a lot of shows around the states. So yeah, the album Summahtology and there’s a video we did for Funny or Die about orangutans driving jet skis.
Wait, did you get actual orangutans?
We went to the World Jet Ski Championships in Lake Havasu and we got the amateur champion to put on an orangutan suit and pull a bunch of crazy tricks. It was great. It was all directed by Lance Bangs who did a bunch of the Jackass stuff. He also directs Meltdown with Jonah and Kumail on Comedy Central and a bunch of other stuff.
You said you’re not good with coming up with the visual side of things, but are you the one who pictured the orangutan on a jet ski?
(Laughing) That was a joke that happened on our podcast. Kulap was going to Loas and I said, “Are you take one of those Gu Cruises?” And she goes, “What’s that?” I go, “It’s like an orangutan drives you around on a jet ski.” That’s as far as my visual powers went. Then after that it became a song. Lance liked the song and his kids liked the song, so we made a video. We crowdfunded it and put it on Funny or Die.
Finally, give us three legitimate things to do to not waste the summah.
Well, you gotta swim. That’s a basic right there. I meet a lot of people who it’s August and they haven’t been in the water yet. A summah feast would be good; some kind of conscious celebration of the summah. So, swimming and a feast, and then I would say, collect a shell. Bring back a shell and then it’s your summah shell. That’s your proof that you had a summah. No one can take it back.In my humble opinion, Metalcore has, shall we say, run its course. As always, there are staunch, vocal supporters of any given genre or sub-genre or sub-sub-genre, but I don’t think anyone would disagree that Metalcore as it was first defined doesn’t really exist anymore. Bands like Every Time I Die, initially and probably correctly labeled as Metalcore, have helped lay that silly moniker to rest.
So where does a band like Every Time I Die fall now on the spectrum? There’s no easy answer, and I have to imagine they like it that way.
Yeah, they’re metal… ish. There’s some very obvious Southern Rock influence. They’re even a little mathy and can more than hold their own in any kind of technical showdown (are there Riff-off’s? If not, there should be). They’ve got a little Hardcore in them, as well. Lyrically, they’re biting and drenched in subtle satire, eloquently so, considering the sometimes obtuse nature of heavy music. And live? They are sometimes comedically good, often great - raucous, engaging, committed, and, as mentioned, comedic, the combination of distinct, and distinctly weird personalities creating a vibrant and intense show filled with riffs, a whole lot of movement from the crowd and band, and some between songs banter that amuses as much as it can confuse those not aware of just how self-aware the band really is.
Touring in support of their insanely great mid-2014 effort From Parts Unknown, Every Time I Die find themselves reaching into aggressive and progressive reserves they’d only hinted at on albums like New Junk Aesthetic. Teaming up with Converge’s Kurt Ballou, ETID crafted an album as ferocious and gritty as some of their earlier releases like Hot Damn! and Gutter Phenomenon, but cleverly and expertly combined with their signature sound post-The Big Dirty. In addition to seeking out the sonic guidance of Ballou, ETID enlisted such disparate musicians as Sean Ingram of Coalesce and Brian Fallon of The Gaslight Anthem (imagine Springsteen singing on a Metallica album and you kind of get the idea) to lend vocals to two equally disparate tracks.
Thrashy, brash, sarcastic - I feel like there are only so many ways to describe a band that, to me, is one of the most invigorating, challenging, and exceptional heavy music acts of the past decade. But, you know, I once saw their vocalist drink beer out of a dude’s prosthetic leg and thought it was hilarious, so maybe my opinion is a little skewed.
Should you find yourself in the mood, Every Time I Die is currently on tour as direct support for The Used and will be at Bogart’s this Friday, April 17th, along with Marmozets and The Eeries. Wear your party hats.Hostage is one of those words that can cause confusion to people new to historical fiction set in the early Middle Ages. After capturing the Saxon fortress of Eresburg and destroying the Irminsul in 772, Charlemagne took 12 hostages, an event recounted in my second novel, The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar.
Today we think of a hostage as someone held against their will to extort money or some other demand, but the word’s meaning was slightly different for Charles and his contemporaries. To them, hostages were a means of making sure an enemy kept a commitment they made.
The vanquished took an oath of loyalty to the Frankish king, but swearing to a saint was not enough to reassure the monarch – or anyone else with sense. The vanquished party also surrendered hostages, often the young sons of important men.
As long as the vanquished behaved themselves and kept their oaths, the hostages would be treated as the king’s guests. If the vanquished broke their promises, the king could do whatever he wanted to the boys, whether that was sending them off to a monastery to be unwillingly tonsured, selling them into slavery, or killing them.
So with the lives of their offspring at stake, one would think the vanquished foes would be motivated to keep their promises. But hostage-taking often didn’t work in practice. When Charles was otherwise occupied – for example a war with his ex-father-in-law in Lombardy in 773 – the Saxons would move to retake lost territory. To the Franks, they were breaking a sacred oath. The Saxons, who never wrote down their story, might argue an oath at the point of a sword was invalid.
A sad part of the history remains untold – what happened to the hostages.
AdvertisementsFor some great firing footage and an assessment of the m/31 in practical terms, check out today's video on InRangeTV!
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Designed by Finland's most notable arms inventor, Aimo Lahti, the m/31 Suomi submachine gun is an iconic weapon of the Winter War and the Continuation War. It is a first-generation submachine gun with a heavy milled receiver and very well-fitted parts - enough so that a series of vent holes were put in the end of the receiver tube to prevent air compression during the firing cycle. The gun is overall quite heavy (4.7kg / 10.4lb) and has a high rate of fire (~900 rounds/minute). It originally used 50-round quad-stack magazines and 71-round drum magazines, which allowed a shooter to exploit the high rate of fire without constantly having to change magazines.
The quad-stack magazines were eventually found to be insufficiently reliable, and were retired. The drum proved to be quite good in use, although quite awkward and bulky to carry (not that Finnish troops had no specialized pouches for these drums). The drum design would be taken by the Russians (handed over by a defecting Finnish officer, apparently) and copied for use in the Soviet PPD and PPSh submachine guns. In the 1950s, a simple double-stack 36 round magazine was developed and became most popular.
If you enjoy Forgotten Weapons, check out its sister channel, InRangeTV! http://www.youtube.com/InRangeTVShowPatrick Kennedy, the son of the late Senator Ted Kennedy, has had his own problems with drug addiction.
Patrick Kennedy, the son of the late Senator Ted Kennedy, has had his own problems with drug addiction.
Anti-Marijuana activists gear up to block 2014 Ballot Questions
Ted Kennedy's son Patrick leads fight to stop Marijuana legalization in Massachusetts
With marijuana activists seeking to legalize the drug through the ballot process, a national organization opposed to legalization, Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), is starting to organize in the state.
Jody Hensley is coordinating SAM in Massachusetts, which will work with the Massachusetts Prevention Alliance, and will plan to disburse research and statistics, while seeking to compare the well-funded legalization effort to “Big Tobacco.”
Kennedy heads anti-pot group
SAM is headed by former Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy, Hensley said, while calling the legalization of marijuana the “worst” policy step that can be taken. The group seeking to change the law, Bay State Repeal, likens the illegality of marijuana to the nation’s past prohibition of alcohol sales, and said it hopes to put non-binding questions on the 2014 ballot and put a proposed change in law to voters on the 2016 presidential ballot.
Kennedy claims marijuana contributes to mental illness
Patrick is the son of the late Senator Ted Kennedy, and he has had his own problems with drug addiction. Six years ago he admitted that he had an addiction to prescription medication and admitted himself into a drug-rehabilitation facility at the Mayo Clinic where he has sought treatment for prior addictions.
Mr. Kennedy claims, "We can not promote a comprehensive system of mental health treatment an marijuana legalization which increases permissiveness for a drug that contributes directly to mental illness."
New Mass. Ballot Committee hopes to legalize Marijuana in 2016
Bay State Repeal plans to put non-binding public policy questions about whether to legalize marijuana before voters in 2014
Having won decriminalization and the legalization of marijuana for medical use through the use of the ballot, activists are now planning to put a full legalization referendum before Massachusetts voters during the next presidential election, in 2016.
"We won't have to have it on the ballot again after we've finally repealed the prohibition," said William Downing, who has been involved in marijuana activism since 1989 and is the treasurer of a newly registered ballot committee called Bay State Repeal.
Last November, as Massachusetts approved medical marijuana, voters in Washington and Colorado fully legalized and regulated the drug. Both opponents and proponents said they will be watching how the new policy fares in those states to make their case to voters in 2016.
Downing said Massachusetts was the first state in the nation to restrict marijuana, prohibiting doctors from prescribing it in 1913, well before it was outlawed federally in 1937. Downing also sees parallels between the legal marijuana movement and the people who successfully repealed alcohol prohibition, which unlike marijuana, was enshrined in a constitutional amendment.
"They were referred to back then as the wets. The drys and the wets. And the wets did almost exactly what we're doing right here right now," said Downing.
Bay State Repeal plans to put non-binding public policy questions about whether to legalize marijuana before voters in 2014, before making a push for binding language - which would be reviewed by the Legislature first - on the 2016 ballot as an initiative petition.
"A lot more people vote generally when there's a presidential election and we do better when a lot more people vote because this is a populist issue," said Downing, whose advocacy began by calling for the use of hemp, a fibrous plant used in textiles and paper, which is nearly identical to marijuana.
Family Group warns of "slippery slope"
"I think that we can make a clear case on the effects of marijuana that have been proven," Massachusetts Family Institute President Kris Mineau told the News Service. He said, "We will vehemently oppose any such effort" to legalize marijuana.
The Family Institute has been on the losing side of recent marijuana ballot questions, dating back to 2008 when voters decriminalized possession of less than an ounce of the drug.
Mineau, who described the legalization proposal as "a slippery slope of a gateway drug," said the opposition would hope to "muster a more effective campaign."
"Is crack cocaine going to be next on the legislation list?" Mineau asked.
Asked if he thought any other drugs should be legal, Downing said, "I don't really know much about other drugs… Those aren't our issue."
Downing said the illegality of marijuana does not prevent people from smoking it, fosters distrust of the police, allows for an unregulated system of drug dealers and "weakens the moral impact of the term, illegal."
Calls State's regulations "ridiculous"
A Melrose resident, Downing said the Department of Public Health's regulations around the medical use of marijuana are "absolutely ridiculous and "based on 'Reefer Madness' logic," while Mineau said the state has taken a strange turn over the past few years.
"We're rational people. Is this really what we want for our commonwealth?" asked Mineau, describing the past decade as a "horrific slope" and referencing "sexuality" and "gambling" in addition to marijuana. He said, "What are we? Are we Copenhagen all of a sudden? I hope not."
Bay State Repeal said in a Thursday announcement they would seek to create the "simplest and least restrictive plan for marijuana law reform focused on preventing non-medical distribution to children."
For marijuana users, legalization would make the drug cheaper, but would not make it more available, said Downing, who argued, "Anybody who wants to get marijuana can get it now."
Once the nearly exclusive province of reggae lyrics, full marijuana legalization has grown nearer to the mainstream. Two of the five elected officials seeking a congressional seat in the Boston suburbs earlier this year said they would support treating marijuana like alcohol.
Downing said it was "exhilarating" to look toward potential legalization.
"I've been a marijuana user since I was 15," said Downing, when asked how long he has used marijuana. He also said, "It's nobody's damn business how long I've been smoking pot," and said strictures on use of the drug saps the freedom from society.
"We are America, and this is the land of the free, and we need to make sure that we remain free from intrusive government," Downing said.BHOPAL: A 9-year-old boy choked to death apparently trying to imitate a suicide scene shown in a television programme at Gwalior district in Madhya Pradesh.
Police said the incident took place on Tuesday evening when the class 3 boy Mohit, a resident of Pintoo Park tried to copy stunt from one of his favourate cartoon series.
His father Pramod Mishra, a plumber by profession was out on work while his mother Deepika had gone out to buy vegetables leaving Mohit and daughter home.
While watching cartoon he tied a rope around his neck, threw other end of it on the ceiling fan and started rotating it. Rope tightened and chocked him to death.
His sister, who was younger than Mohit, called up neibhours for help after she saw him numb on the floor minutes later.
They took him to a private hospital where doctors declared him 'brought dead'. Post-mortem was conducted on Wednesday morning.Dr. Stephen Murgatroyd notes that psychiatry’s diagnostic bible, the DSM, is "By no stretch of the imagination is it a scientific, evidence-based document. It is–and always has been–an unsubstantiated catalog of behaviors deemed "mental illnesses."
Its primary goal is to expand the psychiatry’s reach and billable territory:
"The quest to add sex addiction to the catalogue of recognized illness states is just a part of the desire of psychiatrists to identify everything as problematic."
"If you want to call in sick, |
His Excellency Nelson Lewis as the former FNC staffer and Laura Ingraham Show producer who last year found himself in the clink for impersonating Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga). Or maybe you remember him as Minister Plenipotentiary for Artistic Endeavors to the Bahamas. No? Rolling Stone writer? Ambassador? As it turns out, most of Nellie’s tales, titles and jobs were nothing more than a wicked web of lies he’d been spinning for years (read the full recap here).
In December 2010 Nelson’s web came toppling down and our little fire pants fled the District to seek treatment for chronic lying at the Menninger Clinic in Texas. Thinking we’d seen the last of him, you can imagine our delight to learn Lewis had returned to DC when we caught him crashing The Week’s Opinion Awards at W Hotel this past May. But sadly, it seems that party crashing is the gateway drug to compulsive lying because Lewis fell off the truth wagon and just got caught.
Which brings us to last night at the Dubliner where CBS News’ Christine Delargy and a merry band of boozers were enjoying a post-production libation. As the story goes, His Excellency approached Delargy & Co.’s table to introduce himself. Our tipster tells us that everyone except for Christine offered up their names in response to Nelson’s greeting. But like any good social climber, Lewis didn’t waste the opportunity to catalog a face or title, so he instead asked Christine her place of employment. When she replied “CBS News,” Lewis let the lies fly.
“I know a lot of people there… Do you know Christine Delargy? She’s a good friend of mine,” exclaimed Lewis.
Delargy quickly corrected the con man, saying “Um, no she’s not. Because she is me.” Then a puzzled Nelson quickly shuffled away from the table and out of sight. Christine confirmed the bizarre encounter but declined to comment on the matter. As for us, all we have to say is: This embeddable music video goes out to you, Nelson. #neverchangePaul Labile Pogba (born 15 March 1993) is a French professional footballer who plays for Premier League club Manchester United and the French national team. He operates primarily as a central midfielder, but can also be deployed as an attacking midfielder, defensive midfielder, and deep-lying playmaker.[4]
Born in Lagny-sur-Marne, Pogba showed much promise as a youngster, flourishing as a member of local youth teams. He eventually joined the youth team of Ligue 1 side Le Havre, before a protracted transfer brought him to Manchester United in 2009. After beginning his senior career with Manchester United two years later, limited appearances persuaded him to depart to join Italian side Juventus on a free transfer in 2012, where he helped the club to four consecutive Serie A titles, as well as two Coppa Italia and two Supercoppa Italiana titles. During his time in Italy, Pogba further established himself as one of the most promising young players in the world, and received the Golden Boy award in 2013, followed by the Bravo Award in 2014. In 2016, Pogba was named to the 2015 UEFA Team of the Year, as well as the 2015 FIFA FIFPro World XI, after helping Juventus to the 2015 UEFA Champions League Final, their first in 12 years.
Pogba's performances at Juventus allowed him to return to Manchester United in 2016 for a then-world record transfer fee of €105 million (£89.3 million).[5] The fee paid for him remains the highest paid by an English club.[6] In his first season back, he won the League Cup and the Europa League.[7]
Internationally, he captained France to victory at the 2013 FIFA U-20 World Cup and took home the award for the Best Player for his performances during the tournament. He made his debut for the senior team a year later, and featured prominently at the 2014 FIFA World Cup, where he was awarded the Best Young Player Award for his performances. He later represented his nation at UEFA Euro 2016 on home soil, where he finished as a runner-up, before winning the 2018 FIFA World Cup after scoring in the final.
Early life
Pogba was born in Lagny-sur-Marne, Seine-et-Marne, to Guinean parents.[8] He is Muslim.[9][10][11] He has two older twin brothers – Florentin and Mathias – born in Guinea, who are also footballers and play for the Guinean national team.[12] Florentin currently plays for Atlanta United and Mathias plays for Tours.[13] Growing up, Pogba was a fan of Arsenal.[14]
Club career
Early career
Ronaldo is my footballing role model and the player that made me fall in love with football. I was enthralled by him as I used to play up front when I was younger." Pogba on his idol, former Brazilian forward Ronaldo.[15]
Pogba began his football career at the age of six playing for US Roissy-en-Brie, a few miles south of his hometown. He spent seven seasons at the club before joining US Torcy, where he served as captain of the club's under-13 team.[16]
After one season with Torcy, Pogba joined professional club Le Havre. In his second season at the club, Pogba captained its under-16 team to the final phase of its domestic league, the Championnat National des 16 ans. Le Havre finished second to Lens in the final group phase, finishing ahead of the likes of Lyon and Nancy.[17] Pogba also established himself as a youth international for his country.
Manchester United
Transfer
"The player [Pogba] and his parents refused to keep the arrangement because Manchester United offered very high sums of money to the parents of the [player] with the aim of obtaining the transfer of their son." Le Havre's response to Pogba's decision to join Manchester United.[18]
On 31 July 2009, Pogba announced that he was departing Le Havre to join the youth academy of Manchester United in England. The move surprised his parent club, as it allegedly had a "non-solicitation agreement" with Pogba, which was agreed to by not only the player but also his parents in 2006. The agreement, which was in place until the end of the 2009–10 season, allowed Le Havre to sign Pogba to an aspirant (youth) contract once the player met specific age and scholarship requirements.[19] On 1 August, Le Havre released an official statement on its website criticising Manchester United and the Pogba family.[18] Le Havre also announced its intent to ask FIFA to probe the situation.[20]
In response to Le Havre's accusations, Manchester United threatened to sue the club, while Pogba denied he was leaving Le Havre for monetary reasons, which Le Havre President Jean-Pierre Louvel had alleged to be £87,000 and a house.[21][22] Le Havre was also accused by Pogba's former club Torcy of using the same tactics it purported Manchester United to have used when the club acquired Pogba from its youth academy. On the same day of Pogba's announcement to depart for England, Torcy released a press release on its official website criticising Le Havre's accusations, stating, "We will not use the term'steal,' but the recruiters of Le Havre acted the same way with the club in Torcy." The club cited Le Havre's acceptance of allowing Pogba to sign an amateur licence with the club without notifying Torcy as its primary reason why.[16][23] On 7 October, Manchester United were cleared of wrongdoing by a judge appointed by FIFA, with the declaration that Pogba was not contractually linked to Le Havre.[24] Despite having the option to appeal, on 18 June 2010, Le Havre officials confirmed that the club had reached an agreement with Manchester United for the transfer of Pogba. The terms of the agreement were confidential.[25][26]
2009–10 season
Pogba completed his transfer to Manchester United on 7 October 2009[27] and made his debut with the club's under-18 team on 10 October against Crewe Alexandra in a 2–1 defeat.[28] He finished the 2009–10 under-18 campaign with seven goals in 21 appearances.[29] The team finished first in their group, but lost to Arsenal 5–3 on penalties in the play-off semi-finals.[30] In April 2010, Pogba was a part of the under-18 team that successfully defended their title at the Torneo Calcio Memorial Claudio Sassi-Sassuolo in Bologna, Italy.[31]
2010–11 season
In the 2010–11 season, Pogba remained on the club's academy team in the Premier Academy League and played with the team during the first three months of the season. In November 2010, he was called up to the club's reserve team and made his debut on 2 November 2010 in a 3–1 win over Bolton Wanderers.[32] On 10 January 2011, in the FA Youth Cup, Pogba scored a long-range goal, described as a "piledriver," in the team's 3–2 victory over Portsmouth. The win allowed the team to progress to the fourth round of the competition.[33] A month later, Pogba scored a similar goal in a 3–2 defeat to West Bromwich Albion in the Academy League.[34]
On 19 February 2011, Pogba was one of four academy players promoted to the first-team squad by manager Alex Ferguson ahead of Manchester United's FA Cup fifth round match against Crawley Town, for which he was assigned the number 42 shirt.[35] He continued in the under-18s for the rest of the season, helping the team to a lengthy run in the FA Youth Cup; in the semi-final encounter against Chelsea in the competition, Pogba scored a goal in the first leg, a 3–2 defeat,[36] and provided the assist for the opening goal of the second leg, a 4–0 win.[37] In the final, Manchester United defeated Sheffield United 6–3 on aggregate to win their tenth Youth Cup title; Pogba started and played the entire match in both legs.[38][39]
2011–12 season
Ahead of the start of the 2011–12 season, Ferguson confirmed that Pogba would feature with the senior team during the season, stating, "I mean if we hold Pogba back, what's going to happen? He's going to leave. You know, in a couple of years' time when his contract is going to finish. So we have to give him the opportunity to see how he can do in the first-team and he's got great ability."[40] Pogba was promoted to the club's reserve team permanently for the 2011–12 season and made his first appearance of the season on 15 August 2011 in the team's opening Premier Reserve League match against Arsenal.[41] On 25 August, in the team's second league match against Swansea City reserves, Pogba scored the second goal in a 6–0 rout.[42] On 19 September, he was named to the first team to participate in their Football League Cup tie against Leeds United the following day, with Ferguson proclaiming, "I intend to play him [Pogba] against Leeds United."[43] Pogba appeared as a half-time substitute to make his professional debut as Manchester United won the match 3–0.[44] Pogba made his second appearance against Aldershot Town in the Fourth Round of the League Cup on 25 October 2011.[45]
Pogba made his Premier League debut against Stoke City on 31 January 2012, replacing Javier Hernández in the 72nd minute.[46] He made another substitute appearance against West Bromwich Albion on 11 March.[47] Four days later, he made his European debut in the second leg of the team's UEFA Europa League round of 16 tie against Spanish club Athletic Bilbao; he appeared as a substitute in the 2–1 away defeat, coming on for Michael Carrick in the 63rd minute as Manchester United lost the tie 5–3 on aggregate.[48]
Juventus
2012–13 season
On 3 July 2012, Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson confirmed that Pogba had left the club after not signing a new contract.[49] Ferguson stated that Pogba had signed for Italian club Juventus "a long time ago as far as we're aware." Ferguson also accused Pogba of disrespecting Manchester United, saying, "It is disappointing. I don't think he showed us any respect at all, to be honest. I'm quite happy that if they [footballers] carry on that way, they're probably better doing it away from us."[50] On 27 July, Juventus confirmed on their official website that Pogba had undergone a medical at the club,[51] and the transfer was completed on 3 August, when he signed a four-year contract.[52] He made his first appearance for Juventus in a pre-season friendly against Benfica in Geneva on 1 August, coming on as a 78th-minute substitute for Andrea Pirlo.[53]
Pogba's first competitive appearance with Juventus came in the Serie A match against Chievo on 22 September 2012, where he played the full 90 minutes.[54] On 2 October, Pogba made his first appearance in the UEFA Champions League in a 1–1 home draw against Shakhtar Donetsk,[55] and on 20 October, Pogba scored his first goal for the club in a 2–0 win over Napoli.[56] On 31 October, he started against Bologna and scored the game-winning goal in a 2–1 victory. Pogba also contributed to the opening goal scored by Fabio Quagliarella.[57] The midfielder was subsequently praised for his performance in the match by several Italian media outlets such as la Repubblica, Il Messaggero and La Gazzetta dello Sport.[58]
On 5 May 2013, Pogba was sent off in Juventus' Scudetto-clinching game for spitting towards an opponent after being slapped in the face.[59]
2013–14 season
On 18 August 2013, Pogba was a key protagonist of Juventus' 4–0 win over Lazio, the match that won Juventus the 2013 Italian Supercoppa. During the match, Pogba replaced Claudio Marchisio and scored the first goal of the game; he was elected Man of the Match.[60] In December, Pogba was named 2013's Golden Boy for the best young player in Europe.[61]
In January 2014, Pogba was named by The Guardian as one of the ten most promising young players in Europe.[62] On 20 February, Pogba scored his first goal in UEFA club competitions as Juventus defeated Trabzonspor 2–0 at home in the first leg of the round of 32 of the 2013–14 UEFA Europa League.[63] On 14 April, Pogba produced an assist in Juventus's 2–0 win over Udinese, the same team that Pogba scored two magnificent goals against in the previous season. Later that week, Pogba scored the only goal in Juventus's 1–0 win over Bologna. Pogba was also named the man of the match for his performance.[64] Pogba would prove to be a key player for the club that season, breaking into the starting line-up,[65] and making more appearances (51) for the club than any other player across all competitions that season, also scoring 9 goals.[66] He finished the season by winning his second consecutive Serie A title under manager Antonio Conte, and reaching the semi-finals of the Europa League.[67]
2014–15 season
Pogba in a pre-season friendly for Juventus against Singapore in August 2014
On 20 September 2014, under new Juventus manager Massimiliano Allegri, Pogba contributed to Juventus's away win against Milan by providing the assist for the only goal of the game, scored by Carlos Tevez.[68] Later that month, on 18 October, Pogba saved Juventus from a defeat against Sassuolo by scoring a decisive equaliser; he was later named Man of the Match.[69] On 24 October, Pogba renewed his contract with Juventus, tying him to the club until 2019.[70] On 4 November, on his 100th appearance with the club, Pogba scored Juventus's third goal against Olympiacos in the Champions League, helping them to win the match; this was his first ever Champions League goal.[64] On 22 November, he scored his first brace of the season in a 3–0 win against Lazio at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome.[71] On 28 October, Pogba was named as one of the 23 shortlisted candidates for the 2014 Ballon d'Or; at 21, he was the youngest on the list.[72] In 2014, Pogba was awarded the Bravo Award, by the Italian sports magazine Il Guerin Sportivo, which is awarded to the best under-23 player who has participated in European competitions.[73]
On 11 January 2015, Pogba helped Juventus secure their first win against Napoli at the Stadio San Paolo in 14 years as he scored a volley that helped Juventus beat Napoli 1–3.[74] On 15 January, he scored his first goal in the Coppa Italia as Juventus defeated Verona 6–1 in the round of 16 of the tournament.[75] On 9 March, Pogba scored the only goal in a 1–0 victory against Sassuolo to put Juventus 11 points clear of Roma at the top of the league table.[76] In the second leg of Juventus's round of 16 match-up against Borussia Dortmund, Pogba was taken off during the first half after injuring his hamstring, and was later ruled out for two months.[77] He returned to the starting line-up on 9 May, scoring in a 1–1 home draw against Cagliari, as Juventus celebrated winning their fourth consecutive Serie A title since 2012.[78] On 13 May, Pogba set up Álvaro Morata's equaliser against Real Madrid in the second leg of the Champions League semi-final; the goal allowed Juventus win the tie 3–2 on aggregate to advance to the Champions League Final for the first time in 12 years.[79] On 20 May, Pogba set up Juventus's first goal as they defeated Lazio 2–1 at the Stadio Olimpico in the 2015 Coppa Italia Final.[80] On 6 June 2015, Pogba started for Juventus in the 2015 UEFA Champions League Final as the club were defeated 3–1 by Barcelona at Berlin's Olympiastadion.[81]
2015–16 season
On 15 July 2015, Pogba was named to the ten-man shortlist for the 2015 UEFA Best Player in Europe Award.[82] For the 2015–16 season, he was awarded the prestigious number-10 shirt, following Carlos Tevez's departure, which had previously been worn by Alessandro Del Piero, Roberto Baggio and Michel Platini.[83] On 8 August, he assisted a goal in Juventus's 2–0 win over Lazio in the 2015 Supercoppa Italiana.[84] On 12 August, it was announced that he placed tenth in the 2015 UEFA Best Player in Europe Award.[85] On 31 October, Pogba made his 100th Serie A appearance in a 2–1 home win over Torino in the Turin Derby,[86] also scoring Juventus's opening goal from a half-volley from outside the area.[87] On 24 November, Pogba was nominated for the 2015 UEFA Team of the Year,[88] later being named to the team on 8 January 2016.[89] Three days later he was named to the 2015 FIFA FIFPro World XI.[90] Pogba excelled in his team's new creative position, which saw him gain more time on the ball, and played a key role in helping Juventus to the league title,[91] scoring a joint personal best of 8 goals in Serie A, while also finishing the league season as the top assist provider in Serie A, with a personal record of 12 assists, alongside Miralem Pjanić.[92][93]
Return to Manchester United
2016–17 season
On 8 August 2016, Pogba returned to former club, Manchester United, on a five-year contract for a then-record for highest football transfer fee at €105 million (£89.3 million) plus bonuses of €5 million, surpassing the former record holder Gareth Bale.[94] Paul Pogba's agent, Mino Raiola, received a reported €27 million from Juventus when he re-joined Manchester United;[95] Juventus disclosed the fee as an auxiliary expense, for €26.154 million.[96] The Football Association announced that Pogba would be suspended for Manchester United's opening Premier League fixture of the 2016–17 season against Bournemouth, due to two yellow cards he had accumulated in the previous season's edition of the Coppa Italia with Juventus.[97] On 19 August, he made his first appearance since returning to the club in a 2–0 home victory over Southampton in the Premier League.[98]
After the 2–1 defeat at home in the first Manchester derby of the season on 10 September, Pogba was criticised for his lack of discipline in positioning by pundit Jamie Carragher.[99] Pogba, however, soon recovered to form and scored his first Premier League goal for United with a header against defending champions Leicester City in a 4–1 home win on 24 September.[100] He then scored twice, once from the penalty spot and then with a strike from distance, in a Europa League tie against Fenerbahçe on 20 October.[101] Manager José Mourinho defended Pogba after the game, criticising football's "Einsteins" for being too quick to judge the player.[102]
On 26 January 2017, Pogba scored in a 2–1 away defeat to Hull City in the second leg of the EFL Cup semi-final, which allowed Manchester United to advance to the final 3–2 on aggregate.[103] On 24 May 2017, Pogba scored in the 18th minute of the Europa League final against Dutch club AFC Ajax, which proved to be the game-winning goal as Manchester United defeated Ajax 2–0 to win United's first continental trophy in nine years.[104] Manchester United finished the 2016–17 Premier League season in sixth place, with Pogba being involved in 30 games, scoring five goals and providing four assists.[105]
2017–18 season
Pogba scored the fourth goal in a 4–0 victory over West Ham United on the opening weekend of the 2017–18 Premier League season.[106] During a 3–0 defeat of Basel during the 2017–18 UEFA Champions League group stage, Pogba tore his left hamstring and was expected to miss eight matches.[107] He returned to action on 18 November in a 4–1 win over Newcastle United, assisting Anthony Martial with a cross from the flank and scored United's third goal.[108] In his first game of 2018, on 1 January, Pogba provided assists for both goals as Manchester United defeated Everton 2–0.[109] Throughout the next few months, Pogba was again the subject of criticism regarding a lack of discipline and for not fulfilling his defensive duties.[110] He was absent from several pivotal games in favour of Scott McTominay, including Manchester United's 2–1 victory over rivals Liverpool and was only used as a late substitution as his side were eliminated from the Champions League in the round of 16 by Sevilla in March.[111]
Pogba celebrating after scoring against Arsenal
The day before the Manchester derby, Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola claimed that Pogba's agent, Mino Raiola, had offered Pogba to play for his side, which Raiola denied.[112] In the derby at Etihad Stadium on 7 April, Pogba scored two goals in quick succession as Manchester United came back to defeat their rivals 3–2 after conceding two goals in the first half. The victory also prevented Manchester City from securing the Premier League title against them, which they later did as Manchester United finished the season as runners-up.[113] In the 2018 FA Cup Final against Chelsea, his side were defeated 1–0, with Pogba squandering a chance to equalise with a header in the penalty box.[114]
2018–19 season
Due to the absence of team captain Antonio Valencia, Pogba took over temporary captaincy of the club in the opening games of the 2018–19 season. Pogba began the season well scoring four goals, mainly from penalties, in the first few weeks. However following a series of disappointing results, Mourinho announced that Pogba would not captain the team again.[115] In late September, Pogba and Mourinho were filmed having a confrontation during a training session, despite Mourinho's assertion that there was "no problem" between the two.[116] Despite this, Pogba continued to play in the starting eleven and scored in United's 2-1 victory over Everton.[117] However, following a spell of poor form and strained relationship with Mourinho, Pogba found himself benched and linked with an exit from Manchester United during the January transfer season.[118] Continuing tentions between Pogba and Mourinho saw him branded a "virus" who influenced United’s bad form by the manager.[119] Pogba continued to be benched throughout the next few games up until and including United's match against Liverpool where Manchester United lost 3–1.[120] Shortly after this match however Mourinho was sacked as Manchester United manager,[121] and Ole Gunnar Solskjær was appointed as the caretaker manager one day later.[122]
Under new manager, Ole Gunnar Solskjær, Pogba saw a revival in his form as he scored twice consecutively against Huddersfield Town[123] and Bournemouth.[124] On 13 January 2019, Pogba assisted the only goal of the game, scored by Marcus Rashford in a victory over Tottenham Hotspur,[125] with consecutive goals in the following matches against Brighton & Hove Albion[126] and Burnley.[127] On 9 February, he scored twice in a 3–0 away win over Fulham, and was named man of the match;[128][129] his two goals brought his seasonal tally to a personal best of 11 league goals and 13 in all competitions.[130] Pogba continued this trend by scoring again in United's FA Cup fifth round tie against Chelsea where United won 2-0.[131]
International career
Youth
Pogba with France in the 2012 UEFA European Under-19 Championship
Pogba began his international career for France with the national youth football team and earned caps at all levels for which he was eligible. Prior to his international debut, Pogba was named captain of the under-16 team by coach Guy Ferrier. He made his youth international debut on 23 September 2008 in the team's opening match of the campaign against Wales in Llanelli. France won the match 4–2.[132] Under Pogba's leadership, the team recorded impressive victories over Uruguay and Italy in the Tournoi du Val-de-Marne, and defeated the Republic of Ireland by a combined score of 8–2 over the course of two matches.[133][134][135][136] On 31 January 2009, he scored his first youth international goal in the 2009 Aegean Cup Final against Norway. The goal gave France a 1–0 lead and the team won the match 2–1 to win the tournament.[137]
He was a part of the team that played at the 2010 UEFA European Under-17 Championship scoring both of his goals with the team at the tournament. He scored the only goal in the team's 1–0 victory over Portugal in the group stage and netted his second in the team's 2–1 loss to England in the semi-finals.[138][139] Following the departure of Ferrier as the team's youth international coach, Pogba was re-instated as captain at his age level by new coach Pierre Mankowski. Mankowski had previously been the assistant manager of the senior national team under the reign of Raymond Domenech. Pogba made his under-18 debut on 27 October 2010 at the Tournio de Limoges against Greece in a 4–1 victory.[140] On 24 March 2011, Pogba scored his first goal with the team netting the game-winning goal in a 2–1 win over Germany. The goal was scored from over 30 metres (33 yd) out.[141]
Pogba made his debut with the under-19 team in its first match of the season against Italy on 6 September 2011. In the match, he assisted on two goals, scored by Jean-Christophe Bahebeck and Anthony Koura, in a 3–1 victory.[142] On 29 February 2012, he scored his first goal for the team in a 2–1 defeat to Spain.[143] In Elite Round qualification for the 2012 UEFA European Under-19 Championship, Pogba scored the fifth goal in the team's 6–0 rout of the Netherlands. The victory qualified France for the competition.[144] On 11 June 2012, Pogba was named to the squad to participate in the tournament. In the team's opening group stage match against Serbia, he converted a penalty in a 3–0 win.[145] France reached the semi-finals where the team faced Spain. In the match, with France trailing 3–2 in extra time, Pogba scored the equalising goal three minutes prior to the match's completion to send it to penalties. However, despite Pogba converting the opening penalty for France, Les Bleuets were defeated 4–2.[146]
Due to the under-19 team's semi-final appearance in the 2012 UEFA European Under-19 Championship, the nation qualified for the 2013 FIFA U-20 World Cup, which merited under-20 team appearances for Pogba. Similar to the previous two seasons, Pogba was installed as captain by Mankowski and made his under-20 debut in a 0–0 draw against China.[147] In the team's next match against North Korea, Pogba scored the team's second goal in a 3–1 win.[148] Pogba was the captain of the team that won France's first ever FIFA U-20 World Cup. In that tournament held in Turkey, he played every minute of all of France's matches except for the final group match against Spain, in which he was an unused substitute. He was named the best player of the tournament.[149]
Senior
Early career and 2014 World Cup
Pogba making his senior debut for France against Georgia in March 2013
On 22 March 2013, Pogba made his debut for the French senior team in a 2014 World Cup qualifier against Georgia. He played the full 90 minutes in a 3–1 win.[150] He scored his first international goal against Belarus on 10 September 2013 in a 4–2 victory, once again during a 2014 World Cup qualifier.[151]
On 6 June 2014, Pogba was named in France's squad for the 2014 FIFA World Cup.[152] On 15 June, he started in central midfield in the team's first World Cup fixture – a 3–0 victory over Honduras – suffering a foul from Wilson Palacios which led to a red card for the Honduran and a penalty kick, which was converted by Karim Benzema to give France the lead.[153] He appeared as a substitute in the team's second match, assisting a goal for Benzema in a 5–2 victory of Switzerland.[154] In the round of 16, Pogba scored a 79th minute opening goal and was named man of the match by FIFA[155] as Les Bleus defeated Nigeria 2–0 in Brasília.[156] France were eliminated in the quarter-finals of the competition following a 1–0 defeat to eventual champions Germany on 4 July with Pogba giving away the free kick from which the Germans eventually scored.[157][158][159] On 13 July 2014, Pogba was named the tournament's Best Young Player.[160]
Euro 2016
In May 2016, Pogba was named by national side manager Didier Deschamps to France's 23-man squad for UEFA Euro 2016, to be played on home soil.[161] Although much was expected of Pogba at the upcoming European Championships, in France's opening match of the tournament, a 2–1 win over Romania on 10 June, he endured criticism for his perceived negative performance after being played out of position, and was subsequently left on the bench by Deschamps for his nation's second group match, later coming on as a second-half substitute in a 2–0 win over Albania.[162] In the round of the 16, he was once again the target of media scrutiny for conceding an early penalty against Ireland, prompting former England international Gary Lineker to tweet: “Is Pogba the world’s most overrated player?”; France eventually came from behind to win the match 2–1.[162]
In the quarter-final match against Iceland on 3 July, at the Stade de France, Pogba was able to recapture his form, putting on a dominant performance in his new midfield role, as he scored his nation's second goal of the night from a header following Antoine Griezmann's corner, which he had previously helped to obtain;[162] he later started the play which led to Griezmann's goal, as the host nation advanced to the semi-finals of the competition following a 5–2 win.[163] In the semi-final match against Germany four days later, Pogba was once again started in a deep-lying midfield role alongside Blaise Matuidi in a 4–2–3–1 formation; following N'Golo Kanté's introduction in the second half, he was shifted to a more advanced role, which gave him more tactical freedom, and he subsequently helped to create Griezmann's second goal of the match, as the hosts defeated the reigning World Cup Champions 2–0 to advance to the final of the tournament,[164][165] where they suffered a 1–0 extra-time defeat to Portugal.[166]
2018 World Cup victory
On 17 May 2018, Pogba was called up to the France squad for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia.[167] On 16 June 2018, he took the shot that deflected off Aziz Behich and resulted in the winning goal in France's 2–1 win over Australia in their opening match at the tournament.[168] The goal was initially awarded to Pogba, but the following day FIFA re-awarded it as an own goal to Behich.[169]
In the 59th minute of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Final, Pogba extended France's lead over Croatia to 3–1 with a strike from the edge of the penalty area after his initial shot had been blocked.[170] France eventually won the World Cup by a score of 4–2.[171]
Style of play
Primarily a central midfielder, although he is also capable of playing on the left, in a holding role, as a deep-lying playmaker, in a box-to-box role, or even as an attacking midfielder,[4][172][173] Pogba has been described by his club Manchester United as a "powerful, skilful, and creative" player who has "an eye for goal and a penchant for the spectacular."[174] In Italy, he gained the nicknames Il Polpo Paul ("Paul the Octopus") for his long legs that look like tentacles during tackling or running[175] and "Pogboom" for his explosive playing style and energy on the pitch.[176] A large, quick, hard-working and physically strong player, he excels in the air, and is also known for his stamina, as well as his powerful and accurate striking ability from distance; he has also drawn praise for his finesse, technique, flair, and dribbling skills,[172][177][178][179] as well as his ability to hold up the ball.[180] His characteristics and playing role in midfield initially led him to be compared with former France international Patrick Vieira in his youth.[175]
During his final season with Juventus, Pogba was deployed in a more advanced and creative midfield role rather than in his usual box-to-box role,[172] which saw him gain more time on the ball, and he excelled as the team's main playmaker, due to his vision, and passing range;[91][177][178][181] his performances in this role saw him develop from a promising youngster into one of the best and most complete midfielders in the world.[182][183] Upon Pogba's departure from Juventus in 2016, his former teammate Gianluigi Buffon compared him to French former playmakers Michel Platini and Zinedine Zidane, and also praised his ability, leadership, work-rate and attitude, both on the pitch and in training, stating that he "...is a tremendous warrior on the pitch but also has so much talent. His control of the ball and the way he can swiftly change the play from defence to attack is special."[184][185]
Pogba has a sponsorship deal with sportswear and equipment supplier Adidas. He wears Adidas Predator football boots which he has promoted in |
if I were Prime Minister Modi, I'd be saying, 'Gee, I can deliver coal-based electricity way cheaper than I can deliver renewables," he said.Adjust Your Tracking is a feature-length documentary film directed by Levi "Dabeedo" Peretic and Dan Kinem. It's a passion project made by true lovers of the format hoping to capture why VHS holds such a special place in so many different people's hearts. Already featuring interviews with Lloyd Kaufman, Tony Timpone, Fred Vogel, Keith Crocker, Earl Kess, Louis Justin, among countless other people who help shape VHS collecting culture, we are looking for more. By donating you will help us get more interviews with as many people in the VHS/collecting community as possible.
We need your help to make this the best possible film it can be! This is made by VHS lovers, for VHS lovers. We tried to offer the best rewards we possibly could, but trust me, if you donate we will throw in more goodies for you!
If you have any [honest] feedback, rights to any films we could use, video store footage, anything you want to say [we could interview you!], collection footage, or if you want to provide original music for the movie we would forever love you! Just message us or email us at criterionmaster1@yahoo.comCopyright by WPRI - All rights reserved
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) - Governments at all levels in Rhode Island have accumulated a combined $10.5 billion of debt, and a handful of municipalities' liabilities are alarmingly high, according to a new study by General Treasurer Seth Magaziner's office.
The debt affordability study, Rhode Island's first since 1999, is an ambitious 130-page report that attempts to track public borrowing at all levels, from the state government itself to quasi-public agencies, cities and even small fire districts. It also suggests new targets for maximum sustainable debt. A draft version was presented to the Public Finance Management Board this week.
"We put out this report because we want it to shine a light on public borrowing in Rhode Island, the good, the bad and the ugly," Magaziner, a Democrat, told Eyewitness News. "And there's plenty of all three."
Magaziner said his office believes the new report is also the first debt affordability study in the country that incorporates unfunded pension obligations. "How can you know how much debt you can afford without looking at whether you have a tiny pension liability or a huge pension liability?" he asked.
The $10.5 billion in total public debt - excluding pensions - breaks down as $1.9 billion for Rhode Island state government, $6.6 billion for quasi-public state agencies such as Rhode Island Housing and Commerce RI, and nearly $2.05 billion for municipalities and local special districts. With pensions, the combined total rises to $17 billion, Magaziner's office said.
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"I think the result clearly shows that many of the entities that are borrowing are doing so with an affordable level, a sustainable level," Magaziner said. "And then there are some outliers that clearly are not sustainable and are in quite a concerning situation."
Among the outliers: the cities of Providence and Woonsocket. The study suggests a community's debt and pension liabilities should be less than 6.3% of its total assessed property value; in Providence that ratio is 17.8%, and in Woonsocket it's 20.3%. Central Falls, Pawtucket, Johnston, West Warwick and Cranston are also above the target.
"I don't think it will be a shock to anyone that Providence and Woonsocket have very high liabilities," Magaziner said. "We've known generally this is a problem." He added, "These problems were many decades in the making and it will take some time to bring these liabilities down to more appropriate levels."
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The study's breakdown of municipal liabilities indicates unfunded pension obligations are generally a more significant burden than traditional debt.
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At the state level, Magaziner said the study shows Rhode Island is "slightly higher than the national median, but we are in much better shape than some of our closest neighbors including Massachusetts and Connecticut."
"There isn't a huge cause for concern at the state level," he said.
Still, the report suggests lowering the state-level debt target from 7.5% of general revenue to 7% over the next five years; other New England states' targets range from 5% in Maine to 10% in New Hampshire.
As part of the study, Magaziner's office asked the Center for Retirement Studies at Boston College to develop a standardized measure of pension liabilities across all 50 states, taking into account that some places report lower shortfalls by projecting rosier investment returns in the future or planning to fill the gap over a longer period of time.
The BC numbers show Rhode Island's state-level liabilities are at the higher end among states, but still well below the most indebted states such as Illinois, Connecticut, Kentucky and Massachusetts. The study finds Rhode Island's annual payments for pensions and debt service total 12.1% of its revenue, while Connecticut's total nearly 30%. Magaziner noted the state would be spending about $200 million a year more on pensions if not for the 2011 retirement-system overhaul.
"If you look at the totality of the report, the state's not the biggest problem," he said.
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Among quasi-public agencies, the study singles out a few causes for concern. The first is the Narragansett Bay Commission, which handles wastewater treatment in northern Rhode Island. While the study finds its current debt level is sustainable, the commission is currently looking to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars for the third phase of its long-running Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) project.
"What we're going to have to look closely at with the Narragansett Bay Commission is, their service area includes some of the state's lowest-income communities - will those communities be able to afford whatever rate increase will be necessary to service that amount of debt?" Magaziner said.
The other two quasi-public agencies cautioned in the study are the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation, which manages the state landfill, and the Rhode Island Airport Corporation, which manages T.F. Green. The report recommends the landfill agency not issue further debt until its determines what to do once its current space fills up, and suggests the airport's debt per passenger is too high, though that would come down if volume improves.
While the treasurer's office was able to secure debt and pension information from nearly all of the more than 100 jurisdictions with public borrowing authority in Rhode Island, a small number of local housing authorities are not included. Magaziner said numbers were not readily available from them, though he hopes they will be incorporated into the next affordability study in 2019. His office also opted not to include liabilities for other post-employment benefits (OPEB), primarily retiree health coverage.
Magaziner said he hopes the new study will be useful to policymakers and residents.
"I think a lot of times when you talk about debt and pensions, people's eyes glaze over and it doesn't feel tangible to people," he said. "I hope one of the things that helps with putting these things out there is by making things more concrete to people."This graph seems to me to reconcile aspects of legitimate skepticism with a devastating reality. Here’s the earth’s temperatures going back 11,000 years – far further than the 2,000 years previously viewed in popular culture as the “hockey stick”. You can see that stick at the far right of the following graph:
So, yes, the earth has been warmer than it now is while humans inhabited it. Yes, climate has shifted over the millennia, depending on a variety of non-human factors which could also be affecting us now. Yes, in the last half a millennium, we hit what was described as a mini-ice-age, bringing temperatures down to record lows for ten millennia. In 1683, for example, the river Thames was frozen completely for two months. Here’s a painting of the river in 1677, as the Little Ice Age, as we now call it, set in:
I can remember a cover-story in the New Republic predicting a new ice age in the 1980s – based on the long-term chilling of the planet. So you can see why those urging against hysteria have some historical climate variety to argue that change has always been here and that humans have lived on the planet for 2000 years and adapted to similar temperature variations before. So chill out, and keep drilling.
The problem with that reassuring scenario, as Tim McDonnell points out, is that we have never before experienced this sudden rate of heating before ever – certainly not since humans developed agriculture. It’s getting close to a vertical line now, which suggests to me that the likelihood of feedback loops actually intensifying the heat has also gone up.To put it mildly, I can see no external reason why the earth’s temperature would have suddenly gone haywire in the last 500 years, without factoring in carbon, capitalism and the industrial revolution. For a while, that carbon actually warmed us up out of a millennial-long cooling. But now, it’s out of control. And if you begin to imagine the impact of every Chinese or Indian reaching the same level of prosperity as Western Europe, using the same carbon sources of energy, we are clearly putting the planet through a stress test never before imposed by its inhabitants.
To be perfectly frank, this graph shows our civilization to be unsustainable unless we dramatically alter its source of energy. Maybe we can adapt – in ways our ancestors did. But they were able to do so over much, much longer periods of time, and were not actually creating the situation.
We have become gods. And we are destroying what we inherited as a species. I do not have an answer, and suspect only a technological breakthrough in energy resources will make a difference real enough to stop this looming catastrophe. But that this isn’t the priority of every government on Earth right now (apart from Russia and Canada) is beyond me. And a carbon tax – the simplest clearest inhibitor of turning our planet into an oven – would be a start.Nov 16, 2013; Austin, TX, USA; Formula One driver Esteban Gutierrez (12) is interviewed after placing tenth during qualifying for the United States Grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas. (Photo: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports)
INDIANAPOLIS — Dale Coyne Racing is looking for yet another replacement to drive the No. 18 Honda in the stead of Sebastien Bourdais.
The team had hoped to get Esteban Gutierrez, Bourdais’ replacement for the doubleheader at Detroit, approved to drive at Texas, but he needed to test on an oval first.
A Coyne official told IndyStar that the team requested that IndyCar allow Gutierrez to test at Chicagoland Speedway this week, but the request was denied by IndyCar on the grounds that this part of the calendar is a testing blackout period.
An IndyCar official told IndyStar that the series' statement on the matter is only that "Gutierrez is not approved to run at Texas."
That means the team will need to find another replacement for Bourdais, who is rehabbing after fracturing his hip and pelvis during qualifying for the Indianapolis 500. Bourdais is expected to miss most, if not all, of the remaining Verizon IndyCar Series season.
Among drivers who could be considered to pilot the No. 18 on the challenging oval of Texas Motor Speedway are James Davison, who filled in for Bourdais at the 500 and led two laps before crashing late in the race.
Pippa Mann also drove for the team at the 500 and could be considered by Coyne along with IndyCar veteran Oriol Servia, who drove at both the 500 and the Detroit doubleheader for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing.
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For his part, Gutierrez told IndyStar on Sunday he hoped he would be the driver behind the wheel of the No. 18 car in Texas but wasn't sure it would work out.
Coyne has said it's not out of the question that Gutierrez will return for other races, including ovals, later in the season.
Follow IndyStar Motor Sports Insider Jim Ayello on Twitter and Instagram: @jimayello.Newly released video shows the husband of an off-duty sheriff’s deputy applying a chokehold to a man who later died in hospital. Other people are seen threatening the videographer with arrest for recording the incident.
The video, released Monday, shows Terry Thompson, 46, on top of and choking John Hernandez, 24, while an unidentified female is crouched next to him, helping to restrain Hernandez.
Hernandez flails under Thompson, who repeatedly asks him, “do you want me to hit you again?”
The woman can also be heard, commanding the man to “stay the f*** down.”
As the bystander films the incident, other unidentified individuals step in front of the camera, trying to block the view. They are also heard asking the onlooker to stop recording, telling them that it is illegal, threatening arrest.
"If you continue recording, you will go to jail," one man tells the person recording the assault.
Jack Carroll and Randall Kallinen, attorneys for the Hernandez family say that the witness had every right to record the incident since it happened in a public place, according to the Houston Chronicle.
According to Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, Thompson is the husband of a sheriff’s deputy who was off-duty at the time.
At a news conference on Friday, Gonzalez said that the incident began when Thompson observed Hernandez urinating in public view in a Houston-area Denny’s parking lot last Sunday.
Thompson, 48, confronted the man about his behavior and a physical altercation ensued.
Gonzales identified Thompson as the husband of the Harris County Sheriff's deputy, and that the deputy was off duty at the time of the altercation.
He said that the deputy arrived at the restaurant in a separate vehicle to meet her family. When she saw the fight, she called the Sheriff’s office and Emergency Medical Services (EMS).
Read more
Although the woman in the video is not identified, Gonzales confirmed that the sheriff’s deputy “helped her husband restrain the other man.”
“When the deputy had observed that Hernandez had stopped resisting, she and her husband stopped restraining him, and then noticed that he was not breathing,” Gonzales said.
The deputy began CPR until EMS arrived. Hernandez was taken to the hospital for treatment, where he was pronounced dead on Wednesday night.
Harris County Sheriff's Office said the investigation has been given a “high priority” and Gonzales said they will be seeking oversight from the Texas Rangers as well as the Department of Justice to "make sure there's another set of independent eyes.”
Once the investigation has concluded, Gonzales said they will present the case to the Harris County district attorney’s office.
“I have full confidence in our investigators. I believe they’re doing a thorough job. I trust their skill set on this and I have experience investigating these types of cases, and so I have full confidence that we at the sheriff’s office are highly capable to present an independent investigation and do it thoroughly,” Gonzales said.
Gonzales said that no one has been charged in the incident, which took place on May 28. While Gonzales would not say if Thompson was considered a suspect, he did refer to him as “a party to the incident.”
“Our role at this moment is to gather facts, not necessarily determine how we classify per se,” Gonzales said.
He said he will be conducting interviews and is asking anyone who has any additional information to come forward.If you look to your horoscope for a preview of your day, look again: You're probably following somebody else's supposed fate.
Thanks to Earth's wobble, astrological signs are, well, bunk. (Or even more bunk than you might expect.) Astrological signs are determined by the position of the sun relative to certain constellations on a person's day of birth. The problem is, the positions were determined more than 2,000 years ago. Nowadays, the stars have shifted in the night sky so much that horoscope signs are nearly a month off. [Read: Why Your Horoscope for 2011 Is All Wrong]
"Astrology tells us that the sun is in one position, whereas astronomy tells us it's in another position," said Joe Rao, SPACE.com's skywatching columnist and a lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium.
The shift is caused by precession, the wobble in the Earth's axis caused by the gravitational attraction of the moon to the Earth's equator. Precession popped into the spotlight this week after Minnesota Planetarium Society board member Parke Kunkle told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune about the gap between the astrological and the astronomical view. The story spread around the Internet quickly, but it's actually old news, Rao said.
Very old news.
"The earliest known astronomer to recognize and assess the movement of precession was Aristarchus of Samos, who lived around 280 B.C.," Rao told LiveScience.
The attention triggered by his interview with the newspaper has been "astounding." Kunkle, who teaches astronomy at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, told Livescience, He gave the interview at the request of the paper to discuss precession, and the science he described is centuries old, he said.
"Bombshell dropped?" Kunkle said. "Well, no, not really."
Here's what astronomers know: The Earth is like a wobbly top. As it rotates, its axis swings in a circle, pointing in different directions. As the Earth's position shifts, so does our perspective of the night sky.
For example, Rao said, we take the North Star, Polaris, for granted. It's the star most closely aligned with Earth's North Pole. But back when the pyramids were constructed, the star that aligned with the North Pole wasn't Polaris at all: It was a star in the constellation Draco called Thuban. In 12,000 years, Earth's North Star will be Vega, the brightest star in the constellation Lyra.
The complete rotation takes 26,000 years, Rao said.
"Everything in the sky is in flux," he said.
Even if the astrological signs were stable, there's no evidence the stars have anything to do with people's day-to-day existence. One 2006 study published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences used data from more than 15,000 people and found no relationship between date of birth and personality.
Despite the complete lack of scientific and observational evidence for astrology, 25 percent of Americans still believe in it, a recent Pew survey found. So here are the "real" dates of astrological signs, according to astronomers:
Capricorn: Jan. 20-Feb. 16.
Aquarius: Feb. 16-March 11.
Pisces: March 11-April 18.
Aries: April 18-May 13.
Taurus: May 13-June 21.
Gemini: June 21-July 20.
Cancer: July 20-Aug. 10.
Leo: Aug. 10-Sept. 16.
Virgo: Sept. 16-Oct. 30.
Libra: Oct. 30-Nov. 23.
Scorpio: Nov. 23-29.
Ophiuchus: Nov. 29-Dec. 17.
Sagittarius: Dec. 17-Jan. 20.
The list includes Ophiuchus, a formation the ancient Babylonians discarded because they wanted 12 star signs, not 13. That's yet another example of how astrologers cherry-pick and ignore astronomical observations, Rao said.
"It's crazy," Rao said. "Really, they have their own set of rules."
Nevertheless, maybe some good will come of the astrology-astronomy media blitz, Kunkle said.
"At the very least, I hope it makes people go out and actually look at the sky," Kunkle said. "That's the fun part."
You can follow LiveScience Senior Writer Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas.The American Humanist Association threatened to sue Missouri’s Fayette School District and several school officials on Wednesday for their alleged roles in holding morning religious ceremonies with students on school grounds every week for at least the last year.
After receiving information from a student, the AHA’s legal foundation, the Appignani Humanist Legal Center, drafted a legal explanation (PDF) of why government officials may not actively supervise any sort of religious ceremony while on the job, citing dozens of court cases to justify their demand that the district cease and desist.
“Every Friday morning one of the teachers invites students to come into her room just before first period begins… and prays with them and gives out breakfast,” William Burgess, legal coordinator for the AHA’s foundation, explained to Raw Story.”It appears that the principal makes an announcement that students should go to Mrs. Pope’s classroom for devotionals, which is how they describe the kind of prayer that’s going on there.”
Burgess added that while math teacher Gwen Pope‘s weekly devotionals at Fayette High School appear voluntary, between “both the teacher promoting this practice to students and the principal announcing it, I think it’s fair to say the school is putting this on… This is so unconstitutional that they have to know it is, but they’re doing it anyway.”
Pope is retiring in 2014 after a 38-year career in teaching, according to Missouri newspaper The Democrat Leader. Fayette Superintendent Jim Judd, who is also leaving his post effective June 30 for a job at Truman State University, explained to Raw Story in an email that the matter “will be investigated and addressed according to Board of Education Policy.” A person answering phones at the district was not familiar with the AHA’s letter and the school had no comment.
The letter says that not only could the district and school face legal action, but so too could Pope and the school’s principal, Darren Rapert, for their individual roles in allegedly violating the Establishment Clause, which blocks laws establishing an official state religion and bars government employees from promoting or participating in religious activities while on the job. The letter also claims Mrs. Pope displays a Bible on her desk while teaching class.
“Teachers simply cannot participate in prayers with students at school, nor can they promote their religious beliefs in any other way to their students,” Burgess and fellow AHA legal consultant Monica Miller wrote. “That attendance at the morning devotionals is optional does not change the fact that they violate the Establishment Clause. It is the school’s decision to promote and affiliate itself with Christianity that is unconstitutional. The school has endorsed the religious message of the prayers by permitting a teacher to deliver them to students at school.”
“Students are free to pray in their individual capacity any time during the school day,” Burgess told Raw Story. “That’s clearly private activity. What is not appropriate is for the school to ask students to pray, and that includes teachers, coaches, principals, etc. … Students can gather privately on their own so long as the school is not giving them privileged access to facilities.”
——
[“Stock Photo: Young Woman Praying With Rosary In Hand” on Shutterstock.]
Updated from an original version to include a quote from Fayette Superintendent James F. Judd.Less than a week after Jaxx was advised that Apple would not allow Dash to be integrated into its iOS app, the digital currency wallet is testing the waters again with the integration of Ethereum Classic (ETC). Currently the 6th most valuable blockchain token by market cap, Ethereum Classic is valued at $124 million.
“Millions of people across the world are beginning to take advantage of blockchain, a revolutionary technology with transformative power,” said Anthony Di Iorio, CEO of Jaxx. “The hard-forked version of Ethereum has already been approved by Apple and we hope that Apple will allow the addition of Ethereum Classic, especially given its wide array of developer support and steadily growing popularity.”
Like Dash, Ethereum Classic is now integrated into the other apps in Jaxx’s wallet suite including on Android, Mac OS, Windows and Linux, as well as in its Chrome and Firefox extensions. However, unlike Dash, there is still hope that Apple will approve its iOS integration for ETC shortly.
“Adding Ethereum Classic makes a lot of sense for Jaxx, a pro-technology, pro-blockchain wallet. After the successful integration of Dash last month and now ETC, Jaxx currently has five tokens fully supported. We’re proud to be among the first to embrace the future, multi-coin world.”
Dash Integration Rejected by Apple Store; Six Other Tokens Accepted
In an interview with Bitcoin Magazine, Di Iorio spoke about the news regarding Apple's directive to remove Dash from its iOS app.
According to Coin Market Cap, Dash is the world’s eighth most popular digital currency by market cap. However, despite this, Apple has stated that they are only accepting six coins/tokens: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, Litecoin, DAO tokens and Ripple.
“When trying to ask for more information about the rationale behind the decision, they will not provide information on that,” Di Iorio said. “They would not say anything about why or why not and they are tight-lipped on that.”
After speaking with Apple developer support who confirmed Dash is not on their accepted list of digital currencies, Di Iorio added that Apple has given them until September 16 to remove Dash from the iOS version of the Jaxx wallet. It won’t affect any of their other platforms such as Android, tablet or mobile.
“It’s not a big deal to us, but it’s unfortunate to iOS users because as the technology advances very quickly, it’s very difficult for developers to know if things will be accepted or not and why,” said Di Iorio. “We don’t really know what the playing field is when we’re trying to apply to the iOS store and there doesn’t seem to be much rationale behind which coins to accept.”
Di Iorio said that he didn’t understand the basis behind Apple's decision to accept DAO tokens, but not Dash.
“They didn’t even know anything about DAO until we put our app up because we were the first DAO wallet,” he stated. “I don’t know what their rationale behind it is and I don’t want to speculate, but I don’t know why it makes any difference to them what users are storing in their wallets.”
He went on to say that while it was an unfortunate turn of events, he hoped that Apple would provide a clearer statement as to why some coins are accepted and why some aren’t.
Before the issue with Apple, Di Iorio said it was an easy decision to support Dash. “The Dash community was very responsive and positive and very easy to work with. It’s a good community and it was a very good fit for us.”
Interestingly enough, Apple had initially approved and accepted Dash into its store. The timeline illustrates that Jaxx had prepared their first application to add Dash to Apple on August 12. After several updates, it wasn’t until August 22 that it was ready for sale.
However, Di Iorio says that Apple ended up calling him a few days later to inform him that the addition of Dash had been a mistake and that it could have to be removed.
This isn’t the first time, though, that Apple has taken a stance against digital currencies. In 2014, it took action against bitcoin, but after a backlash from the digital currency community, Apple later reversed its position and reinstated the bitcoin wallet in the Apple store.
Bringing the Community Together
According to Di Iorio, the main thing is to bring the blockchain community together and to provide an interface for that community.
“We do that by being agnostic; we do that by thinking everyone should be working together,” he said. “It’s not about Ethereum versus Bitcoin, or Dash versus Bitcoin.
“It’s about the technology and that’s what we try to promote. We’re here to bring the tools and bring the blockchain to the masses, and that’s what we’re trying to do with our product to make it easy for users to use, no matter what blockchain they want to use.”A torque tube system is a drive shaft technology, often used in automobiles with a front engine and rear drive. The torque tube consists of a large diameter stationary housing between the transmission and rear end that fully encloses a rotating tubular steel or small-diameter solid drive shaft that transmits the power of the engine to a regular or limited-slip differential.[1] Its use is not as widespread in modern automobiles[2] as is the Hotchkiss drive. The torque tube system is also used for other types of vehicles and machinery.
Construction [ edit ]
The "torque" that is referred to in the name is not that of the driveshaft, along the axis of the car, but that applied by the wheels. The design problem that the torque tube solves is how to get the traction forces generated by the wheels to the car frame. The "torque tube" transmits this force by directly coupling the axle differential to the transmission and therefore propels the car forward by pushing on the engine/transmission and then through the engine mounts to the car frame[citation needed]. In contrast, the Hotchkiss drive has the traction forces transmitted to the car frame by using other suspension components such as leaf springs or trailing arms.
A ball and socket type of joint called a "torque ball" is used at one end of the torque tube to allow relative motion between the axle and transmission due to suspension travel. Later American Motors Rambler models (1962 through 1966) used a flange and cushion mount in place of the ball and socket.[3] Since the torque tube does not constrain the axle in the lateral (side-to-side) direction a panhard rod is often used for this purpose. The combination of the panhard rod and the torque tube allows the easy implementation of soft coil springs in the rear to give good ride quality[citation needed].
In addition to transmitting the traction forces, the torque tube is hollow and contains the rotating driveshaft. Inside the hollow torque ball is the universal joint of the driveshaft that allows relative motion between the two ends of the driveshaft. In most applications the drive shaft uses a single universal joint which has the disadvantage that it causes speed fluctuations in the driveshaft when the shaft is not straight. The Hotchkiss drive uses two universal joints which has the effect of canceling the speed fluctuations and gives a constant speed even when the shaft is no longer straight[citation needed]. The 1963-1966 AMC Rambler large-sized cars use a double-Cardan constant velocity joint in V8 powered models to eliminate driveshaft fluctuations, though six cylinder and earlier V8 models used only one standard universal joint.[4]
The torque tube design is typically heavier and securely ties the rear end together, thus providing for a rigid rear and assuring good alignment under all conditions. However, because of the greater unsprung weight of the torque tube and radius rods there may be a "little hopping around of the rear end when cornering fast or on washboard roads"[5]
Application [ edit ]
Examples of the torque tube were the American cars of the Ford brand up through 1948, including over 19,000,000 Model Ts.[5] Ford used the less expensive transverse springs that could not take forward thrust[citation needed]. For many of those years, Chevrolet used the torque tube to compete in cost, while Buick used it so as to be able to use coil springs for a softer ride than traditional leaf springs.
Buick started using coil springs in the 1930s and used the torque tube as the main rear axle locating arm.[6] This suspension design became a Buick "engineering trademark" until it was dropped with the 1961 model year full-sized models.[7]
The Nash 600 model adopted torque-tube drive in 1941 without an enclosed joint, but utilized a "horizontal yoke at the front end of the torque tube is supported by rubber biscuits at each side."[8]
After the merger of Nash and Hudson in 1954, American Motors Corporation (AMC) continued to use the coil spring and torque tube rear suspension design on their large-sized cars (Rambler Classic and Ambassador) from the 1956 through the 1966 model year.[9] The enclosed driveshaft made for more complicated gear swaps and hampered hot rodders.[10] The discontinued torque-tube drive was replaced by a completely new open driveshaft and four-link axle-location system.[11]
The Peugeot 403 and 404 models used a torque tube.[12] The Peugeot 504, and Peugeot 505 estate/station wagons, as well as most export-market sedans also had torque tubes, while domestic and European-market sedan models had a transaxle and individual rear suspension.
The Chevrolet Chevette (1976-1988) and the similar Pontiac T-1000 used a torque tube and center bearing.[13] This design was unlike any other Chevrolet model "to isolate impacts to the rear wheels, cut down on road noise, and reduce engine vibration... also allows a reduction in the height of the drive shaft and tunnel."[14]
The continuing limited production of the Avanti switched to a new chassis in 1986 that utilized a torque tube along with an independent rear suspension.[15]
The Mercedes SLS has a torque tube, but only to align the transaxle with the engine.[16]
Sine 1998 the Chevrolet Corvette from General Motors has used a torque tube since the introduction of the C5 version in 1996.[17]Details Published: 20 November 2017 20 November 2017
If you get the chance to try 18 whites and 32 reds from the same region, the same year and the same producer, you should not let it pass. With prices from £17 to £250 per bottle, this is Burgundy, not bargain supermarket wine, but many of them do represent excellent value for money. Some of the most pleasing wines were the £17 Beaujolais. BRENDAN BARRATT reports.
Unpronounceable but highly drinkable
The Pernard Vergelesses Les Combottes was a great young wine, and is great value. It grows a few hundred meters from the Grand Cru Corton Charlemagne, but does not find its way to the UK too often. I have heard the same story from a number of different wine merchants on why the wines from this village are so cheap. They say that the name puts people off because they can’t pronounce it. Showing off good wine to your friends is not so much fun if you can’t pronounce the name. My advice? Sniff the air and pronounce it any way you want and enjoy a great white burgundy for £25.
We were told that the whites were not looking great as a result of a late malolactic fermentation. The few problems I saw in the whites were not an overabundance of acidity, or turbidity or unpleasant gasses. For me, some of the more expensive whites seemed unbalanced, without the powerful nose I would have expected. The Puligny Referts was a great wine, with mouth-filling power, and perfume and balance. Unfortunately there is none available for sale as all allocations will be taken up. It makes sense.
The fact that there were some great white wines and that the winemaking process is essentially the same, except for some slight oak ageing differences, is a good example of the great Burgundian adage that the wine is made in the vineyard!
Jadot, is one of the biggest producers in Burgundy. They make wine from 270 hectares in Burgundy while most producers make wine from 5-10 hectares. You don’t get that by owning and operating all of your own vineyards. It is common for producers to rent vineyards and do all the work, to buy fruit grown by someone else, to buy juice that has been grown and processed by someone else, and even to buy wine. I suspect that some of the inconsistencies are the results of different processes in the vineyards.
As for the wines:
My Highlights:
Moulin a Vent Thorins (but all of them were great value)
Pernard Vergelesses Les Combottes – A great white burgundy at a very reasonable price
Corton Charlemagne – Expensive, but great value.
Marsannay Longeroies – Good value classic red Burgundy
Monthelie Champs Fulliot – A very good, classic Burgundy, with a finely perfumed nose and long finish. Great value too.
The Chassagne Morgeot was impressive with a lean, typically Chassagne nose, very good length, and a balanced palate. At more than £50 per bottle, It is expensive by most people’s standards, but it is a fair price.
The Batard Montrachet had a slightly honeyed nose, but lacked a front/mid palate. There was not a great deal of perfume on the nose but it did provide exceptional good power and length in the mouth. I preferred the Corton Charlemagne, and that is not something I say often. It has a great nose, lean, balanced, and much better value than the Batard.
Most of the top reds were impressive, but a stand-out performer was the Estournelles Saint Jaques, my favourite of the tasting and shows that a good premier cru wine can be a bargain when up against the ‘lesser’ Grand Cru of Clos Vougeot.
The Volnay’s were good, consistent and a fine example of decent Burgundy with complex perfume, plenty of tannin and good acidity that will reward keeping for a long time. There was a very fine Pommard, that surprised me as it was not overly tannic.
The Beaune reds were a good example of Beaune, with a lean palate and reasonably good perfume, but not really Premier Cru quality. There are lot of good, cheaper village wines out there for the same price.
Lowlights:
Clos Vougeot
Chambolles they were good, but disappointing for the appellation and not good value.
For fun, Jadot showed four 2011’s (one of which was extremely pleasing!)
A Moulin a Vent, Savigny red, Beaune Boucherottes and a Gevrey Chambertin Cazetiers.
2011 was a difficult year, with a lot of sorting to get rid of rotten grapes, but they always showed really well in the bottle and have been appealing ever since. The Moulin a Vent was great. Even more reason to buy the 2016s. The Gevrey Chambertin Cazetiers was a reminder of what I didn |
of six nuclear-capable bombers over disputed islands near Okinawa, warning Japan such stand-offs will become ‘the new norm’.
Beijing announced at the weekend that its H6K bombers had flown “several” long-range drills over the Bashi Channel and Miyako Strait during the past week.
The strategic Miyako strait sits between the Sakishima islands — scene of fierce fighting during the last days of World War II by the British Pacific Fleet — and Okinawa, linking mainland Japan with the northern tip of Taiwan.
13 JUL: JASDF jets scrambled to intercept 6x Chinese H-6 bombers pic.twitter.com/ro9P501P1A — Mil Radar (@MIL_Radar) July 13, 2017
The equally significant Bashi Channel is a waterway linking the South China Sea and the Pacific between Taiwan and the Philippines.
Whoever controls the waterways has access to rich fish stocks, underwater resources — and military control over access to shipping lanes of vital importance to regional powers Japan and China.
‘GET USED TO IT’
“China’s air force over the past week conducted multiple drills far out at sea, with H-6K bombers and many other types of aircraft flying through the Bashi Channel and Miyako Strait, testing actual battle capabilities over the sea,” a spokesman told the state-run CGTN news service.
EXPLORE MORE: The coming war with China
The flight of six H6K bombers passed through the Miyako Strait on Thursday as part of “routine exercises”, a Beijing Defence Ministry official said.
Japan scrambled fighters from nearby Okinawa and closely observed the Chinese aircraft, which remained in international airspace.
A Japanese defence force spokesman noted, however, that the Chinese action was ‘unusual’
China Fri released a video called PLA Today to commemorate the 90th Anniv of the Founding of the #PLA.(Part 3) Video: 81.cn pic.twitter.com/DBKhnzBnaF — Global Times (@globaltimesnews) July 16, 2017
“It is legitimate for Chinese military planes to fly through the strait, and more similar training will be conducted on the high seas as needed,” spokesman Ren Guoqiang Guoqiang told Chinese media
“The parties concerned don’t need to overact and make a great fuss about it,” he added. “They will feel better after getting used to such drills.”
FIRST ISLAND CHAIN
China has in recent months sought to assert its military strength and its ability to reach into the Pacific, sending ships — including its aircraft carrier Liaoning — into politically sensitive waters around Taiwan and Okinawa.
China's Liaoning aircraft carrier formation on Sunday returned to a military port in E China's Qingdao after maneuvering exercises, HK visit pic.twitter.com/YCwk2FfaAa — People's Daily,China (@PDChina) July 16, 2017
In March this year, China surged a large-scale force of 13 naval fighter and bomber aircraft through the same Mikayo Strait, startling Tokyo into declaring it would keep an eye on China’s ‘expanding and increasing’ actions.
Japan last year doubled the number of fighter jets based in Okinawa to counter a series of Chinese ‘probes’ in September, November and December.
EXPLORE MORE: Can China’s navy ‘shirt-front’ Australia?
It’s naval presence in the Indian Ocean has also been increasing, with India expressing alarm at the presence of submarines and up to 13 warships operating in waters between Singapore and the Horn of Africa. Last week, it sent its first detachment of troops to establish a naval base in Djibouti.Read all of our coverage on 2016 ballot measures at governing.com/ballotmeasures.
Voters this year weighed in on a total of 234 state supreme court and intermediate appellate court seats.
But beyond the election or retention of individual judges, voters in four states -- Alabama, Georgia, Oregon and Pennsylvania -- got to decide the fate of ballot measures that would change the rules governing judicial careers. Most of them had to do with the mandatory retirement age for judges, but Georgia's will revamp the state's judicial ethics commission.
Debating the Retirement Age
There may be no practical reason to force judges to retire at a given age. That doesn’t mean voters are ready to allow them to serve forever.
In Pennsylvania, voters narrowly agreed to raise the age limit for judges from 70 to 75. But Oregon voters handily defeated a proposal to repeal the age limit entirely. It will stay at 75 in Oregon.
In addition, voters in Alabama decided to raise the maximum age at which a judge can be appointed, from 70 to 75, but that will apply only to one county. It also passed by a narrow margin.
Such measures are a tough sell.
Voters tend to be skeptical about keeping a particular group of judges on the bench for longer periods. The question had been on ballots around the country 11 times between 1995 and this fall's election, according to the National Center for State Courts. In nearly every instance, the move to lift age limits has failed.
Across the culture now, there’s an understanding that older people are often able to remain productive well past traditional retirement ages. That’s one reason why the age for collecting full Social Security benefits has gone up and is likely to be extended further.
“All the evidence suggests that people are living longer, and judging is the classic old-age profession,” says Scott Makar, an appellate court judge in Florida who has studied the issue. “It takes what older people have, which is experience and judgment.”
Laws placing an age limit on judges have been on the books a long time in most places, and are rooted in historical events in which jurists were incapacitated by dementia. But that shouldn’t be much of a problem anymore. As Makar notes, his state and others have commissions in place to remove judges who can’t perform their duty.
“There is a growing belief that an age limit established long ago is too low by today’s standards, and is arbitrarily depriving our courts of some experienced, thoughtful and highly capable judges,” says Pennsylvania state Sen. Lisa Baker.
Supporters of maintaining age limits generally talk less about impaired ability and more about using them as a form of term limits.
“If all you’re concerned about is mental fitness, of course you raise the age,” says Charles Geyh, an expert on the judiciary at Indiana University. “But there’s a countervailing concern for new blood. You want young people not because they’re young and vital, but because they bring a new perspective.”
Supporters of the age limit in Pennsylvania also pointed to the fact that in recent years, the state Supreme Court has been rocked by scandals involving pornography, sexually explicit emails and campaign violations.
Mandatory retirement ages may not make the judiciary cleaner or more competent, any more than legislative term limits have added to the honesty or competence of legislatures. But they can be a way to get rid of judges who the public feels have outstayed their welcome.
A version of the retirement-age referendum had already appeared on Pennsylvania ballots once this year. The legislature decided to move the referendum to November, but it stayed on most ballots in the April primary anyway. It didn’t count, and the vote was close. Tht time, the measure to raise the age limit failed.
Overhauling the Judicial Ethics Commission
Who should judge the judges? That age-old debate has just had a fresh hearing in Georgia.
On Tuesday, voters agreed to change the way the state judicial qualifications commission is set up via a proposed constitutional amendment. The independent agency is tasked with going after judges for unethical behavior. Over the past decade, more than five dozen judges have been removed or stepped down in the face of an agency investigation.
One of those judges is now a sitting legislator. State Rep. Johnnie Caldwell resigned as a superior court judge in 2010 amidst sexual harassment allegations. He also co-sponsored the legislation that put the question of the makeup of the judicial commission before voters. Caldwell has said this has nothing to do with his own history with the commission, which he maintains is all in the past.
Instead, along with his co-sponsors, Caldwell cites the commission's treatment of former Superior Court Judge Cynthia Becker. She was indicted last year for lying to the commission, but the case was so weak that it was thrown out just days later, with a judge scolding the prosecutor for bringing charges.
"They sit as a completely autonomous group under the Georgia Constitution, so they're really answerable to no one," says Wendell Willard, who chairs the state House Judiciary Committee.
Up until now, commissioners have been selected by the state bar, the Supreme Court and the governor. With the measure's passage, the legislature will get to pick a majority of the commissioners. Supporters of the current commission say the new system will have the effect of eroding the agency's independence by making its members answerable to the political class.
Even if there are legitimate questions about how the commission has treated certain cases, that's not a good reason to change its structure and give the legislature effective control over it, Billy Corriher, an expert on state courts at the progressive Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C., said prior to Tuesday's vote. "It's important to have independent watchdogs in states where they elect judges," he says. "The commission they have in Georgia, as currently constituted, seems to have worked pretty well."
But Willard and others argued that commissioners have acted as investigators going after judges, and have then served -- in effect -- as the judges and juries in the same cases.
"One of the concerns we've raised is the due process issue," says Willard. "There is no way to really modify the makeup of the commission," short of a constitutional amendment -- which the state now has.
*This story has been updated from the version that appears in the October 2016 print issue of the magazine.
Read all of our coverage on 2016 ballot measures at governing.com/ballotmeasures.Have you ever wondered how to monitor your WiFi connection from the command line? While experimenting with an Edimax WiFi dongle on my Raspberry Pi I wanted an easy method to monitor the wireless signal strength as I moved around the house.
The Pi was running from a USB power bank and sometimes this can result in the WiFi dongle dropping the signal. It’s hard to trouble-shoot WiFi issues so I went looking for a simple utility that would constantly report the status of the connection.
Eventually I found a utility called Wavemon. It’s free, easy to install and does exactly what I needed.
Installation
To install Wavemon use the following command :
sudo apt-get install -y wavemon
Launching
You can run Wavemon from the command line after the Pi has booted or from within a LXTerminal window once you have launched LXDE using “startx” using :
wavemon
This will present you with the main screen :
The toolbar along the bottom shows the pages available. Each one is associated with a function key.
F2 displays a graph of you signal levels. The graph below was created using the “random data” setting in the preferences to make it a bit more exciting.
F3 lists the wireless networks visible to your Pi as well as the signal strength and the channel they are using.
F7 displays the preferences page. These can be left at the default values but I changed the “override scale autodetect” to “on” and increased the signal level maximum to 30dBm. This allowed the graph on the “F2:lhist” to correctly display the signal level from my connection which was averaging 20dBm and initially off the top of the screen.
F8 displays the help screen. There isn’t much there at the moment!
F9 will display the author and licence details.
F10 (or the letter Q) will quit the utility and return you to the command line.
Alternative Method to Monitor Your WiFi
For a really quick snapshot of your WiFi performance you can use :
iwconfig
which will give you something like :
wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:"TheMatrix" Nickname:"<WIFI@REALTEK>" Mode:Managed Freq:2.427 GHz Access Point: 00:18:4D:10:49:C6 Bit Rate:54 Mb/s Sensitivity:0/0 Retry:off RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off Link Quality=98/100 Signal level=83/100 Noise level=0/100 Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0
Wavemon Configuration File
The configuration file is located in :
/home/pi/.wavemonrc
and can be edited directly using :
sudo nano.wavemonrc
You don’t need to edit it manually. I include the information just in case you wanted to!Even before the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) made its much-discussed error in glacier melting dates, the question of how climate change impacts were being felt across the Himalayas was something of a hot topic.
One of the problems back then, which remains a problem now, is simply lack of data.
Getting into some of the regions is time-consuming and arduous. Satellites give an incomplete picture - and only since the early 1980s, at that.
Nevertheless, it's a hugely important issue given the vast number of people who depend on Himalayan glaciers to store their drinking water and release it in a steady, controlled fashion during the year.
The journal Biology Letters this week reports a novel yet kind of obvious way to tackle the data dearth; simply asking Himalayan villagers about their experiences.
To be fair, the phrase "simply asking" does the researchers a disservice, because what they emphasise throughout their paper is the need to gather local knowledge "rapidly and efficiently... using systematic tools".
It has to be structured, internally consistent and rigorous; that's the message.
This particular project involved villages in the Darjeeling Hills in the north-east of India and in Ilam District just across the border in Nepal.
Researchers went to 28 villages in total, and did 250 face-to-face interviews as well as a number of focus group exercises.
Their top line conclusions are that villagers are noticing signals suggestive of climate change.
Warmer weather, drying water sources, the advance of summer and the monsoon, new insect pests, earlier flowering of plants... all consistent with the basic idea of a warming world.
The sample size was big enough that researchers - Pashupati Chaudhary and Kamal Bawa from the University of Massachusetts in Boston, US - could note different perceptions at different altitudes.
Dr Bawa is also president of the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, based in Bangalore, India - and the trust is keen to see more of this type of research.
Glaciers play a key role in regulating water supply in the Himalayas and for people outside the immediate region
The conclusions themselves are less intriguing, I think, than the idea that this kind of research could play a much larger role than it has done up to now in building a picture of how climate is changing - and not just in the Himalayas.
Report after report bemoans the lack of instrumental data across Africa - but more than any other continent, African lives are lived close to the land, which is exactly the situation in which you'd expect people to build up the most detailed and accurate internal pictures.
I had a quick chat with Martin Parry, who co-chaired the working group on climate impacts, adaptation and vulnerability for the 2007 IPCC assessment.
Now a visiting professor at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change Research in London, he told me there definitely is a role for evidence gathered through word-of-mouth.
"We need to expand the information we can collect on the evidence of climate change occurring now, which the last IPCC report kicked off and the next one is no doubt going to grow greatly - because it's ground-truthing, it's not model-based future stuff. "But also the gaps in the knowledge are so big, and filling them in by going out and asking people is going to be increasingly the way to go. "It's about less formal ways of collecting data. It takes time to set up monitoring stations and get 10 years of data, but if we can get into peoples' memories... I guess the one concern is the drift that occurs in peoples' memories, and how do you account for that?"
This is indeed going to be an issue - you can almost hear the objection forming in the minds of researchers around the world who are more used to dealing with the hard numbers churned out by thermometers, mass spectrometers and satellite-based radar.
How can you trust people's recollections?
And even if it gives you some qualitative indication of how things are changing, can this kind of research ever be quantitative, as instruments are?
This could be a good way of gathering data in Africa too
The Himalayan work threw up questions as well as answers.
For example, in some villages about half of the people questioned reported that summer was now starting earlier than 10 years ago; which raises the question of why the other half did not.
In villages where life is based almost totally on farming, you might expect a more consistent view.
In one sense, that is like putting two thermometers in the same place and finding that one registered a temperature rise while the other did not.
If that happened in practice, you would need to have experts in thermometers on hand to interpret the divergent readings - and perhaps there's a parallel need for expertise in interpreting the apparently conflicting recollections of different villagers.
As Professor Parry pointed out, help may come from other disciplines. Social anthropologists (and indeed other social scientists) depend on people data for much of their work, and may already have protocols that can be adapted for climate-based questionnaires.
Medicine, too, has its share of structured questionnaires. For example, heart failure can be assessed through people's evaluation of their own symptoms - to what degree are they out of breath when climbing stairs, for example - and there are myriad indices for pain and quality of life.
One of the recommendations coming out of recent inquiries into climate science (as pertaining to the IPCC and the University of East Anglia) is that researchers could and should make more use of specialist statisticians.
And perhaps the increasing use of orally-gathered evidence will require the systematic and rigorous involvement of social scientists in order to ensure best practice is followed.
But there surely is going to be more data of this kind used in climate circles in future.
It's cheap, is available in many regions with poor instrumental coverage, it can span large timeframes, and data can be gathered simultaneously on what communities are experiencing and how they're coping.
What's not to like, provided the cautions are heeded?JAFFA, Israel – Masses of Arab social media users attacked Turkish President Recep Tayip Erdogan for Monday’s reconciliation pact with Israel, which some dubbed “a shameful concession.”
Erdogan, whose hostile approach to Israel had been lauded in the Arab world, was criticized across the board, even on the normally sympathetic Al Jazeera network.
“Is normalization with Israel treason?” Khaled asked, and answered: “Yes! Doesn’t it apply to Turkey as well, or is the Caliph [Erdogan] immune to criticism?”
هل التطبيع مع إسرائيل خيانة اذا الجواب نعم! هل ينطبق ذالك ع تركيا أم خليفة المسلمين منزه! المايك معك@AJABreaking pic.twitter.com/tiZ4sTgakM — ✨خالد الجنيدي (@khalid8890) June 27, 2016
Naif wrote: “I now want to see the faces of the Zionist Muslim Brotherhood!”
ودنا نشوف وجوه صهاينة الاخوان
بعد هذا الخبر..@AJABreaking — مجموعة نايف بن خالد (@naif4002) June 27, 2016
Ali blamed the Arabs for shunning Turkey, pushing it toward Israel. “It’s all because of the Saudis and the Arabs who boycotted Turkey and undermined its position,” he wrote. “The only allies it had left were Israel and Iran.”
@AJABreaking كله من السعودية والعرب اللي قاطعوها وضيقو عليها فلابد أن تبحث على حليف يدعمها كـ #اسرائيل و #ايران #المفك_يغرد — علي الشريف (@AliiTeacher) June 26, 2016
“This is Erdogan!!!” Abdualaziz wrote. “Where are all those who say that he is the servant of Islam and the Muslims?!”
هذا اوردغان!! ،، وين اللي يقولون عنه انه خادم الاسلام والمسلمين ،،!! @AJABreaking — عبدالعزيز العصيمي (@mr_abdualaziz1) June 26, 2016
“Now they’ll say that Erdogan is allowed to do what others aren’t,” Nasser tweeted.
يجوز لاردوغان مايجوز لغيره هكذا لسان حال القطيع — ناصر البهيجي 🇸 (@drnasserotaibi) June 26, 2016
“LOL the Muslim caliph normalizes ties with Israel,” Khalid wrote.
تركيا وإسرائيل تتوصلان إلى اتفاق لتطبيع العلاقات بينهما.
هههه
خليفة المسلمين يطبع مع العدو#تفكيك_الخطاب_المتصهين#التطبيع_التركي_الإسرائيلي — خـالد الجنيدي (@Khalid8890) June 26, 2016
“What’s wrong with overt normalization?” a commenter retorted. “It’s better than normalization under the table.”
https://twitter.com/atat1423/status/747258247229349888
“He’s not the Muslim caliph,” another replied. “He is the caliph of the Jews.”
خليفة المسلمين لا والله خليفة اليهود — موجز المملكة (@jrvjidd) June 27, 2016
“Israel and Turkey normalized relations,” Alfarouq wrote. “Israel will now mediate between Turkey and Russia to end hostilities. Israel played its cards right. The Muslim Brotherhood cannot be trusted.”
https://twitter.com/homhash/status/747171136522326017?s=03
“Turkey has been playing with the Syrian issue and the Syrian people since the crisis began!” Ibnqasuoon wrote. “It turns out that Erdogan’s red lines are fantasy and gobbledygook. All they care about is that the war will be kept outside their borders.”
تركيا تلعب بالملف السوري والسوريين منذ بداية الأزمة! إتضح أن كل خطوط أردوغان الحمراء خزعبلية!هم يهمهم فقط أن تبقى الحرب خارج حدودهم! — ابن قاسيون (@ibnqasuoon) June 26, 2016
Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers, who see Erdogan as a world leader representing their views, were also critical.
Yasser Zaatreh, a pro-Hamas and pro-Muslim Brotherhood Jordanian columnist wrote: “I’m against the Turkish-Israeli deal, regardless of Israel’s apology, and despite the achievements it stipulates for Gaza. Any type of normalization is to be condemned, even if the strong relations with the enemy are inherited, as in Turkey’s case.”
ضد الاتفاق التركي الإسرائيلي رغم اعتذار إسرائيل، وبعض المكتسبات البسيطة لغزة. أية خطوة تطبيع مدانة، حتى من حكومة ورثت علاقات متينة مع العدو. — ياسر الزعاترة (@YZaatreh) June 26, 2016
One commenter gloated at Zaatreh’s disappointment: “I respect you in the same way Erdogan, the sloganeering buffoon, treated you.”
احترمك بقدر مصيبتك في اردوغان الهريج بياع الكلام — مواطن (@mwaten12345) June 26, 2016
Syrialander also replied: “I told you a long time ago nothing good would come out of the Muslim Brotherhood. I wrote this to you in [former Egyptian president Mohammed] Morsi’s time, and you were angry at me.”
https://twitter.com/ihw2012/status/747220285452132352Spoilers for Eye of The World and The Great Hunt, and The Dragon Reborn up to Ch 32 | More info and previous posts | Please no spoilers for future books/events
In my plan to read The Wheel of Time, and post about my experience, I’m now on book 3, The Dragon Reborn. This post covers chapter 17-32.
Healing
Nynaeve, Egwene and Elayne are all raring to go heal Mat by themselves (seriously though, someone should take care of that!), when Elaida bursts in. The last I remember, she was Queen Morgase’s advisor. It seems Elayne’s disappearance did piss off Morgase royally. Elaida seems to be extra touchy and anger prone as a result. She’s really interested in Mat, and even more in Rand. Black Ajah? Damn, but I’ve become paranoid, seeing Darkfriends everywhere.
Soon though, Sheriam Sedai barges in as well, and tells us that the Amyrlin and co. have finally found time from scheming to heal Mat. She invites the girls to observe the process, and also warns them to keep quiet about the dead assassin they found.
They are lead to a room deep underground, where Mat is healed in a creepy/scary procedure by the Amyrlin and a bunch of other Sedai, with the help of a sa’angreal – shaped like a wand. Hmm, so that means that angreals and such need not have a particular shape or size to work. But then, what does make them tick? Mat also shouts out ancient Manetheren war cries during his healing. I know the old blood runs in Two Rivers folk, but this has got to be more than that. What though? Reincarnation? Does this world even have an afterlife, let alone reincarnation? Or something else? Anyway, it’s fitting – Rand is the Dragon Reborn, Perrin is a Wolfbrother, and so Mat too needs something special.
Anyways, they finally manage to rid Mat of the bloody Shadar Logoth dagger.
Awakening
The POV shifts to Mat after what seems like ages. Mat wakes up, remembering a dream that is almost certainly a memory of the battle which preceded Manetheren’s fall. He takes stock of himself – it’s clearly that his memories of the earlier days are foggy, but he finally concludes that he’s in Tar Valon (and was probably healed by Sedai) and he’s really hungry. He also does some thinking about his future, but then the door open…
And it’s Selene. Two questions arise immediately – how did she manage to get into the White Tower, and what does she want with Mat? I though she was following Rand around because he was the Dragon, and Lanfear and Lews Therin apparently have a history, but now Mat. It seems she’s really interested in the Horn of Valere. But why would she bother warning Mat about how the Aes Sedai intend to use him, and so does she? If she wants the Horn, why not kill Mat and take it? I know the Amyrlin has it hidden, but surely it will not be a big issue for one of the most powerful Forsaken?
Mat, I have the same advice for you as I did for Rand : this woman is not good for you. Stay away.
Selene runs off after threatening Mat a bit, and in comes the Amyrlin Seat and her secretary. Boy, it seems we are really important. Mat gets all stubborn, and the Amyrlin throws around fishing metaphors, as she is wont to do. The tl;dr is that Mat is confined to Tar Valon, the guards under orders to not allow him to leave. The pretense is that Mat needs time to recuperate, but in fact they need him because he is the one who blew the horn of Valere.
Poor guy wakes up after almost getting killed by an evil artifact, only to get caught in the schemes of powerful people.
Tel’aran’rhiod
Oh boy, that’s quite a mouthful. And not one but two apostrophes. It must be important.
Egwene meets Verin, who hands her some background info on the Black Ajah, and quotes a mysterious old book at her. She also gives us some much needed information about all these dreams people are having. It seems that all the different worlds we last saw courtesy the Portal Stone are somewhat connected. They all share a Creator, a Dark One (who if escapes in one world, escapes in all), and a world within the worlds – the world of dreams. Ooohhhh….
So that’s why Rand (and others) keep having these strangely concrete dreams – they’re literally going into the world of dreams. Very interesting indeed. Verin also gives Egwene a ter’angreal that is supposed to help her travel to this world in her dreams, last used by the dreamer before Egwene – Corianin Nedeal.
What she doesn’t give Egwene is Corianin’s diary. Why? Black Ajah? No, that’s going too far, perhaps.
Egwene’s Trial
Now it’s time for the trial that was inevitable for Egwene to become Accepted. Sheriam and Elaida seem to be having a bit of a spat. I was kind of suspecting Sheriam, but given that I suspect Elaida even more, and they don’t seem to get along, my money is officially on Elaida being a Black Ajah. Maybe she is just naturally harsh and bitchy, but the mind suspects as the mind wills.
Alanna notices a disturbance of some sort with the test apparatus – not good. I bet this test won’t go smoothly. The past shows Egwene married to Rand. What? How is that past? The past that could have been, I guess. Anyway, compared to what Nynaeve had to face, it seems pretty easy – Egwene just has to leave Rand in pain as one of his supernatural headaches brings him to his knees in agony. Okay, maybe not so easy.
Next up is a vision of a Caemlyn destroyed and in ruins, infested by bands of Trollocs and Darkfriends. Egwene finds Rand trapped, who tells her that if they catch him, they can turn him. This is in direct contradiction to what I remember – that so long as you deny the Dark One, he can’t control you or anything like that. Also, where is this information coming from? Egwene herself does not know this, then how can it be a part of her fear? I mean, sure, after being captured by the Seanchan, she has developed a terror to being captured and controlled, and this is basically a scary version of that. But Egwene doesn’t even know that it is possible. So is the ter’angreal just showing her what it feels will scare her? Or is this being turned actually possible?
Egwene manages to abandon Rand yet again, and Sheriam tells us that it is the latter – thirteen Sedai with thirteen Myrddraal can indeed turn people who can channel. I sure hope it doesn’t end up happening. Because now that I remember, there are exactly thirteen confirmed Black Ajah.
In the final trial, Egwene finds herself the Amyrlin Seat, forced to pass judgement on a Rand who has been captured and charged with being a guy who can channel. Egwene refuses to gentle him, and is knocked unconscious by her secretary. She wakes up to find that a bunch of Sedai and Fades are about to turn her. Oh boy. I wonder what will happen if she gets turned inside the ter’angreal? For that matter, the way out should have present itself to her by now. Something is certainly going wrong. Luckily, Egwene does some rapidfire magic and makes her escape. She finds that Elaida was behind this (ha!) and Rand is about to be gentled, and rushes to help him. She’s still planning, when the way out appears. Things seem to be going haywire on the other end too.
She comes out, and finds that the little “disturbance” went haywire towards the end. The reason, as Alanna tells us, is the ter’angreal that Egwene had with her – the dream one. And so were Egwene and Elayne raised to Accepted.
Swords vs Staff
Mat goes out exploring, and finds that indeed all the guards know about him. He stumbles across the training warders, and proceeds to challenge Galad and Gawyn to a fight, while being barely able to stand. You fool, Mat.
Or not. Mat actually knows his stuff, and proceeds to kick their royal asses. Wow. Yep, he’s definitely channeling some dead badass Manetheren warrior.
Back in the Tower, the girls are playing at Sherlock, and not liking it. They do find that the statistical distribution of the Black Ajah is way too regular to be natural, and so much be an attempt to find a pattern. There’s also a description of some of the stole ter’angreal, no doubt one or more of these will turn out to be plot relevant.
Else (anyone else find her name a bit awkward) delivers a message from the Amyrlin about the belongings of the Black Ajah escapees. Egwene rushes after her (because, the hunt for the Black Ajah is supposed to be Top Secret) and when she catches up to her she finds… Selene. So that’s how she’s been getting into Tar Valon, I guess – magical disguise. Egwene doesn’t realise that though, thinking she must have missed Else. The girls nevertheless make their way to where the Black Ajah Sedai’s belongings are stored. But don’t you get it, it’s a trap.
And a painfully obvious one at that – that the Black Ajah apparently intended to go to Tear, to the Heart of the Stone. The girls do some recursive thinking, but can arrive at no conclusion.
A Visit to Dreamland
Out of leads, Egwene decides to try the ter’angreal and visit Tel’aran’rhiod. She meets Perrin, but is driven away by Hopper (who is apparently dead in the real world but alive here), and Rand, who attacks her thinking she’s Darkspawn in disguise (Rand really is in a bad shape, especially mentally), and finally to the chamber where Callandor is kept – the Heart of The Stone.
Wait, I just realised – the cover of A Memory of Light is Rand wielding Callandor, it seems.
So, Egwene meets this shady old woman called Silvie, who tells her that the Forsaken are scheming their own schemes, which makes sense, given the way Selene has been acting. She also finds that Callandor is protected by what seems a barrier made of a combination of saidin and saidar.
She wakes up, and decide that they must go to Tear. Hmm, so apparently Tear is this book’s Falme – no doubt the plot will contrive to have Mat brought there as well. It is decided that this time they won’t just disappear, and that Elayne will send a letter to her mom, and it seems Mat will be the one to carry it. They visit Mat the next day, and after attempts at niceness fail, Nynaeve bullies him into accepting to carry the letter to Morgase, so long as they can figure out a way to let him escape the city. Lo and Behold, they have just the thing – the Amyrlin’s blank check. Though I doubt the Amyrlin would be pleased to have her writ being used to undermine her own orders. Anyway, Mat accepts.
The Amyrlin finds Nynaeve in the kitchens, and under pretense of anger and scolding, manages to talk to her in secret. Nynaeve brings her up to speed on their discoveries, who informs her that indeed, Else no longer even studies at Tar Valon. But Nynaeve being Nynaeve, says that the best way to catch whoever set a trap is to spring it and wait for him. Um, no. NO. The way to catch someone is not to do exactly what they want you to do. What you want to do is pretend to spring their trap, while laying down your own trap around theirs. Damnit Nynaeve, there’s confidence, and there’s overconfidence. Of course, this is only the beginning of the series, so I guess nothing too terrible will come if this, but that’s bad decision making right there. They should have a better plan than “we three Accepted will just go to this place alone, with no idea of what to expect, and hopefully not get our asses handed to us by the thirteen Black Ajah.”
Oh, and Callandor it seems, is a sa’angreal. A very powerful one. Yeah Rand, go get it!
The Dark One’s Own Luck
Mat heads off on his journey to Caemlyn, having a lot of fun at the expense of everyone in the process. But he gets sidetracked by gambling. It seems that he just keeps winning, and playing, and winning, and all the throws are perfect. The hours blur into a haze of taverns and games and dice. This is pretty suspicious. I seem to recall reading about a ter’angreal that was supposed to do weird things to probability. Methinks this is its work we are seeing. But that would imply the Black Ajah planting it on Mat. Which I can’t fathom any reason for.
Or maybe he’s just extra lucky. Anyway, after a while, Mat comes to his senses and heads out to find a ship. Unfortunately he’s ambushed by thieves – strangely persistent thieves, if they are thieves at all. He kills one, and escapes into an inn – and stumbles into Thom.
Thom? Nice to see you mate, but not really, because Thom is a wreck – drunk and full of self pity. Dena’s death really hit him hard, it seems. And apparently, he managed to kill Galldrien But Mat convinces him to tag along with him, and they manage to catch a boat. Hopefully a change of scenery will help Thom get better.
The boat is attacked in the night by mysterious assailants, but Mat’s quarterstaff and Thom’s knives make short work of them. Who did sic all these murderers on Mat though? Not Tar Valon. And certainly not Selene. Then who are they? Darkfriends probably, given that the prologue told us Ba’alzamon wants Rand dead – it stands to reason he also wants Mat dead.
And so the plot reveals itself |
Nasser agreed, and Qasim soon undertook numerous repressive measures against the communists, effectively rendering fears that Iraq was "going red" moot. Bryan R. Gibson writes that "there is no documentation that ties the United States directly to any of Nasser's many covert attempts to overthrow the Qasim regime, though there is evidence that the CIA had helped Jordan and the UAR infiltrate Iraqis back into the country." The SCI was finally shut down in January 1961.
Iraq 1960 [ edit ]
According to the Church Committee report:
In February 1960, CIA's Near East Division sought the endorsement of what the Division Chief [James H. Critchfield] called the "Health Alteration Committee" for its proposal for a "special operation" to "incapacitate" an Iraqi Colonel believed to be "promoting Soviet bloc political interests in Iraq." The Division sought the Committee's advice on a technique, "which while not likely to result in total disablement would be certain to prevent the target from pursuing his usual activities for a minimum of three months," adding: "We do not consciously seek subject's permanent removal from the scene; we also do not object should this complication develop."... In April [1962], the [Health Alteration] Committee unanimously recommended to the DDP [Deputy Director for Plans, Richard M. Bissell Jr.] that a "disabling operation" be undertaken, noting that the Chief of Operations advised that it would be "highly desirable." Bissell's deputy, Tracy Barnes, approved on behalf of Bissell... The approved operation was to mail a monogrammed handkerchief containing an incapacitating agent to the colonel from an Asian country. [James] Scheider [Science Advisor to Bissell] testified that, while he did not now recall the name of the recipient, he did remember mailing from the Asian country, during the period in question, a handkerchief "treated with some kind of material for the purpose of harassing that person who received it."... During the course of this Committee's investigation, the CIA stated that the handkerchief was "in fact never received (if, indeed, sent)." It added that the colonel: "Suffered a terminal illness before a firing squad in Baghdad (an event we had nothing to do with) not very long after our handkerchief proposal was considered."[11]
Although some sources[12] depict this operation as an assassination attempt on Qasim, other sources note that this interpretation is inaccurate or unsupported by evidence,[15][16][17] as the notion that the CIA sought the target's assassination is refuted by the plain meaning of the text itself. In addition, it is unlikely that Qasim was the intended recipient of the handkerchief, as CIA officials would likely have remembered an attack on the Iraqi head of state. While Qasim was not a colonel but a brigadier general and did not openly promote Soviet interests in Iraq, the pro-Soviet head of Iraq's "People's Court," Colonel Fahdil Abbas al-Mahdawi, fits the above description perfectly.[18] Qasim effectively banned the ICP in January 1960, but Mahdawi remained a crucial conduit between Qasim's government and several communist-front groups—including the "Peace Partisans," which was allowed to operate in public despite being formally outlawed in May 1961—and was known for his outspoken praise for Fidel Castro as well as his trips throughout the Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc, and China. In 1991, former high-ranking U.S. diplomat Hermann Eilts told journalist Elaine Sciolino that Mahdawi had been the target.[15]
Iraq 1961 [ edit ]
In 1961 and 1962, we increased our interest in the Ba'ath—not to actively support it—but politically and intellectually, we found the Ba'ath interesting. We found it particularly active in Iraq. Our analysis of the Ba'ath was that it was comparatively moderate at that time, and that the United States could easily adjust to and support its policies. So we watched the Ba'ath's long, slow preparation to take control. They planned to do it several times, and postponed it. —James H. Critchfield, head of the CIA's Near East Division from 1959—1969.[20]
By 1961, the CIA had cultivated at least one high-level informant within the Iraqi wing of the Ba'ath Party, enabling it to monitor the Party's activities.
Iraq 1962 [ edit ]
A CIA cable reveals that the Ba'ath Party "first approached Arif about a coup in April 1962."
In mid-1962, alarmed by Qasim's threats to invade Kuwait and his government's expropriation of 99.5% of the British- and American-owned Iraq Petroleum Company's (IPC) concessionary holdings, President John F. Kennedy ordered the CIA to make preparations for a military coup that would remove him from power. Archie Roosevelt, Jr. was tasked with leading the operation. Around the same time, the CIA penetrated a top-secret Iraqi-Soviet surface-to-air missile project, which yielded intelligence on the Soviet Union's ballistic missile program.
Also in 1962, Mahdawi and some of his family members were stricken with a serious case of what Mahdawi dubbed "influenza." It is unknown whether this ailment was related to the CIA's plan to poison Mahdawi in April 1962; Nathan J. Citino observes that "the timing of the illness does not correspond exactly to that of the 'incapacitating' operation as described in the cited testimony."
Iraq 1963 [ edit ]
While it's still early, the Iraqi revolution seems to have succeeded. It is almost certainly a net gain for our side.... We will make informal friendly noises as soon as we can find out whom to talk with, and ought to recognize as soon as we're sure these guys are firmly in the saddle. CIA had excellent reports on the plotting, but I doubt either they or UK should claim much credit for it. —Robert Komer to President John F. Kennedy, February 8, 1963.[25]
On February 7, 1963 State Department executive secretary William Brubeck wrote that Iraq had become "one of the more useful spots for acquiring technical information on Soviet military and industrial equipment and on Soviet methods of operation in nonaligned areas." U.S. officials were instructed not to respond to Qasim's false claims that the U.S. was supporting Kurdish rebels out of a desire to preserve the U.S. presence in Iraq. With access to an "intelligence bonanza" hanging in the balance, U.S. officials were showing "great reluctance about aggravating Qasim."
The Iraqi Ba'ath Party overthrew and executed Qasim in a violent coup on February 8, 1963. Mahdawi was executed along with Qasim: "Their bodies were then exhibited on state television in a gruesome, five-minute film called The End of the Criminals that aired immediately following prayers and a Felix the Cat cartoon." While there have been persistent rumors that the CIA orchestrated the coup,[30] declassified documents and the testimony of former CIA officers indicate there was no direct American involvement, although the U.S. had been notified of two aborted Ba'athist coup plots in July and December 1962 and its post-coup actions suggested that "at best it condoned and at worst it contributed to the violence that followed."[33] Despite evidence that the CIA had been closely tracking the Ba'ath Party's coup planning since "at least 1961," the CIA official working with Roosevelt to instigate a military coup against Qasim, and who later became the head of the CIA's operations in Iraq and Syria, has "denied any involvement in the Ba'ath Party's actions," stating instead that the CIA's efforts against Qasim were still in the planning stages at the time: "I was still engaged in contacting people who could play a role in a coup attempt against [him]." Qasim's former deputy Arif (who was not a Ba'athist) was given the largely ceremonial title of President, while prominent Ba'athist general Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr was named Prime Minister. The most powerful leader of the new government was the secretary of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, Ali Salih al-Sa'di, who controlled the National Guard militia and organized a massacre of hundreds—if not thousands—of suspected communists and other dissidents in the days following the coup. The Kennedy administration viewed the prospect of an Iraqi shift in the Cold War with cautious optimism, ultimately approving a $55 million arms deal for Iraq. It is widely believed that the CIA provided al-Sa'di's National Guard with lists of communists and other leftists, who were then arrested or killed. This claim originated in a September 27, 1963 Al-Ahram interview with King Hussein of Jordan, who—seeking to dispel reports that he was on the CIA's payroll—declared:
Qasim after execution
You tell me that American Intelligence was behind the 1957 events in Jordan. Permit me to tell you that I know for a certainty that what happened in Iraq on 8 February had the support of American Intelligence. Some of those who now rule in Baghdad do not know of this thing but I am aware of the truth. Numerous meetings were held between the Ba'ath party and American Intelligence, the more important in Kuwait. Do you know that... on 8 February a secret radio beamed to Iraq was supplying the men who pulled the coup with the names and addresses of the Communists there so that they could be arrested and executed?... Yet I am the one accused of being an agent of America and imperialism![38][39]
In the cellars of al-Nihayyah Palace, which the [National Guard's] Bureau [of Special Investigation] used as its headquarters, were found all sorts of loathsome instruments of torture, including electric wires with pincers, pointed iron stakes on which prisoners were made to sit, and a machine which still bore traces of chopped-off fingers. Small heaps of blooded clothing were scattered about, and there were pools on the floor and stains over the walls. —Hanna Batatu, recounting the scene of a Ba'athist torture chamber discovered after the Party's 1963 overthrow.[40]
According to Hanna Batatu, however, "the Ba'athists had ample opportunity to gather such particulars in 1958-1959, when the Communists came wholly into the open, and earlier, during the Front of National Unity Years—1957-1958—when they had frequent dealings with them on all levels." In addition, "the lists in question proved to be in part out of date," which could be taken as evidence they were compiled well before 1963.[38] Batatu's explanation is supported by Bureau of Intelligence and Research reports stating that "[Communist] party members [are being] rounded up on the basis of lists prepared by the now-dominant Ba'th Party" and that the ICP had "exposed virtually all its assets" whom the Ba'athists had "carefully spotted and listed." On the other hand, Citino notes that two officials in the U.S. embassy in Baghdad—William Lakeland and James E. Akins—"used coverage of the July 1962 Moscow Conference for Disarmament and Peace in Iraq's leftist press to compile lists of Iraqi communists and their supporters... Those listed included merchants, students, members of professional societies, and journalists, although university professors constituted the largest single group." Lakeland, a former SCI participant, "personally maintained contact following the coup with a National Guard interrogator," and may have been influenced by his prior interaction with then-Major Hasan Mustafa al-Naqib, the Iraqi military attaché in the U.S. who defected to the Ba'ath Party after Qasim "upheld Mahdawi's death sentences" against nationalists involved in the 1959 Mosul uprising. Furthermore, "Weldon C. Mathews has meticulously established that National Guard leaders who participated in human rights abuses had been trained in the United States as part of a police program run by the International Cooperation Administration and Agency for International Development."
The attacks on the people's freedoms carried out by the... bloodthirsty members of the National Guard, their violation of things sacred, their disregard of the law, the injuries they have done to the state and the people, and finally their armed rebellion on November 13, 1963, has led to an intolerable situation which is fraught with grave dangers to the future of this people which is an integral part of the Arab nation. We have endured all we could.... The army has answered the call of the people to rid them from this terror. —President Abdul Salam Arif, 1963.[40]
The Ba'athist government collapsed in November 1963 over the question of unification with Syria (where a rival branch of the Ba'ath Party had seized power in March) and the extremist and uncontrollable behavior of al-Sa'di's National Guard. President Arif, with the overwhelming support of the Iraqi military, purged Ba'athists from the government and ordered the National Guard to stand down; although al-Bakr had conspired with Arif to remove al-Sa'di, on January 5, 1964, Arif removed al-Bakr from his new position as Vice President, fearful of allowing the Ba'ath Party to retain a foothold inside his government. Throughout the Party's brief time in power, British and Israeli officials as well as the representatives of Western oil companies were generally skeptical of the Ba'ath, but U.S. officials including ambassador Robert C. Strong had what Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt characterizes as a "romantic" conception of the Ba'athist ability to modernize Iraq, and attributed reports of the National Guard's cruelty and fanaticism to what Lakeland dubbed "the well‐known Arab tendency to exaggerate." After the November coup, however, mounting evidence of Ba'athist atrocities emerged, and Lakeland authored "a devastating postmortem on the Ba'athist regime" in which he concluded: "The popular revulsion against the Ba'ath for this particular reason is largely justified, and therefore will have a more or less permanent effect on the political developments in the country—particularly on the prospects of a Ba'athi revival."[46]
Iraq 1968 [ edit ]
Under the Presidencies of Arif, and, especially, his brother Abdul Rahman Arif, the U.S. and Iraq developed closer ties than at any point since the 1958 revolution. The Lyndon B. Johnson administration favorably perceived Arif's proposal to partially reverse Qasim's nationalization of the IPC's concessionary holding in July 1965 (although the resignation of six cabinet members and widespread disapproval among the Iraqi public forced him to abandon this plan), as well as pro-Western lawyer Abdul Rahman al-Bazzaz's tenure as Prime Minister; Bazzaz attempted to implement a peace agreement with the Kurdish rebels following a decisive Kurdish victory at the Battle of Mount Handren in May 1966. Rahman Arif (hereinafter referred to as "Arif") was considered "one of the few forces of moderation" in Iraq, having previously established a friendship with Strong and making a number of friendly gestures to the U.S. between April 1966 and January 1967.[50] At Arif's request, President Johnson met five Iraqi generals and Iraqi ambassador Nasir Hani in the White House on January 25, 1967, reiterating his "desire to build an ever closer relationship between [the] two governments." According to Johnson's National Security Adviser, Walt Whitman Rostow, the NSC even contemplated welcoming Arif on a state visit to the U.S., although this proposal was ultimately rejected due to concerns about the stability of his government.[53] Prior to the outbreak of the Six-Day War, Iraqi Foreign Minister Adnan Pachachi met with a number of U.S. officials to discuss the escalating Middle East crisis on June 1, including U.S. ambassador to the UN Arthur Goldberg, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Eugene V. Rostow, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and President Johnson himself. The political atmosphere engendered by the costly Arab defeat prompted Iraq to break relations with the U.S. on June 7, and ultimately ensured the collapse of Arif's relatively moderate government.
Until things sort themselves out, and until we get better information—we have no representation in Baghdad—it's impossible to tell what the effect of last night's coup will be.... The intelligence community's initial reading is that the new group—apparently Baathists—will be more difficult than their predecessors, but at this point no one knows how radical they will be. So far, their communiques have taken a fairly moderate line by Iraqi standards, promising economic reforms, honest government, a 'wise' solution of the Kurdish problem, and Arab unity against the Zionist and Imperialist threats. On the other hand, if these people are Baathists, their tendencies will be towards moving Iraq even closer to Fatah, the Syrians and the Soviets. —NSC official John W. Foster to Walt Whitman Rostow, July 17, 1968.[56]
In May 1968, the CIA produced a report titled "The Stagnant Revolution," stating that radicals in the Iraqi military posed a threat to the Arif government, and while "the balance of forces is such that no group feels power enough to take decisive steps," the ensuing gridlock had created "a situation in which many important political and economic matters are simply ignored." In June 1968, the Belgians relayed a message from the U.S. State Department to Iraqi officials, offering to resume normal relations if Iraq agreed to provide compensation for damage to the U.S. embassy and consulate incurred during an earlier protest and met other conditions, including an end to the Iraqi boycott of U.S. goods and services imposed after Israel's 1967 victory; although U.S. officials were hoping to prevent a coup, there is no indication of any Iraqi response to this overture. On July 17, the Iraqi Ba'ath Party—led by al-Bakr as Prime Minister, Abd ar-Rahman al-Dawud as Defense Minister, and Abd ar-Razzaq an-Naif as Interior Minister—seized power in a bloodless coup, placing Arif on a plane to London. Remembering the collapse of the short-lived coalition government in 1963, al-Bakr quickly ordered Naif (who was not a Ba'athist) arrested and exiled on July 30, cementing the Ba'ath Party's control over Iraq until the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. al-Bakr was then named commander-in-chief of the army. On August 2, Iraqi Foreign Minister Abdul Karim Sheikhli announced that Iraq would seek close ties "with the socialist camp, particularly the Soviet Union and the Chinese People's Republic." By late November, the U.S. embassy in Beirut reported that Iraq had released many leftist and communist dissidents, although "there [was] no indication... [they had] been given any major role in the regime." As the Arif government had recently signed a major oil deal with the Soviets, the Ba'ath Party's rapid attempts to improve relations with Moscow were not a complete shock to U.S. policymakers, but they "provided a glimpse at a strategic alliance that would soon emerge."
Iraq 1970 [ edit ]
Estimates on the size of the crowds that came to view the dangling corpses spread seventy meters apart in Liberation Square —increasing the area of sensual contact between mutilated body and mass—vary from 150,000 to 500,000. Peasants streamed in from the surrounding countryside to hear the speeches. The proceedings, along with the bodies, continued for twenty-four hours, during which the President, Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, and a host of other luminaries gave speeches and orchestrated the carnival-like atmosphere. —Kanan Makiya describing the 1969 Baghdad hangings.[61]
The Richard M. Nixon administration was confronted with an early foreign policy crisis when Iraq publicly executed 9 Iraqi Jews at the end of January 1969.[61] The Nixon administration initially sought to stay the executions by convincing American allies with close ties to Iraq—such as France, Spain, and India—to apply pressure on the government, but Iraqi officials responded "in no uncertain terms, to stay out of [Iraq's] domestic affairs." The U.S. also urged UN Secretary General U Thant to intervene, but he was unable to influence Baghdad's decision. Nixon's Secretary of State, William P. Rogers, condemned the executions as "repugnant to the conscience of the world," while U.S. ambassador to the UN Charles Yost took the matter to the UN Security Council, stating that Iraq's actions were "designed to arouse emotions and to intensify the very explosive atmosphere of suspicion and hostility in the Middle East." In early 1968, the U.K. had announced its intention to withdraw its forces from "East of Suez"—including the Persian Gulf region—thus alarming U.S. officials and prompting the Johnson administration to formulate what became known as the "twin pillar policy," in which the U.S. would support Iran and Saudi Arabia in their efforts to maintain the Gulf's stability. The Nixon administration would ultimately revise this policy by focusing on building up Iran, then ruled by Nixon's old friend Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (hereinafter referred to as "the Shah"), as the dominant regional power.[64] The Shah distrusted the Ba'athist government in Iraq, which he considered a "bunch of thugs and murderers." Following Iraq's provocative actions in January 1969, the Shah sought to "punish" Iraq, and possibly win partial Iranian sovereignty over the Shatt al-Arab waterway—which a 1937 treaty had given Iraq almost complete control over—through a series of coercive measures: At the beginning of March, he arranged for Iran's Kurdish allies to attack IPC installations around Kirkuk and Mosul, causing Iraq millions of dollars in damage; in April, he unilaterally abrogated the 1937 treaty; and in January 1970, he sponsored a failed coup attempt against the Iraqi government. The Shah knew that most of Iraq's army was deployed in Kurdistan—while an additional three Iraqi brigades were stationed in Jordan—thus Iraq was in no position to retaliate militarily, but he offered to "break off supplies to the Kurds in return for concessions in the Shatt," a proposal Iraq rejected.
The Shah's aggressive actions convinced Iraq to seek an end to the Kurdish War. In late December 1969, al-Bakr sent his deputy, Saddam Hussein, to negotiate directly with Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani and his close aide Dr. Mahmoud Othman. The Shah was outraged when he learned of these negotiations, and sponsored a coup against the Iraqi government, which was scheduled for the night of January 20–21, 1970. However, Iraq's security forces had "complete recordings of most of the meetings and interviews that took place," foiling the plot, expelling the Iranian ambassador to Iraq, and executing "at least 33 conspirators" by January 23. On January 24, Iraq announced its support for Kurdish autonomy, and on March 11, Saddam and Barzani reached an agreement (dubbed the "March Accord") "to recognize the binational character of Iraq... [and] allow for the establishment of a self-governing region of Kurdistan," which was to be implemented by March 1974, although U.S. officials were skeptical that the agreement would prove binding.
There were allegations of American involvement in the failed 1970 coup attempt, which involved a coalition of Iraqi factions, including Kurdish opponents of the Ba'ath Party. Edmund Ghareeb claimed that the CIA reached an agreement to help the Kurds overthrow the Iraqi government in August 1969, although there is little evidence to support this claim, and the CIA officer in charge of operations in Iraq and Syria in 1969 "denied any U.S. involvement with the Kurds prior to 1972." The State Department was informed of the plot by Iraqi businessman Loufti Obeidi on August 15, but strongly refused to provide any assistance.[70] Iraqi exile Sa'ad Jabr discussed the coup planning with officials at the U.S. embassy in Beirut on December 8; embassy officials reiterated that the U.S. could not involve itself in the conspiracy, although on December 10 the State Department authorized the embassy to tell Jabr "we would be prepared to consider prompt resumption of diplomatic relations and would certainly be disposed to cooperate within the limits of existing legislation and our overall policy" if the "new government prove[d] to be moderate and friendly."[72][73] In late August 1970, the CIA was informed of another plot to overthrow the Ba'athist government, which was being organized by Shia dissidents.[75]
In the aftermath of the March Accord, Iranian and Israeli officials tried to persuade the Nixon administration that the agreement was part of a Soviet plot to free up Iraq's military for aggression against Iran and Israel, but U.S. officials refuted these claims by noting that Iraq had resumed purging ICP members on March 23, 1970, and that Saddam was met with a "chilly" reception during his visit to Moscow on August 4–12, during which he requested deferment on Iraq's considerable foreign debt. Iraqi–Soviet relations improved rapidly in late 1971 in response to the Soviet Union's deteriorating alliance with Egyptian leader Anwar al-Sadat, who succeeded Nasser following the latter's death on September 28, 1970. However, even after Iraq signed a secret arms deal with the Soviets in September 1971, which was finalized during Soviet Defense Minister Andrei Grechko's December trip to Baghdad and "brought the total of Soviet military aid to Iraq to above the $750 million level," the State Department remained skeptical that Iraq posed any threat to Iran.[79] On April 9, 1972, Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin signed "a 15-year treaty of friendship and cooperation" with al-Bakr, but U.S. officials were not "outwardly perturbed" by this development, because, according to the NSC staff, it was not "surprising or sudden but rather a culmination of existing relationships."[81]
It has been suggested that Nixon was initially preoccupied with pursuing his policy of détente with the Soviet Union and with the May 1972 Moscow Summit, but later sought to assuage the Shah's concerns about Iraq during his May 30–31 trip to Tehran. In a May 31 meeting with the Shah, Nixon vowed that the U.S. "would not let down [its] friends," promising to provide Iran with sophisticated weapons ("including F-14s and F-15s") to counter the Soviet Union's agreement to sell Iraq Mig-23 jets. According to Nixon's National Security Adviser and later Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, and numerous scholars, Nixon also agreed to a covert operation to assist Barzani's Kurdish rebels while in Tehran. (Barzani had resumed his alliance with Iran and Israel after a December 1970 assassination attempt on his son Idris, which he held the Ba'ath Party responsible for.) There is, however, no official record that this occurred, with the only record that Nixon approved the operation being an August 1 memo from Kissinger to 40 Committee principals.[82] It is therefore plausible that two additional factors ultimately convinced Nixon to approve the operation, despite widespread opposition to supporting the Kurds within the State Department and CIA: Iraq's complete nationalization of the IPC on June 1, after Iraq began exporting oil from North Rumaila to the Soviet Union in April; and the July 18 withdrawal of 15,000 Soviet military personnel from Egypt, which Kissinger's deputy, General Alexander Haig, Jr., predicted on July 28 "will probably result in more intense Soviet efforts in Iraq."
From October 1972 until the abrupt end of the Kurdish intervention after March 1975, the CIA "provided the Kurds with nearly $20 million in assistance," including 1,250 tons of non-attributable weaponry. The main goal of U.S. policy-makers was to increase the Kurds's ability to negotiate a reasonable autonomy agreement with the government of Iraq. To justify the operation, U.S. officials cited Iraq's support for international terrorism and its repeated threats against neighboring states, including Iran (where Iraq supported Baluchi and Arab separatists against the Shah) and Kuwait (Iraq launched an unprovoked attack on a Kuwaiti border post and claimed the Kuwaiti islands of Warbah and Bubiyan in May 1973), with Haig remarking: "There can be no doubt that it is in the interest of ourselves, our allies, and other friendly governments in the area to see the Ba'thi regime in Iraq kept off balance and if possible overthrown."[87] After Nixon's resignation in August 1974, President Gerald Ford was briefed about the Kurdish intervention on a "need-to-know" basis—leaving Kissinger, former CIA director and ambassador to Iran Richard Helms, Arthur Callahan (chief of the CIA Station in Tehran), and Callahan's deputy—to actually implement the U.S. policy. To prevent leaks, the State Department was not informed of the operation. In fact, the State Department had dispatched Arthur Lowrie to establish a U.S. Interests Section in Baghdad shortly prior to Nixon's decision to support the Kurds; the Interests Section officially opened on October 1, 1972. Lowrie repeatedly warned that there was a power struggle between moderates and extremists within the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, and that the Shah's aggressive posture towards Iraq, combined with the Ba'ath Party's belief that the U.S. sought to overthrow it, empowered the extremists while forcing Iraq to turn towards the Soviet Union for arms resupply.[91] Helms and the CIA rejected Lowrie's analysis and his proposal that the U.S. try to improve relations with Iraq, with Helms stating "[We] are frankly skeptical that in practice we could help the moderates without building up our extremist enemies." The CIA went further, producing a report that cautioned "the level of political violence is very high... This is not a happy situation nor a happy government for the US to try to do business with."[93] After a failed coup attempt on June 30, 1973, Saddam consolidated control over Iraq and made a number of positive gestures towards the U.S. and the West, such as refusing to participate in the Saudi-led oil embargo following the Yom Kippur War, but these actions were largely ignored in Washington.
On March 11, 1974, the Iraqi government gave Barzani 15 days to accept a new autonomy law, which "fell far short of what the regime had promised the Kurds in 1970, including long-standing demands like a proportional share of oil revenue and the inclusion of the oil-rich and culturally significant city of Kirkuk into the autonomous region" and "gave the regime a veto over any Kurdish legislation." Barzani allowed the deadline to lapse, triggering the outbreak of the Second Iraqi–Kurdish War in April. Although the CIA had stockpiled "900,000 pounds of non-attributable small arms and ammunition" to prepare for this contingency, the Kurds were in a weak position due to their lack of anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons. Moreover, Soviet advisers contributed to a change in Iraq's tactics that decisively altered the trajectory of the war, allowing the Iraqi army to finally achieve steady gains against the Kurds where it had failed in the past. To prevent a collapse of the Kurdish resistance, Kissinger negotiated a deal with Israel to provide the Kurds with $28 million in heavy weaponry, but all assistance came to a sudden end shortly after the Shah and Saddam embraced one another at a press conference in Algiers on March 6, 1975: Saddam had agreed to a concession on the border of the Shatt al-Arab waterway in return for an end to "all subversive infiltration from either side." The increasingly overt Iranian involvement necessary to stave off a Kurdish defeat—including the presence of Iranian soldiers dressed in Kurdish uniforms, who participated in combat for as long as 10 days at a time, thus raising the possibility that further escalation might lead to "open war" between Iran and Iraq—combined with assurances from Arab leaders including Sadat, King Hussein, and Algeria's Houari Boumédiène that "Saddam Hussein was ready to pull Iraq out of [the] Soviet orbit if Iran would take away the [Kurdish revolt] which was forcing them into the arms of the Soviets"—also helped convince the Shah that an accommodation with Iraq was necessary and desirable.[100] In the aftermath, over 100,000 Kurds fled to Iran, while the Iraqi government brutally consolidated its control over Iraqi Kurdistan—destroying as many as 1,400 villages by 1978, imprisoning 600,000 Kurds in resettlement camps, and ultimately waging a campaign of genocide against the Kurds in 1988.
A leaked Congressional investigation led by Otis Pike and a February 4, 1976 New York Times article written by William Safire[102] have heavily influenced subsequent scholarship regarding the conduct of the Kurdish intervention. As a result, there is a widespread belief that U.S. officials prodded Barzani into rejecting the Iraqi government's initial offer of autonomy, cynically agreed to "sell out" the Kurds at the Shah's behest, refused to provide any humanitarian assistance for Kurdish refugees, and failed to respond to "a heartbreaking letter" Barzani sent Kissinger on March 10, 1975, in which he stated: "Our movement and people are being destroyed in an unbelievable way with silence from everyone." In fact, declassified documents reveal that U.S. officials warned Barzani against his proposal to declare autonomy unilaterally, as they knew doing so would provoke the Iraqi government, even as the goal of permanently dividing Iraq and maintaining an autonomous Kurdish government would require massive resources irreconcilable with plausible deniability.[106] However, Barzani could never have accepted Iraq's "watered-down autonomy law," as it was inconsistent with the terms of the March Accord and ignored outstanding Kurdish demands. The Shah's "sell-out" blindsided American and Israeli officials, as well as his own advisers; Kissinger had personally lobbied the Shah against reaching any agreement with Iraq, and questioned the logic of "trad[ing] a valuable coercive asset... for a modest border concession." The U.S. provided $1 million in aid to Kurdish refugees—and, on March 17, Kissinger responded to Barzani's letter: "We can understand that the difficult decisions which the Kurdish people now face are a cause of deep anguish for them. We have great admiration for the courage and dignity with which those people have confronted many trials, and our prayers are with them."[110] With neither Iran nor Turkey willing to allow their territory to be used to support the Kurds, the U.S. and Israel were forced to abandon their assistance. According to Gibson, "The Pike Report ignored inconvenient truths; misattributed quotes; falsely accused the United States of not providing the Kurds with any humanitarian assistance; and, finally, claimed that Kissinger had not responded to Barzani's tragic plea, when in fact he had... This was not the 'textbook case of betrayal and skulduggery' that the Pike Report had led many people to believe."[112] Gibson concedes that U.S. involvement was self-serving and "advanced America's Cold War interests, though not entirely at the expense of the Kurds." Joost Hiltermann offers a contrasting analysis: "The exoneration shouldn't go unqualified. Kissinger cared for the Kurds only to the extent that they could be used in the pursuit of US interests, and he would surely have abandoned them sooner or later."[114]
Iraq 1979 [ edit ]
Longtime CIA officer George Cave met with the Iranian Deputy Prime Minister Abbas Amir-Entezam and Foreign Minister Ebrahim Yazdi on October 15, 1979 as part of an intelligence-sharing liaison approved by Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Harold H. Saunders; this preceded the initiation of the Iran hostage crisis on November 4. Cave told Mark J. Gasiorowski that he "warned Iran's leaders of Iraqi invasion preparations and told them how they could monitor these preparations and thus take steps to counter them." However, while Entezam and Yazdi corroborated Cave's account of the briefing, neither man seems to have shared this information with other Iranian officials, perhaps out of fear that their relationship with a CIA officer would be misconstrued. Owing largely to extensive post–revolutionary purges of its armed forces, Iran was in fact grossly unprepared for Iraq's invasion of Iran in September 1980. The veracity of the underlying intelligence supporting Cave's warning, and its implications with regard to allegations that the U.S. gave Saddam a "green-light" to invade Iran, have been debated. Gasiorowski contended that "If Iran's leaders had acted on the information provided in Cave's briefings... the brutal eight–year [Iran–Iraq War] might never have occurred."[115][116][117]
Iraq 1982 [ edit ]
On July 27, 1982, at the direction of the Reagan administration's NSC, Thomas Twetten arrived in Baghdad to share CIA satellite imagery on Iranian troop movements with the Iraqi Mukhabarat. This was "the first U.S. provision of intelligence to Iraq" during the Iran–Iraq War, and sparked a short-lived debate over whether Iraq would tolerate a CIA presence in the country: Mukhabarat head Barzan Tikriti told Twetton to "get the hell out of Iraq," but Iraqi military intelligence—"having already drooled over it and having said repeatedly how valuable it was"—subsequently informed Twetton "we'll continue to look at your information, and we'll assess whether it is of use to us in any way." This intelligence may have played a crucial role in blocking the Iranian invasion of Iraq in 1982. According to Twetton: "One of our officers met one of the Iraqi military intelligence officers in Kurdistan about three years ago. He said that the intelligence we provided to them made all the difference. It prevented an Iraqi collapse."[118]
Iraq 1984 [ edit ]
In 1984, the CIA "established a formal intelligence liaison" with the Mukhabarat, which provided the CIA with information on terrorist groups including the Abu Nidal Organization. However, there was a delay between the CIA's provision of intelligence to the Mukhabarat and that intelligence being received and analyzed by the Iraqi military, which resulted in much of it not being actionable. Therefore, the CIA eventually began working directly with Iraqi military intelligence, thereby negating its leverage on Iraqi-sponsored terrorism.[119]
Iraq 1991 [ edit ]
The CIA provided intelligence support to the U.S. military in Operation |
09/03/12 Los Angeles, CA at Down and Out Bar
09/07/12 Kansas City, MO at Club MustacheSo who wants to fly to Mars... one way? Mission for volunteers receives over 1,000 applications from budding astronauts before it was even announced
Dutch firm plans reality TV show to choose its team
Plans to land four astronauts on the red planet in 2023, with four more arriving every two years
To boldly go where no man has gone before is quite a challenge.
But to boldly go knowing that you will never return to Earth may be asking a bit too much.
This has not deterred a Dutch-led research institute, however, which has launched a search for volunteers to take part in a one-way mission to Mars... where they would set up a human settlement.
Scroll down for video
Endemol, the production company behind Big Brother, has announced that it will document the progress of a group of hopefuls as they compete for a 2025 ticket to the red planet. This illustration shows what the settlement on Mars would look like
WANT TO GO TO MARS?
Mars One says it is not necessary to have military training nor experience in flying aircraft nor even a science degree. Candidates must:
'Be at least 18 years of age, have a deep sense of purpose, willingness to build and maintain healthy relationships, the capacity for self-reflection and ability to trust.
They must be resilient, adaptable, curious, creative and resourceful.
Mars One is not seeking specific skill sets such as medical doctors, pilots or geologists.
Rather, candidates will receive a minimum of eight years extensive training while employed by Mars One. While any formal education or real-world experience can be an asset, all skills required on Mars will be learned while in training' To apply, click here
Successful candidates will have to undergo eight years of training before blast-off in 2023.
The Mars One Institute pulled no punches yesterday: ‘They should realise that if this project is successful, they won’t be coming back.’
Former NASA researcher Norbert Kraft, Mars One’s medical director, said: ‘Gone are the days when bravery and the number of hours flying a supersonic jet were the top criteria for selection.
'Now, we are more concerned with how well each astronaut works and lives with the others – and for a lifetime of challenges ahead.’
Mars One aims to raise money to help fund the project through a long-running, global, reality TV show, which will select the first 24 candidates and follow their training.
Viewers would vote for who should be on the first team of four to leave Earth in ten years time. By 2033 the colony would reach 20 settlers.
Journey time to Mars, which is approximately 40million miles away depending on its position in orbit, would be around 200 days.
Settlers would encounter a barren, cratered landscape, an unbreathable atmosphere made up of 95 per cent carbon dioxide and temperatures ranging from 35C to minus 135C.
Mars One will launch several unmanned missions in the next 10 years to prepare the ground for the arrival of the colonists. The Mars lander and rover, illustration pictured, will help scout out ideal locations for the colony
The Dutch-based project wants to launch a supply mission to land on Mars by October 2016. The landing systems will be tested eight times before they are used to transport humans - a move that Mars One said will make the trips'much safer than moon missions' Journey time to Mars, which is approximately 40 million miles away depending on its position in orbit, would be around 200 days. An artist's illustration of the colony is picturedAbout DRT
What it is:
Psychotherapy conducted outdoors.
As much about sitting and walking as it is about running.
Client led.
Adheres to the UKCP and BACP Code of Ethics
What it is not:
It is not a kind of exercise regime.
It is not all about running.
It is not a get fit quick routine – physical, mental, or emotional.
How it works:
DRT is fundamentally the linking of movement (walking/running) with traditional talk therapy. It replaces the static atmosphere of the therapists’ office with an outside environment rich in life, change, and possibility. Less confrontative than an office where client and therapist “face – off” to one another, with DRT the therapist joins the client side by side, sharing each step.
Most people can recall instances where walking has facilitated deep conversation. Walking /running can result in a step by step “metronomic” sense of real progress and understanding. Clients feel they are taking bodily, proactive steps towards addressing their issues. This allows them to reach deep and locate, acknowledge, and “work” through whatever they bring.
What movements are we talking about? We may sit, walk, or run. It all depends on how you feel. We will look to see if your struggles in life are enacted in how you move in the world and in the sessions. Are you housebound or out too much? Do you get ahead of yourself or hold yourself back? Do you pace yourself but can never just let go?
Together we will examine and challenge your choices, assumptions, and habits. DRT’s use of movement facilitates a flow into and through the issues that you have brought to therapy. Whether it is allowing for silence, breathing properly, or the feeling of the earth holding us as we lie, sit, or move, the aim is for a gentle “being with” whatever needs to be met, resolved, or let go of.
By combining movement with talk therapy, DRT addresses the different elements of the human “operating system”, capitalizing on the synergy found in the “mind, body, and spirit”. We have found that when people make progress in one of these areas it is often also experienced in another. DRT capitalizes on this complimentary system to facilitate a sense of momentum and growth. An example of this may be a client experiencing depression who not only enjoys the added lift provided by exercise but also experiences a sense of progress by showing up and actively addressing his/her situation. Each component compliments the other, resulting in a deep-seated and powerful sense of growth.
When do we move, when do we sit? Who decides?
The answer is that the work together is very much a mutual endeavor. The therapist may make suggestions but fundamentally it is for the client to check in with themselves and their body to see what feels appropriate. If there is a loss of drive and direction we look at this – we may do the same if there is a struggle to sit still. It is an important component of DRT that the client is empowered to lead the way to their own recovery as soon as they feel comfortable to do so.
Reading body language.
For some clients it may be a long time since they respected the messages and needs of their body. DRT allows for a “reunion” of sorts to take place in a similar way to yoga. This can be a powerful and rewarding experience.
This takes place via regular “checking in”, whereby a note is made of changes in non-verbal cues such as posture, speed, and breathing. These changes are often informative about what is being discussed or experienced. This may then be practiced by the client in their own time. DRT draws on the “felt sense”, helping clients to notice and be “mindful” of what is going on inside them.
DRT and depression.
For those struggling with depression DRT can be practical and powerful way to make a change. It is an active step toward doing something. If the client is withdrawn to the point that talk is difficult we respect that, but ask that they still come, because showing up is a kind of commitment to change. And while we believe there is place for a pharmacological intervention in more extreme cases of depression, it is also our understanding that depression may indicate a need to stop and look at an important issue or block. Therefore we work hard with the client to try to understand the intricacy of their experience.
DRT and trauma/addiction.
DRT may also be ideal for those recovering from emotional or physical traumas such as illness, divorce and addiction. For those in recovery it can provide a regular commitment during the week which is both stabilizing and nurturing. Again, movement can encourage a closer and more respectful relationship with the body, leading to a greater sense of physical and emotional completeness – something often lost during substance abuse. This can be beneficial for those with internet/pornography addiction as well.
DRT and anxiety/sadness/tiredness.
For those suffering from sadness, anxiety, or tiredness, DRT can feel like a proactive step in the right direction. An article in Therapy Today quotes Richard Mitchell, Professor of Health and Environment at Glasgow University: “Physical activity in a natural environment gives you a double dose – both a biological and psychological response that protects against mental ill health…It can and does make people feel better about themselves”.
What does the process entail?
Emphasis is placed on gaining a fundamental understanding of the issue(s) at hand. When did it begin? How bad is it and when does it get better or worse? What do you do to cope? This process may take time, may be revisited, and the pace is set by the client.
If we are working toward change, we then ask what this change would look like. What would you like to change specifically? How would that change effect your life and what would others notice? What are some of the steps we can take toward it? How can we recognize and capitalize on a step that has been useful? What helps to motivate you and keep you motivated? During the period we are working together you will be asked to keep a note (mental or written) of progress between sessions. We will also ask for regular feedback on our work together.
On what theoretical foundation is DRT based?
DRT is an integrative psychotherapy grounded in person centred, existential, and solution based psychotherapy. In part this means it is non-directive and non-judgemental with an interest where applicable on such existential themes as freedom, choice, and suffering. As an Integrative Psychotherapy it aims to facilitate wholeness between the feeling, behavioural, cognitive, and physiological levels of functioning – in other words the whole person. It also means that the therapist may tailor their approach by drawing on their knowledge of different schools of psychotherapy according to what their experience tells them will work best with your personality and situation (some people may be seeking greater clarity in their lives, others may want to take a bit of space and time, while others may have a specific goal or a solution to a dilemma in mind).
DRT core beliefs:
Clients have the resources and strengths to solve their problems
Clients are the experts and thus define their goals
Emphasis is placed on what is possible and can be changed
Client feedback is critical to efficacy
DRT provides a powerful therapeutic alliance derived from a shared movement in the same direction. The beauty, space, and smells found in parks and open ground allow the client to see their worries and pain through a greater perspective resulting in a deep and holistic sense of wellness.
If this sounds like something that you could benefit from, please take the first step today, get in touch – every great journey starts with a single step…Excerpts:
"(U) Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists are taught to expect Americans to abuse them. They are recruited based on false propaganda that says the United States is out to destroy Islam. Treating detainees harshly only reinforces that distorted view, increases resistance to cooperation, and creates new enemies. In fact, the April 2006 National Intelligence Estimate “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States” cited “pervasive anti U.S. sentiment among most Muslims” as an underlying factor fueling the spread of the global jihadist movement. Former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee in June 2008 that “there are serving U.S. flag-rank officers who maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq – as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat – are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.”
(U) The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of “a few bad apples” acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees. Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority. This report is a product of the Committee’s inquiry into how those unfortunate results came about
A. Conclusions on GTMO’s Request for Aggressive Techniques:
Conclusion 13: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques for use at Guantanamo Bay was a direct cause of detainee abuse there. Secretary Rumsfeld’s December 2, 2002 approval of Mr. Haynes’s recommendation that most of the techniques contained in GTMO’s October 11, 2002 request be authorized, influenced and contributed to the use of abusive techniques, including military working dogs, forced nudity, and stress positions, water boarding in Afghanistan and Iraq.
B. Conclusions on Interrogations in Iraq and Afghanistan:
Conclusion 15: Special Mission Unit (SMU) Task Force (TF) interrogation policies were influenced by the Secretary of Defense’s December 2, 2002 approval of aggressive interrogation techniques for use at GTMO. SMU TF interrogation policies in Iraq included the use of aggressive interrogation techniques such as military working dogs and stress positions. SMU TF policies were a direct cause of detainee abuse and influenced interrogation policies at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq.
Conclusion 19: The abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own. Interrogation techniques such as stripping detainees of their clothes, placing them in stress positions, and using military working dogs to intimidate them appeared in Iraq only after they had been approved for use in Afghanistan and at GTMO. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s December 2, 2002 authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques and subsequent interrogation policies and plans approved by senior military and civilian officials conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees in U.S. military custody. What followed was an erosion in standards dictating that detainees be treated humanely."
-Report Released by Senators. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) & John McCain (R-Ariz.) 12.12.2008. Image: Illustration - "Prison Life in America Showing the "Trapeze", Torture Of Hanging By The Thumbs". Life Magazine, 1871).
-Former U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld (Comments at a Department of Defense Briefing, 3.28.03)."Senate Armed Services Committee Inquiry Into The Treatment Of Detainees In U.S.Custody"AmForth is an easily extendible command interpreter for the Atmel AVR8 Atmega micro controller family and some variants of the TI MSP430. The RISC-V CPU (32bit) is currently beeing worked on. It has a turnkey feature for embedded use too.
AmForth is published under the GNU Public License v3 (GPL). A commercial use is possible but for traditional commercial uses there are commercial Forths — amForth just is not one of them.
AmForth runs completely on the controller. It does not need additional hardware. It makes no restrictions for hardware extensions that can be connected to the controller. The default command prompt is in a serial terminal.
The command language is Forth. AmForth implements an almost compatible Forth 2012 indirect threading 16bit Forth.
AmForth for the AVR8 needs 8 to 12 KB Flash memory, 80 bytes EEPROM, and 200 bytes RAM for the core system. A similar code for the MSP430 fits into 8KB flash. The MSP430 info flash is used for similar purposes as the EEPROM for the AVR8 platform.
The 32-bit variants for ARM and RISC-V are experimental. They share most of the high-level code with the 16-bit variants.
Work In Progress¶ Here you’ll find things that are not yet released but will be part of the next release. See the code section at Sourceforge to get the most recent sources
7.1.2019: release 6.8¶ core(ARM32): new target ARM with 32bit word size using the Cortex M4 board LM4F120XL TI Stellaris Launchpad and as a Linux-ARM program.
with 32bit word size using the Cortex M4 board TI Stellaris Launchpad and as a program. core(ARM32+RV32): compile to RAM, introducing the RAM Wordlist as target.
as target. core(AVR8): small fixes for bigger Atmegas. Thanks to Martin.
core(RV32): numerous small improvements.
24.7.2018: release 6.7¶ core(RV32): new target RISC-V with the Hifive1, interpreter mode only.
with the, interpreter mode only. core(ALL): Fix some errors in accept in corner cases. Thanks to Richard.
3.10.2017: release 6.6¶ core(ALL): Update to Recognizer v4 keyword set.
doc(ALL): Using Gerald Wodni’s module for LCD HD44780.
. core(ALL): new deferred prompt word.input. Prompts
. core(AVR8): More work in interrupt reliability.
core(ALL): factor (create-in) (addr len wid – ) to make a new wordlist entry in a given wordlist without XT and data area.
30.4.2017: release 6.5¶ core(AVR8): redesigned interrupt handling to improve reliability. Thanks to Erich.
core(MSP430): highly experimental support for interrupt service routines in Forth for MSP430 2553. Manually enable it if your’re brave the same way the AVR’s work. Interrupts on the MSP430 and Interrupt Service Routines.Left - David Shankbone / CCL Right - YouTube
Resorting to personal attacks rather than engaging in civil debate has been a favored strategy of leftists ever since President Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.
Still angry over Clinton’s loss, Rosie O’Donnell referred to White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders as “suckabee” on Wednesday, tweeting “history is watching you.”
“Suckabee” Sanders
During a White House press briefing, Sanders was asked about a report from the New York Times titled “Russian Dirt on Clinton? ‘I Love It,’ Donald Trump Jr. Said,” where it was revealed that Trump Jr. took a meeting in June 2016 with a Russian attorney who promised to provide “incriminating information” on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Sanders denied allegations of collusion between Trump officials and members of the Russian government, and instead reminded the media that former aides of Hillary Clinton coordinated with Ukrainian government officials in their efforts to win the 2016 presidential election.
Unfamiliar with the facts, O’Donnell claimed Sanders wasn’t being honest by trying to “impugn efforts by Ukraine officials to warn Democrats” about former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his “shadowy” connections to the Ukrainian government.
ROSIE on Twitter hey suckabee – we see thru u – watch maddow tonight – she will tell u what ur next move is – and by the way – history is watching you sarah
Real collusion
Evidently, O’Donnell was unaware of the Politico report from January 2017 which detailed how the Ukrainian government attempted to coordinate with the Clinton campaign to defeat Trump in the 2016 election.
Politico reported:
Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election.
Ukranian officials “helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers,” according to Politico.
Alexandra Chalupa, a consultant for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) who had worked in the White House Office of Public Liaison during the Clinton administration, told Politico she had “developed a network of sources in Kiev and Washington, including investigative journalists, government officials and private intelligence operatives.”
She shared the information she uncovered about Trump and then-campaign manager Paul Manafort with the DNC.
Common O’Donnell tactic
O’Donnell has frequently verbally attacked members of the Trump administration, as well as members of the president’s family.
The comedian attacked Barron Trump, son of Donald and Melania Trump, when she accused him of being autistic. She shared a video of Barron in November 2016, writing, “Barron Trump Autistic? If so – what an amazing opportunity to bring attention to the AUTISM epidemic.”
O’Donnell is one of many leftists employing rhetorical assaults against the Trump administration.
Ahead of crucial Senate elections in 2018, Democrats have as yet failed to formulate a message that will resonate with voters; instead they appear to be doubling down on the strategy of insulting their way back into political power.
JOIN THE MOVEMENT. Add your best email address below to start receiving news alerts. Sign Up Privacy PolicyGaza terrorists fired a rocket at Dimona Wednesday, where Israel's nuclear reactor is located. The rocket fell wide of its mark and caused no casualties or damage. Channel 2 said this was the first time a terror rocket was fired at the sensitive site.
Terrorists fired about 20 Grad Katyusha missiles at Be'er Sheva, after firing at Sderot and Ashkelon. There have been no reports of casualties. Iron Dome anti-missile batteries successfully intercepted most of the rockets fired at Be'er Sheva. One woman was reportedly lightly hurt in Be'er Sheva.
At least two rockets were fired at Ashdod. Iron Dome intercepted one but a second one fell within the city, in an open space. No one was hurt.
Rockets were also fired at Ofakim.
The IDF released video of a Fajr rocket being placed inside a concrete silo at an unknown date in the past. The IAF is believed to have hit most of the Fajr rockets that have been hidden in Gaza.
The IDF also released an aerial photo showing the proximity between a Fajr launch site and civilian structures, including a kindergarten.
Loading....Image copyright NASA/Colorado School of Mines Image caption The Moon as we see it (L), in terms of height variation (C), and from surface gravity variations (R)
Scientists have identified a huge rectangular feature on the Moon that is buried just below the surface.
The 2,500km-wide structure is believed to be the remains of old rift valleys that later became filled with lava.
Centred on the Moon's Procellarum region, the feature is really only evident in gravity maps acquired by Nasa's Grail mission in 2012.
But knowing now of its existence, it is possible to trace the giant rectangle's subtle outline even in ordinary photos.
Mare Frigoris, for example, a long-recognised dark stripe on the lunar surface, is evidently an edge to the ancient rift system.
"It's really amazing how big this feature is," says Prof Jeffery Andrews-Hanna.
"It covers about 17% of the surface of the Moon. And if you think about that in terms relative to the size of the Earth, it covers an area equivalent to North America, Europe and Asia combined," the Colorado School of Mines scientist told BBC News.
"When we first saw it in the Grail data, we were struck by how big it was, how clear it was, but also by how unexpected it was.
"No-one ever thought you'd see a square or a rectangle on this scale on any planet."
The study is reported in Nature magazine.
Image copyright NASA/Colorado School of Mines Image caption The full Moon as seen from the Earth, with the Procellarum border structure superimposed in red
So how was this extraordinary feature produced?
Andrews-Hanna and colleagues note that the Procellarum region contains a lot of naturally occurring radioactive elements, such as uranium, thorium and potassium.
On the early Moon, these would have heated the crust, which, when it cooled would have contracted.
Image copyright NASA Image caption Mare Frigoris is evidently an edge to the ancient rift valley system
This shrinking, they propose, would have ripped the surface, opening deep valleys. The geometry is the giveaway.
On Earth, cooling and contraction will preferentially produce hexagons containing 120-degree angles.
The famous Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland is a classic example on the small scale, but even in bigger settings, such as in East Africa's rift valleys, geological lines tend to intersect in this way.
Procellarum's giant rectangle does the same, too - because the entire feature is draped over a sphere. This means the angles at the corners are wider than 90 degrees.
"What we're seeing is a clever trick of spherical geometry. For structures on this scale, a polygon with 120-degree angles at the corners actually has four sides instead of six," explained Prof Andrews-Hanna.
The team cannot tell when the rifting occurred, but the dating of Moon rocks brought back by Apollo would suggest the valleys were filled by volcanic lavas about 3.5 billion years ago.
Image caption Giant's Causeway: Cooling basaltic rock naturally fractures into hexagons
Image copyright NASA Image caption The Grail satellites sensed very subtle variations in the pull of gravity across the Moon's surface
The new study goes some way to resolving arguments over the origins of Procellarum, which looks different to other, more circular mare (dark regions) on the Moon's surface.
For these regions, big asteroid impacts were more important in sculpting their forms.
The study is also further proof of the value of the Grail mission, led from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
This comprised two, near-identical satellites that chased each other around the Moon over the course of a year.
They mapped changes in the pull of gravity as they flew over areas of differing mass.
Big mountains will have a different signal that is distinct to deep depressions, obviously. But the data also reveals those locations that have discrete rock types and densities.
In the case of Procellarum, the Grail pair sensed an excess of mass stemming from the presence of all the basaltic lava filling the rift valleys.
Image copyright NASA/Colorado School of Mines Image caption The feature stands out in this Mercator map projection of the changes in gravity
Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmosFor an upcoming book discussion, I drafted the following announcement:
“ Social Security is immoral.” – Don Watkins
Come and join us for a discussion of Don Watkins’ new book Rooseveltcare: How Social Security is Sabotaging the Land of Self-Reliance. In a brief 125 pages, Watkins argues that America should liberate the productive young from being drafted into financially supporting the idle elderly as mandated by Social Security and its related wealth transfer welfare programs.
Through our government schools and the news media, young producers have been indoctrinated with the contradictory ideas that the elderly have already paid for their own future benefits AND that it is the duty of the young to pay the taxes to pay the current spending of these programs. Now, that contradiction is coming to a head as the Social Security Trust Funds have been already been spent on past federal welfare programs and taxes on the productive young MUST be raised to maintain the promised benefits to the idle elderly.
No biggie? How does paying $400k in taxes more than the future benefits received sound to you? That is the debt for old age welfare programs owed by our current infants and toddlers. Social Security…it’s like stealing a flourishing life from a baby.
How did this happen? Is there an alternative that protects the innocent victims of Social Security, both young and old? In his book, Watkins addresses these critical questions by starting with a factual review of both the history of the program and its consequential attacks upon America’s culture of self-reliance.
The book is available for purchase in both paperback and Kindle. Additionally, it is available gratis in pdf format.
For additional information on the book, check out the End the Debt Draft Campaign.
Here is a list of questions that you may want to consider as you read (or re-read) the book:
What was America like before Social Security?
Under what terms was Social Security sold to our citizens? How is that contradicted by Social Security’s actual legal terms?
What impact has Social Security and resulting additional welfare programs had upon America’s culture of self-reliance?
What are the myths that perpetuate the Social Security Ponzi scheme?
In the face of this fiscal train wreck, what can we do now? [Hint: Plenty and it starts with facing the facts!]
As a selfish citizen, what could you do about this?
If you are in the DC area, let me know and I can invite you to our event.
Read the book!
Reuse the above (permission granted) to organize your own discussion of the book.
Take advantage of the legislative elections to voice your opposition to Social Security to your candidates and community.
If you have a campus based organization, attempt to secure Don Watkins to speak at your campus.
AdvertisementsBerlin recently became the first of Germany's 16 federal states to allow children to legally make a noise. Joanna Robertson, currently based in Berlin with two daughters, compares the varying attitudes to children she has encountered in Berlin, Paris, New York City and Rome. Germany has strict laws to ensure children are seen but not heard In the beginning, it was the telephone. "Frau Robertson?" "Yes?" "I know your daughter's up there. She's playing, isn't she?" Then came the doorbell. Neglecting, for once, to peep through the spy-hole I opened the door, all unawares. There she stood, square in the hallway, the neighbour from the third floor. A successful detective novelist with a penchant for Parisian murders, she muscled her way in and could not be muscled-out again for quite some time. The problem? My three-year-old daughter, Miranda - weight: under three stone; footwear: soft bedroom slippers - was allegedly making a noise. Only she was not. For my own and other families in our quiet, solid apartment building, Berlin's concession to the sounds of childhood comes as an immense relief. The reward for keeping quiet in class? The teacher gives out a balloon filled with freezing water, to burst upon the head of a fellow pupil of one's choice
Children may now officially be children at least from Monday to Saturday, 0900 to 1900. For parents, there will at last be some protection from harassing neighbours. "Excessive child noise," warranted a police call-out to our building for the crying of a newborn baby and, one Saturday afternoon, a group of cheerful 12-year-olds playing a game of Monopoly. Berlin leaves me baffled. True to the spirit of the Brothers Grimm, childhood here is filled with wonders, but is unexpectedly grim. Two-faced There are toyshops by the hundreds. And puppet theatres. Sweetshops. Playgrounds with terrific slides. Ice creams scattered with gummi-bear jelly sweets. Sledging in winter, cycling in summer, tree-climbing and swimming in lakes. But should a little child fall off her bike, passers-by will laugh out loud. No mercy will be shown to a young child who has lost his ticket on the train, and beware like Hansel and Gretel children, those tempting German sweets. Your teeth must be brushed three times a day, or Croko the Tooth Cleaning Crocodile might just gobble you up. A Monopoly game meant a call from the police for some "noisy" youngsters Take my elder daughter, Lilli's, junior school. The reward for keeping quiet in class? The teacher gives out a balloon filled with freezing water, to burst upon the head of a fellow pupil of one's choice. An ancient history lesson included a film so gorily violent that even the toughest 10-year-olds covered their eyes. "That's what life is like," they were told. There is the science mistress who carries a long cane to "tap" wayward pupils. Recent school outings have included an unscheduled visit to a nuclear bunker, and a film about the struggles of an abandoned girl given up for international adoption. Childhood controls Back in middle-class Paris, such issues were censored. Childhood was strictly controlled. Small playgrounds, kept neat. Climbing frames with minimum age restrictions. Parks with formal lawns and avenues of white gravel, perfect for grazing children's knees. German and Italian parents differ radically on when to eat ice-cream The school system drilled the nation. From kindergarten upwards, Lilli was told when to sit, when to stand, when to go to the toilet. She practiced, with her pen, curls and loops and has handwriting the same as everyone else in France. There was speech therapy to perfect French children's French vowels. Lilli struggled home under the weight of her book-brimming schoolbag, sat almost daily tests and three times a year brought-in a school report that said little about her, but listed her marks and her position in class to the second decimal place. In the two-hour lunch break in a small, bleak courtyard no books were allowed, and there was certainly no playing football with the boys. Parental angst Life in Manhattan was all "developmental milestones". By the sandpit (or "sandbox"), parents' talk was anxious. Would Maxwell master his pencil-hold, and get into that preschool? Why was two-year-old Ashley not doing better at maths? On the health front, the obsessions were hyper-activity, attention deficit disorder, dyslexia, and dyspraxia, all largely ignored in France, where all anyone talked about was bronchitis. In Rome, it was paramount to cover one's child, even in hot weather, in case a breeze or a sweat should lead to a sudden chill
Here in Germany, I have discovered it is bowels, whereas back in Italy, it was chills. In Rome, it was paramount to cover one's child, even in hot weather, in case a breeze or a sweat should lead to a sudden chill. Ice-cream was never eaten on a cold day (something German children would find extraordinary), and never in one's Sunday best clothes, in case of spills. In a culture where the child was so often the centre of attention, it seemed that messy clothes were the only taboo. Lilli would happily rebel, making mud-pies, and fishing for tadpoles on the banks of the River Tiber. Confused by so many conflicting cultures the other day, I booked a telephone appointment with an international parenting counsellor from Washington State in the US, and obediently got up at 0400 GMT to talk. A soothing, disembodied voice from the Pacific North West recommended I immediately remove my children from school, that we all sleep together on cushions on the floor and switch to unpasteurised milk. I rang off, and remembered my sensible, Scottish roots. When it comes to one's children, I reminded myself, mother always knows best. How to listen to: From Our Own Correspondent Radio Four: Saturdays, 1130 BST. Second weekly edition on Thursdays, 1100 BST (some weeks only). World Service: See programme schedules Download the podcast Listen on iPlayer Story by story at the programme website
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionFor days after an ambush in southwestern Niger, U.S. Army Special Forces searched in vain for one of their own.
A small cohort of elite soldiers and the Nigerien troops they mentor had come under sustained and intense assault on Wednesday from a militant group near the border with Mali. Three of them died, Pentagon officials confirmed Thursday, and two others were wounded.
But there was a fourth soldier on the mission—one who will never make it home from a place most of his countrymen never realized he was fighting. Pentagon officials appeared to obliquely refer to him on Thursday, when they batted away questions about the Niger ambush by mentioning “ongoing partnered operations” were underway.
The Daily Beast had agreed not to publish an account of the missing soldier until his status was resolved, which The Daily Beast’s sources confirmed Friday afternoon. On Friday, Fox News’ Lucas Tomlinson tweeted that U.S. officials said the soldier’s body had been found by locals, and CNN’s Barbara Starr swiftly confirmed it.
The violent deaths of four Special Forces soldiers deployed on an obscure mission, and the chaos that occurred in its aftermath, is likely to prompt intense questioning from Capitol Hill and elsewhere about the future of U.S. forces in Niger and beyond.
Much of what happened on a deadly day in Niger remains unclear so soon after the ambush. This story is based on knowledgeable sources within the special operations community, all of whom warn of the danger of over-examining preliminary accounts.
On Wednesday, fewer than 12 special forces soldiers, most but not all Green Berets, came in for an ambush during or after they were on patrol with the Nigerien soldiers they are in the country to mentor.
Anonymous U.S. officials have told reporters that the mission the special forces were on was a routine patrol. There is some confusion about how routine it was. One source told The Daily Beast that it was hardly commonplace, but rather a hunt for a specific terrorist target. Another one said that the team had some limited information about the target, but the patrol itself was not out of the ordinary.
A spokesman for U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), which oversees U.S. military operations on the continent, described the mission as outreach to local leaders.
Still, their convoy came under attack by approximately 40 or 50 militants, severely outnumbering the U.S. team. Starr reported the militants were equipped with rocket-propelled grenades as well as small arms. As the attack developed into a battle, three Americans were killed. The Pentagon released their names on Friday: Staff Sergeants Bryan Black, Jeremiah Johnson and Dustin Wright.
But the attack left a fourth member of the team separated from the rest. For over 48 hours, U.S. and allied forces attempted to locate him. A “full-court press” effort involved swarms of American, French and Nigerien military officials, as well as the U.S. ambassador, Eunice S. Reddick, who convinced the Nigerien government to allow the U.S. to bring additional surveillance and rescue assets into the country.
Sources described an increasingly wrenching experience as days passed without knowing if he was dead or alive, and fears circulated that he may have been captured. By Friday morning, a source indicated that the operating assumption was that the soldier was dead and the mission shifted from rescue to recovery.
The slain soldier’s body was found near the area of the ambush, said AFRICOM’s Colonel Mark R. Cheadle. Cheadle said they had no indication the soldier was ever captured by enemy forces he declined to identify, to deny them “any feeling of success.”
The U.S. |
80 percent of its goods exports.
Carmaking is no exception.
Mexico produced 3.22 million autos in the first 11 months of last year, and exported 2.55 million, local industry group AMIA said. Fully 77 percent of the exports went to the United States.
Some Mexican states have come to depend on autos almost entirely for growth. In San Luis Potosi, 15,000-17,000 new direct jobs are expected to be created in 2017, all in the auto sector, according to federal labor delegate Edgar Duron. The total does not include the Ford plant, which had been expected to create thousands of additional jobs in coming years.
The San Luis Potosi state government had already paid part of the 1 billion pesos ($47 million) it owed under a contract to support the Ford plant, Puente said, without specifying how much. The federal government said Ford would reimburse the sum.
Projects, both private and public, are underway to spend hundreds of millions of pesos to expand the city’s airport and build a new bus line in expectation of a busier future.
But the real fear in Mexico is that, as Trump himself tweeted after the Ford decision, “This is just the beginning.”
Outside the Goodyear plant in San Luis Potosi, 46-year-old Marcos Rodriguez, an engineer working on the facility, said that Mexico should assume that other sites are at risk.
“Here there’s a lot of equipment inside, so I think it would be a little more difficult,” he said. “(But) can they cancel it? I think they can.” (Editing by Dave Graham, Christian Plumb and Mary Milliken)Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Is losing a top job in 24 days a record?
Leading members of the US Republican Party have joined calls for a wide investigation into the former national security adviser's links with Russia.
Michael Flynn quit on Monday over claims he discussed US sanctions with Russia before Donald Trump took office.
On Tuesday, a White House spokesman said Mr Trump knew weeks ago there were problems with the Russia phone calls.
But calls for an independent investigation have encountered a cold response from some senior Republicans.
The development came as the New York Times reported that phone records and intercepted calls show members of Mr Trump's presidential campaign, as well as other Trump associates, "had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election".
However, officials spoken to by the newspaper said they had not yet seen evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia on the hacking of the Democratic National Committee or to influence the election.
As well as an FBI investigation, both the Senate and House intelligence committees are already examining Russian involvement in the election. It is not yet clear whether the latest claims will be included in their scope.
Why Mr Flynn resigned
He stood down over allegations he discussed US sanctions with a Russian envoy in December, before Mr Trump took office.
The conversations took place about the time that then-President Barack Obama was imposing retaliatory measures on Russia following reports it attempted to sway the US election in Mr Trump's favour.
Mr Flynn could have broken a law - known as the Logan Act - by conducting US diplomacy as a private citizen, before he was appointed as national security adviser.
More on the Flynn scandal
The retired army lieutenant-general initially denied having discussed sanctions with Ambassador Sergei Kislyak. Vice-President Mike Pence publicly denied the allegations on his behalf.
The White House admitted it had been warned about the contacts on 26 January but President Trump initially concluded Mr Flynn had not broken any law.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption White House press secretary Sean Spicer: "What this came down to, was a matter of trust"
White House lawyers then conducted a review and questioned Mr Flynn before reaching the same conclusion as Mr Trump, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said, but the trust had gone.
"In the end, it was misleading the vice-president that made the situation unsustainable," White House Counsellor Kellyanne Conway said on Tuesday.
Mr Flynn was also reportedly questioned by FBI agents in his first days as national security adviser, according to US media.
What Mr Flynn says
In an interview conducted with the conservative website The Daily Caller on Monday, but published only on Tuesday, Mr Flynn said he "crossed no lines" in his conversation with the ambassador.
He said he discussed the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats over alleged hacking ahead of the election, but "it wasn't about sanctions".
He said he was concerned that the apparently classified information had been leaked. "In some of these cases, you're talking about stuff that's taken off of a classified system and given to a reporter," he said. "That's a crime."
However, in his resignation letter, Mr Flynn said "the fast pace of events" during the presidential transition meant that he had "inadvertently briefed the vice-president elect and others with incomplete information regarding my phone calls with the Russian ambassador".
How are Republicans reacting?
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Kellyanne Conway said Gen Flynn either "misled" or "could not completely recall" his conversation
In his first public comments about the controversy, President Trump tweeted on Tuesday: "The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington? Will these leaks be happening as I deal on N Korea etc?"
US House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes told reporters on Tuesday he wanted to examine the leaks, and said the FBI should explain why Mr Flynn's conversation had been recorded.
But the Senate's second-ranking Republican,John Cornyn, and other Republican senators have called for an investigation into Mr Trump's connections with Russian officials.
Republican John McCain, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Mr Flynn's resignation was a "troubling indication of the dysfunction of the current national security apparatus", which raised questions about Mr Trump's intentions towards Russia.
Meanwhile, the Senate's most senior Republican, Mitch McConnell, said the intelligence committee was already looking into Russian influence on the election, indicating there was no need for a new investigative panel.
And Russia?
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia would not be commenting on the resignation.
"This is the internal affair of the Americans, the internal affair of the Trump administration," he added. "It's nothing to do with us."
Image copyright AP Image caption Mr Flynn was pictured dining with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in December 2015
What will America's allies think? - by BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus
Gen Flynn's resignation comes just as senior US officials are mounting a major effort to reassure uncertain allies in Europe about the Trump administration's intentions.
The new US Defence Secretary General James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Vice-President Mike Pence are all in Europe over the coming days. Gen Mattis is in the vanguard - he meets his Nato counterparts in Brussels on Wednesday.
There will be few tears shed within the alliance over Gen Flynn. His was widely seen as a bizarre and destabilising appointment.
But his demise and the rumbling row over team Trump's contacts with Russia continues to cause unease at Nato where many governments wonder at the Trump administration's resolve in standing up to what they see as a new assertiveness from Moscow.
Many key US officials are still to be appointed and the continuing chaos at the heart of the Trump administration is a cause for concern among Nato countries whatever reassurance the heavyweight US diplomatic trio may bring.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The US public has "serious questions" about US-Russia ties, says congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi
What happens next?
Democrat Adam Schiff, a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has said Mr Flynn's departure will not end questions about contacts between Trump's campaign and Russia. But there are various ways that these questions could be answered.
Two Democratic members of the House of Representatives have demanded a classified briefing to Congress on Michael Flynn by the justice department and FBI.
Several House Democrats had already called on Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz to launch an investigation into Mr Flynn's ties to Russia.
More on Trump's first 100 days:Federal Judge Richard Kopf, who was appointed to a U.S. District Court in Nebraska by George H.W. Bush, slammed the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision in his personal blog, Hercules and the Umpire, and told the judges to “stfu.”
He said that the court’s ruling looked bad, as the majority opinion was signed on to by five male, Catholic judges appointed by a Republican president.
“To the average person, the result looks stupid and smells worse,” he wrote. “The decision looks misogynist because the majority were all men. It looks partisan because all were appointed by a Republican. The decision looks religiously motivated because each member of the majority belongs to the Catholic church, and that religious organization is opposed to contraception.”
Kopf argued that the Supreme Court should have left the case alone, and should stay far away from controversial issues.
“Next term is the time for the Supreme Court to go quiescent–this term and several past terms has proven that the Court is now causing more harm (division) to our democracy than good by deciding hot button cases that the Court has the power to avoid. As the kids says [sic], it is time for the Court to stfu,” he wrote.
He linked to the Urban Dictionary definition of “stfu,” which is an abbreviation for “shut the fuck up.”
Kopf has maintained his colorful blog since February 2013. In March, he penned a controversial post about “how young women lawyers dress.”
“You can’t win. Men are both pigs and prudes. Get over it,” he wrote about how women should approach dressing for court, adding that he has “been a dirty old man ever since I was a very young man.”
[H/t Think Progress]Emergency crews were able to capture 23 of 30 venomous snakes on the loose in south Bexar County after their mode of transportation was involved in a rollover crash Thursday.
According to the Bexar County Sheriff's Office, a van crashed on Interstate 35 at Kinney Road after its tire blew out.
The van rolled into the access road, trapping the driver and a 9-year-old minor occupant inside with some 30 venomous snakes, including rattlesnakes and cottonmouths, as well as a baby alligator and a turtle.
The occupants were a herpetologist and his 9-year-old grandson. While officials say that they only suffered minor injuries, they were transported to SAMMC as a precaution.
Texas Parks and Wildlife enrolled the New Braunfels Snake Farm to help with the scene.
They also said that the San Antonio Zoo had people at the site assisting in apprehending the animals and that while nobody had been bitten by any of the snakes, nearby hospitals had been notified and had anti-venom on standby.
Assisting BCSO deputies in the scene was Lytle Animal Control Services and the Lytle Police Department.
This is a developing story. Please check Kens5.com for the latest details.Introduction
William S. Harley was a boy in Milwaukee who in 1901 got the notion that he would put an engine in a bicycle and he set about making it happen. Back then, young William Harley probably wasn't really thinking in terms of starting a motorcycle manufacturing business, he just wanted to build a motorised bike. His friends Arthur, William and Walter Davidson were also interested so they came alongside on the project. Arthur Davidson was the one most interested but his interest was mostly in getting a motorised bicycle so he could get to good fishing spots more effortlessly. He was a keen fisherman and he wanted a motorised bike, perhaps even with a side-car to carry all his fishing gear and the fish he caught. Many years later in 1919 Walter Davidson would confirm this when he said “The business had its origin, not through any particular idea on the part of the starters of it that there was a commercial future for the motorcycle, but through the desire to make a motorcycle for our personal use“. Click here to see all the vintage Harley-Davidsons on eBay. By 1903 the young men had a decent working prototype and it was taken racing in the Milwaukee Motorcycle Race of 1904 where, ridden by a man named Edward Hildebrand, it finished in a respectable fourth place. These early Harley-Davidson motorcycles were single cylinder 440cc bikes with the engine developing 4hp. William Harley and the Davidsons got into limited production of kits that people could use to motorise their own bicycle and by 1905 began making complete motorised bicycles. During this time William Harley was leading a busy life studying for a Degree in Engineering at the University of Wisconsin, whilst doing waiter work, and working part time in a drafting office, and helping make bikes in their 10'x15' shed. Click here to see the Harley-Davidson F-head bikes on eBay. He graduated in 1907 but even the year before he graduated Harley and the Davidsons opened a new factory in what was then called Chestnut Street. Chestnut Street was subsequently re-named Juneau Avenue and it has been Harley-Davidson's permanent home ever since. By this time William Harley and the Davidsons had realised that they had the beginnings of a viable business. In 1905 they had already acquired a Chicago dealer and their sales were doubling and re-doubling. So, once he'd graduated, William Harley was able to put some serious thought into what they needed to do to create a motorcycle that would sell in large numbers, including the potential for sales to police departments. In his thinking William Harley had grown past the “motorised bicycle for fishing trips” into planning motorcycles for large volume production. His thinking turned to engine power and he looked for a good but simple way to get more power from a motorcycle engine but to also ensure it could be made economically.
The original Harley-Davidson engine had been a single cylinder 440cc Inlet-Over-Exhaust (F-Head). This design featured an inlet valve at the top of the cylinder head which was not opened by a cam but by the vacuum created as the piston moved on its down-stroke. The spark plug was also located at the top of the combustion chamber whilst the exhaust valve was in a side channel as in a side-valve engine. The F-Head design has some inherent strengths. By placing the inlet valve at the top of the combustion chamber it can be made proportionately large and it is efficiently located to distribute fuel/air mix into the combustion chamber. Similarly the spark plug is well placed to ignite the fuel/air mix when compressed. In fact the F-Head design is so good that British car maker Rolls-Royce was using it up until it created its OHV V8 in 1959. Another British car maker, Rover, produced what is widely regarded as the most sophisticated F-Head engine ever created. An engine that powered its post war passenger cars and was used in the long wheelbase Land Rover up until the late 1970's. William Harley decided to keep using the familiar F-Head engine but to double its power by using two cylinders instead of one. In putting two cylinders together there are a few possible configurations. He cold have created a horizontally opposed engine, or put the two cylinders side by side, but William Harley decided to follow the lead set five years earlier by Hendee Motorcycle Company and put the cylinders in a V formation. This served the dual function of ensuring efficient engine cooling by keeping the cylinders separated and keeping the cylinder heads and spark plugs protected by them being kept under the fuel tank and not sticking out the sides of the bike (as on a BMW for example). The V-twin layout also ensured there would be no need to re-angle the drive through 90° to get it to use a belt drive to the rear wheels. William Harley's new V-twin engine was effectively two 440cc singles joined together on a common crankshaft creating an 880cc engine with almost double the power at 7hp. Click here to see all the Harley scale models. The engine was moderately successful but the use of the vacuum actuated atmospheric inlet valves limited the engine's ability to rev at higher speeds. An additional problem with the atmospheric inlet valves was that they worked well enough on a single cylinder engine but did not work well when there were two cylinders trying to breathe through the same carburettor. This problem could have been fixed by simply using two separate carburettors but William Harley realised he needed a better solution so he determined to re-design the engine. Thus the V-twin with the atmospheric inlet valves only remained in production for one year. William Harley's new design did away with the atmospheric inlet valves and instead used an external push-rod and rocker. This new 811cc V-twin produced 11hp and was capable of revving higher. It was still a similar F-Head but had been morphed into an engine that would remain in production from its inception in 1911 until 1929 after which it was replaced by the Flathead V-twin. William Harley also moved the engine's magneto from the front of the engine to the rear which had the effect of making the new engine look distinctly different so buyers were made aware they were getting something improved. The engine was well received and by 1913 this was the engine powering the vast majority of Harley-Davidsons sold.
Harley-Davidson motorcycles were gaining more improvements than just the engine - In 1912 Harley-Davidson had introduced their “Full-Floating Seat” suspended by a coil spring in the seat tube. In succeeding years the gravity fed lubrication system was replaced with a mechanical oil pump, the original transmission was improved from a simple leather belt drive to a chain drive with a three speed gearbox, and the bikes electrics were also improved by fitting of a gear driven magneto generator which enabled the bike to be fitted with lights. By 1913 the small Harley-Davidson factory had been pulled down and replaced by a five storey building which took up two blocks of Juneau Avenue and included space on 38th Street. 1914 production from the large new factory was 16,284 motorcycles, most of them fitted with the new F-Head V-twin engine. As sales continued to grow the Harley-Davidson name likewise became more and more well known. By 1910 there had been over 150 motorcycle manufacturers in the United States but this plethora was quite quickly shrinking and by the time of the 1929 Great Depression the handful that were left would be reduced even further finally leaving just Harley-Davidson and Indian standing as major players. Harley-Davidson motorcycles were selling well to government agencies such as police departments and also to the U.S. military. Click here to see Harley-Davidson books on eBay. Harley-Davidson motorcycles with their improved F-Head engines went with the U.S. Expeditionary Force against Pancho Villa in 1916-1917 but the big demand came as the United States entered the Great War and troops were sent to join the fight against the German Second Reich. With the defeat of Germany in 1918 the first U.S. motorcycle to enter Germany was a Harley-Davidson powered by an F-Head V-twin engine. Harley-Davidson had provided over 20,000 motorcycles to the U.S. Army by that time.A welder doing work on a disco ball on the ceiling of the Amphitheatre nightclub in Ybor City sparked a fire that caused extensive damage.
According to Tampa Fire Rescue, the three-alarm fire broke out at the club, located at 1609 East 7th Avenue, just before 8 p.m. when welding sparks ignited material covering the ceiling.
The smoke and flames quickly spread in the two-story brick building. The automatic sprinkler system did operate but was not enough to completely extinguish the fire.
When firefighters arrived, smoke was pouring from the building and flames were seen coming from the roof. Three workers escaped the building and neighboring businesses were evacuated.
Twenty units and 50 firefighters responded to the fire.
Firefighters fought the flames for several hours before the building's roof gave way and collapsed, officials said. Two firefighters were injured and were taken to a local hospital for observation. They are expected to be okay.
The fire was brought under control by 1:30 a.m.
"There are multiple decks and ceilings within this old structure," said Tampa Fire Chief Tom Forward. "(That) made it very difficult for all of our firefighters, first of all, to be able to identify the exact location of the fire."
Although damage was extensive, officials said the Amphitheatre remains structually sound. Officials said 7th Ave will remain closed in the immediate area due to cleanup.
The Fire Marshal's Office is investigating.Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
May 19, 2015, 9:38 PM GMT / Updated May 19, 2015, 9:35 PM GMT / Source: Associated Press
ConAgra Foods is likely to face a criminal charge now that the U.S. government has completed its investigation of the company's 2007 peanut butter recall.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in Georgia, Pam Lightsey, said Tuesday that prosecutors plan to reveal details of the investigation Wednesday.
ConAgra spokeswoman Teresa Paulsen declined to comment Tuesday, but the company previously has said it was negotiating an end to the investigation that would likely include a misdemeanor charge of shipping tainted products.
Earlier this year, two former Iowa egg industry executives were sentenced to three months in jail. Last year, two Colorado cantaloupe farmers were convicted and received probation in a deadly 2011 listeria outbreak, and the former owner of Peanut Corporation of America was convicted in a 2008 salmonella outbreak. The peanut executive, Stewart Parnell, could face jail time when sentenced.
ConAgra recalled all its peanut butter in 2007 after its Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter was linked to a salmonella outbreak that sickened at least 625 people in 47 states. The peanut butter was produced at ConAgra's Sylvester, Georgia, plant.
IN-DEPTH:Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker was one of at least 23 governors Monday opposed to allowing additional Syrian refugees into their state following Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris.
New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan took it one step further, becoming the first Democratic governor Monday afternoon to call for a complete freeze of Syrian refugees entering the United States until the government can “ensure robust refugee screening.’’
“The Governor believes that the federal government should halt acceptance of refugees from Syria until intelligence and defense officials can assure that the process for vetting all refugees, including those from Syria, is as strong as possible to ensure the safety of the American people,’’ said a statement from Hassan’s communications director, William Hinkle.
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The White House, however, said Monday it remained committed to its plan to accept at least 10,000 Syrian refugees in 2016 under the current process of “rigorous screening and security checks.’’
Refugee resettlement agencies also pointed out that states do not have the capability to prevent legally-admitted refugees from residing in their state, as immigration and refugee policy is governed at the federal level, per the Refugee Act of 1980 and, more recently, the Supreme Court.
“As the federal government has the exclusive legal authority for resettling refugees, the Governor cannot block resettlement but believes that the federal government should work closely with emergency management and safety officials from the states to ensure local safety concerns are addressed before resuming any resettlement plans,’’ Hinkle added.
Hassan is running for Senate in 2016 against Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte, who has also opposed allowing Syrian refugees into the country until the government can guarantee they are not affiliated with the Islamic State.
The Guardianreported Monday that at least five of the eight Paris attackers had visited Syria, before returning home to Belgium or France.
New England’s governors have thus far been split over how to deal with the refugee crisis.
Maine’s Republican Gov. Paul LePage joined Baker and Hassan, reiterating his continued opposition to allowing Syrian refugees into the United States.
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“To bring Syrian refugees into our country without knowing who they are is to invite an attack on American soil just like the one we saw in Paris last week and in New York City on 9/11,’’ LePage said in a statement Monday. “That is why I adamantly oppose any attempt by the federal government to place Syrian refugees in Maine, and will take every lawful measure in my power to prevent it from happening.’’
Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy, a Democrat, told NBC Connecticut the state would stick to its commitment to bring in roughly 1,600 Syrian refugees having completed existing background checks.
In Vermont, Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin also said his state was willing to accept those fleeing the war in Syria and lambasted those who would try to impede refugees entrance into their state, according to the Burlington Free Press.
“The governors who are taking those actions are stomping on the qualities that make America great,’’ he said at a press conference, “which is reaching out to folks when they’re in trouble and offering them help, not hurting them.’’
Shumlin added that he trusted the existing screening process, adding, “We root out folks who should not be accepted.’’
As Rhode Island lawmaker battled Monday over whether the state should reject or accept any refugees from Syria, Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo said it was a moot argument, per a statement to WPRO’s Tara Granahan:
“We haven’t received any requests to help, so there’s nothing to decide at the moment. If a request is made, we will coordinate closely with the White House and with Col. O’Donnell. Anything Rhode Island may do in the future to support our nation’s efforts to respond to this humanitarian crisis and help those in need must include robust background checks and security procedures to keep Rhode Islanders safe.’’
In September, Raimondo said Rhode Island would “be ready to help’’ if they’re called upon to accept refugees from the war in Syria.
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According to the New York Times, a total 1,854 Syrian refugees were admitted to the United States since 2012, compared to the tens of thousands accepted — per the Los Angeles Times — in some European and Middle Eastern countries.
The focus may be on Europe, but most Syrian refugees are closer to home http://t.co/2kUndP7FTC pic.twitter.com/R0LsGOMPJr — Mitchell Landsberg (@LATlands) September 20, 2015
“Slamming the door in their faces would be a betrayal of our values,’’ President Barack Obama said Monday in Turkey. “Our nations can welcome refugees who are desperately seeking safety and ensure our own security. We can and must do both.’’I publish articles in exactly two places: here on this blog, and in magazines (both digital and paper). In the latter case, the pieces are paid commissions. Sometimes I’ll republish my own commissioned articles here, and sometimes I accept requests to republish my blog articles elsewhere, but generally speaking a piece is either exclusively here, or exclusively elsewhere.
The distinction affects a number of things. Topic: I naturally choose my own topics here, whereas commissions usually specify the topic. Tone: Here, it’s my own; in magazines, it’s usually to fit the publication’s style and audience. Length: I allow articles to be their natural discursive length here, whereas (at least for print), magazines tend to specify the limit down to the word - and often the character.
There’s a reason I’m telling you this. If you’re reading something with my name on it, there are two things you won’t encounter: Someone else’s unattributed words, here; or my own (non-commissioned) words, elsewhere.
This blog is my own outlet; my collected thoughts, essays and diary entries. It’s uniquely mine, and whatever you read here came directly from me. Hopefully, that seems obvious. It’s a matter of trust.
I get requests to publish “guest posts” here, which is an SEO scamming tactic. The deal is that there’s no explicit indication that the post was written by someone else (except for the generally inferior quality of English), and it includes links which convey rank to whatever sites they target. I get paid to keep the post up for a given period of time. Sometimes the fee is surprisingly high. I’ve never accepted, because it would be an abuse of the reader’s trust, but also (and more importantly), this is my place.
I have no problem with acknowledged sponsorship. It’s the way of the web, and it lets people devote more time to sharing their thoughts. I don’t even find it intrusive, as long as it’s clearly marked. To me, that’s fine. But the unacknowledged stuff - or the stuff that’s so sleazily presented as to discourage noticing it’s an ad, like the awful ‘advertorial’ sections in print magazines only flagged at the top of the page, and prepared in house layout style - is wrong. It’s a breach of trust. I think that most of us would agree on that.
The second thing I said you won’t see - my own personal words published elsewhere - is a more interesting subject. I’m seeing a lot of people posting articles on Medium lately, for example, and I understand why. It’s gorgeous to look at, the per-paragraph comments system is slick (not that you want comments), and there’s nothing to set up. There’s a lot of great content, and more importantly there’s a lot of content that’s trying to be great. Why wouldn’t you publish there?
Well, because it’s a byline. Your words, in someone else’s publication.
The issue for me isn’t legal rights to the content, or revenue generation, or even control over advertising. Those are all legitimate concerns, but they’re also valid for platforms where other people host your own personal blog, and I don’t have a problem with those. Likewise, writing words that others pay for is a choice. No problem there either.
I do have an issue with giving away your words just because it’s easy to do so. By default, your words should be yours, and that means more than being attributed: it also means gathering them together in your own publication, controlled by you, that serves as a place for your own voice to be heard above (and instead of) all others.
I think there’s a lot of value in seeing how a person’s writing has evolved over time, and I also think that people choose authors rather than topics. You’ll read a piece on just about anything as long as it’s by someone whose words you know you’ll enjoy. Posting your own stuff on someone else’s site (without remuneration) is working for free, but it’s also diluting your own presence: it’s fragmenting your own continued voice.
I understand that slotting an article into someplace like Medium may be a quick way to get some readers, but using it as your regular outlet seems like a huge mistake to me. If you have enough to say that you want to publish something of substance for a wide audience, your ultimate goal surely has to be to publish it yourself, in your place.
Article-dump sites take away your editorial control, and reduce you to one voice amongst many. You have no influence over who’s up before or after you, and you have no deeper identity. There’s no sense of inviting the reader in to try what you have to offer, then hoping they’ll stay for more.
Scattering your own words - and there are some very, very personal words on these sites - all across someone else’s web site also subtly changes their character, and the impression given of the author. There’s just a hint of reticence about publishing elsewhere; a note of separation. There’s a certain flavour of mail going to a PO Box instead of your home address. There’s one level of removal from the person; it has a bulletin-board quality.
As a discovery mechanism, there’s probably value there - but not as a permanent solution. Medium et al are at best social kickstarters for long-form personal writing, and at worst they’re pretty article-aggregators. But they aren’t publishing platforms.
I think a lot of people haven’t made that realisation, and that’s a sad thing. Your words, and the stories they tell, deserve more than being the latest morsel on a buffet of tiny, fashionably-circular author photos, to be sampled and then forgotten as the next thing rolls around. Where’s the identity? Where’s the commitment?
If you’re going to write, I believe you should have the honesty and the integrity to really expose yourself. If someone’s paying, then the finger can always be pointed at them: editorial control is a double-edged sword. But if no-one is paying, and you’re instead doing the courageous thing and sharing your raw words with the audience, do it on your own terms - whether that’s a hosted Tumblr or WordPress blog, or something you’ve set up yourself. The tech isn’t important; the personal exclusivity is.
It’s intimate, it’s disarming, it’s poignant, and it’s right at the pulse-point. Welcome to my place, and here are my words. Not as a taster where you have to scroll past the article footer to even see the author’s info, but in your house. In your own living room, or under the harsh light of the kitchen counter, with dirty dishes still piled in the sink.
For me, that’s what owning your words really means. Not the distribution rights, or even attribution. The vulnerability, and the authenticity, and the personal permanence.
If you’re going to say it at all, you should say it as yourself.
If you enjoyed this article, please consider supporting my writing.Arizona criminal defense attorney Allen Bickart has defended many people during his 60 years of practicing law, but last week, the case of one client came back to haunt him.
“He was a very troubled, very vicious kid,” Bickart tells PEOPLE exclusively, describing his brush with Todd Kohlhepp, a South Carolina man who police have linked to seven murders. Bickert represented Kohlhepp back in 1987, after he was arrested for allegedly raping a 14-year-old neighbor at gunpoint in Tempe, Arizona, at the age of 15, according to court records obtained by PEOPLE.
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Kohlhepp ultimately pleaded guilty to kidnapping, served prison time from 1987 to 2001, and was placed on the sex offender registry, according to records.
“That girl should be very lucky he didn’t kill her,” recalls Bickart, 85.
Kohlhepp emerged in the news on Nov. 3 when police, acting on a tip, arrived at the 45-year-old real estate agent’s 95-acre property in Woodruff, South Carolina, and discovered a woman inside a metal storage container. According to the local sheriff, she had been “chained up like a dog” for the past two months.
The body of her boyfriend, who had reportedly been shot to death, was found buried nearby in a shallow grave. Two additional bodies were also discovered buried on the property, revealed Wednesday to be married couple Meagan Coxie, 25, and Johnny Coxie, 29, police tell PEOPLE.
When questioned by police two days later, Kohlhepp confessed to the unsolved murders of four people at a motorcycle shop in 2003. He has so far only been charged in the 2003 murders.
“He had some very, very, very serious issues,” says Bickart, who worked with a psychiatrist in an effort to get his client sent to a facility where mental health specialists could attempt to help the violence-prone teen — instead of prison. “He was off the edge.”
Kohlhepp “took responsibility for what he did,” adds Bickart, but soon his case was bumped from juvenile to adult court, a move his former attorney described as “very rare” for such a young defendant.
“He didn’t qualify for the state hospital because he didn’t show all the symptoms of being a complete whacko,” says Bickart, who adds that Kohlhepp’s birth father put him up for adoption when he was younger because “he couldn’t control” his son’s violent temper and unpredictable outbursts.
(Kohlhepp has reportedly not retained an attorney who could respond to the allegations against him, and sheriff’s officials have told PEOPLE an interview from jail is “not going to happen,” citing the ongoing investigation. It is unclear if he has pleaded to his new charges.)
Tim Kimzey/The Spartanburg Herald-Journal/AP Tim Kimzey/The Spartanburg Herald-Journal/AP
• Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.
In recommending that the teenager be tried in adult court, an Arizona judge overseeing the case wrote, in documents obtained by PEOPLE, “At less than the age of 9, this juvenile was impulsive, explosive, and preoccupied with sexual content. He has not changed. He has been unabatedly aggressive to others and destructive of property since nursery school. He destroys his own clothing, personal possessions and pets apparently on whim and caprice.
“Approximately six years of intervention in fifteen years of life have resulted in abysmal failure. Twenty-five months of the most intensive and expensive professional intervention, short of God’s, will provide no protection for the public and no rehabilitation of this juvenile by any services or facilities presently available to the Juvenile Court.”
Bickart admits to being “terribly conflicted” while handling Kohlhepp’s case because he realized what the “big, very bright” teenager might one day be capable of.
Apparently, so did the Maricopa County Superior Court judge who eventually sentenced Kohlhepp to 15 years in prison after a plea deal was reached that involved the youth pleading guilty to kidnapping and registering as a sex offender.
“I never thought he’d be the type to shoot up a school,” insists Bickart. “but I thought he’d focus [his violence] on women.... I don’t think [his psychopathic tendencies] truly matured until he got older and got out of prison, but he got developed in prison, believe me.”A Cork granny has gone viral after she mistook six glittery purple thongs for Christmas baubles.
A Cork granny has gone viral after she mistook six glittery purple thongs for Christmas baubles.
Irish granny goes viral after she mistakes Dunnes' glittery purple thongs for Christmas baubles
The 74-year-old woman's granddaughter was helping to decorate her Christmas tree when she realised her granny's mistake.
Actress Alex Bermingham (@Alex_Bermingham) took to Twitter to share the hilarious tale and it has been retweeted almost 21,000 times and liked 73,000 times.
"My 74 year old grandmother bought Christmas baubles in Dunnes Stores, which I have just realised upon decorating her tree that unbeknownst to her upon purchase, they are in fact, lavender glitter G-strings. Wishing everyone a kinky Christmas this holiday season." she wrote.
My 74 year old grandmother bought Christmas baubles in Dunnes Stores, which I have just realised upon decorating her tree that unbeknownst to her upon purchase, they are in |
campaign chairman Jesse Benton told BuzzFeed that Kokesh is a "deeply troubled individual with whom we cut off contact a long time ago."
"These are definitely outliers," Paul campaign spokesman Gary Howard told Business Insider. "Almost all of the grassroots supporters are all positive people who are just trying to participate in the process."
But while Kokesh and the Idaho activists may be outliers, the incidents reinforce the perception that Paul's supporters are an unruly — and sometimes downright scary — bunch.
This reputation is not particularly helpful as Paul and his acolytes strive to remake the Republican Party in their image.
When asked if he plans to embarrass Romney at the convention, Paul is indignant:
"That is against my plan so I don't like that even being a suggestion," the candidate told CNN Wednesday. "I'm in it for very precise reasons: to maximize our efforts to get as many delegates as we can. I'm still a candidate, and to promote something that is very, very important, that is a change in the direction for the Republican Party."
Clearly, Paul understands that letting his supporters run roughshod over the party in Tampa would be detrimental to his goals. But it remains to be seen if the man who gave the Liberty Movement its voice can also silence it when the time comes.MSNBC’s Chris Matthews isn’t always the most diplomatic guy, and on Wednesday night he showed that to be true when he paid President Obama what he probably thought was a compliment.
Praising the president’s ability to inspire on stage, and arguing Obama had made serious strides in overcoming racial and political tensions in the US, Matthews said:
You know, I was trying to think about who he was tonight. And, um, it’s interesting. He is post-racial by all appearances. You know, I forgot he was black tonight for an hour. You know, he’s gone a long way to become a leader of this country and passed so much history in just a year or two.
MSNBC’s top two anchors, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, had nothing to say about Matthew’s comments, although the Countdown host did appear to be taken by surprise.
This video is from MSNBC, broadcast Jan. 27, 2010.
Download video via RawReplay.com
Later on, Matthews “clarified” his comments and said he was “proud” he said it. That he was happy there was no “ethnic fighting” during Obama’s State of the Union address.
MATTHEWS: And can I say one more point? MADDOW: Sure. MATTHEWS: I think something that I`d mentioned earlier tonight. And I`m very proud I did it and I hope I can say it the right way. You know, this country has been — and I grew up in a country that was driven apart by race right until the `60s. You couldn`t have a black member of the United States Cabinet. There are no black Cabinet members in the Kennedy administration. It has been such a big part of our life in big cities, this sort of ethnic debate, ethnic fighting. And then to see the president of the United States who`s African-American, I was thinking tonight, this isn`t even an issue tonight. How far we`ve come in just a year where it wasn`t a campaign issue in some parts of the country. It was talked about as something that would hurt him. And it wasn`t in the room tonight. You can feel it wasn`t there tonight. And that takes leadership on his part to get us beyond these divisions. Really, national leadership. And I felt it wonderfully then I saw it almost like an epiphany. And I hope it`s true, I hope what I saw is true, that we`ve gotten beyond it. At least — well, in the presidential level, I think. It`s still going to be out there in American life, but I think he`s done something wonderful.
I think he`s taken us beyond black and white in our politics wonderfully so in just a year. I think.
Wonkette mocks, “It’s fine, really. If we were Boomers, we would forget that people were black sometimes too.”
The Daily News reports, ‘Chris Matthews forgot he was black’ was high on Google’s list of hot Web searches Thursday morning. This isn’t the first time Matthews has made an unusual remark that set tongues wagging. Covering the Potomac primaries for MSNBC, Matthews said he ‘felt this thrill going up my leg’ listening to Obama speak.”
A Fox News article was quick to quote conservatives slamming Matthews.ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish police detained the sons of three cabinet ministers as part of an investigation into alleged bribery linked to public tenders on Tuesday, Turkish newspapers reported on Tuesday.
Police carried out dawn raids in the main commercial city Istanbul, detaining at least 18 people including well-known businessmen, and also searched the headquarters of state-run lender Halkbank in the capital Ankara, sources said.
Hurriyet and other newspaper websites reported that the sons of Interior Minister Muammer Guler, Economy Minister Zafer Caglayan and Environment and City Planning Minister Erdogan Bayraktar were detained.
Government officials could not immediately be reached for comment. Police declined to comment on the reports.
It was not immediately clear if there was a link between the investigation at Halkbank’s offices in the capital Ankara and the reported detentions.
Halkbank shares fell as much as five percent after reports of the police search emerged. Halkbank officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
Police also searched the headquarters of construction magnate Ali Agaoglu’s Agaoglu Group, its chief executive Hasan Rahvali told Reuters.The California Attorney General ordered Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games to refund the money after it initially refused.
Crowdfunding is pretty hit-and-miss. Sometimes you get in on the ground floor of something magical, and other times people will literally steal your money, or the product evolves into something you don't want anymore. For many Star Citizen fans, the latter has become true, especially for backer "Streetroller" who dropped over two grand on the project when it first started, but wanted out following the game's change in scope and lengthy delays. Despite being initially refused a refund from the developer, Streetroller dug deep, getting the California Attorney General, the FTC and the DCBA involved in order to get his money back.
The whole exchange, which went down on the Something Awful Forums, details Streetroller's journey to get his $2,560 refund. He first requested a refund from CIG on June 14, stating that Star Citizen "remains unfulfilled and no longer constitutes the product(s) I originally purchased". CIG refused his request, pointing to the following passage in the terms of service:
"For the avoidance of doubt, in consideration of [Roberts Space Industry's] good faith efforts to develop, produce, and deliver the Game with the funds raised, you agree that any Pledge amounts applied against the Pledge Item Cost and the Game Cost shall be non-refundable regardless of whether or not RSI is able to complete and deliver the Game and/or the pledge items."
Streetroller argued that he never agreed to these terms of service, as they have changed from the original terms of service that he agreed to when he first made his pledge. The original TOS says that refunds can only be requested 18 months after the game's estimated delivery date. Star Citizen's initial ETA was November 2014, and eighteen months after that would put us at May, 2016.
Streetroller then reached out to the LA district attorney the FTC and LA Department of Consumer and Business Affairs. The DA immediately contacted CIG, which refunded Streetroller $900 on June 23. But, he wasn't satisfied with that: he wanted all his money back. After a few back-and-forths between these regulatory associations and CIG, he was able to get the vast majority of his refund.
Additionally, The DCBA also told Streetroller they urged others to come forward and file a complaint against CIG regarding refund policy.
So, if you want a Star Citizen refund, get in touch with your local DCBA!
Source: PC Games NRadio host Glenn Beck (YouTube)
Radio host Glenn Beck on Tuesday lashed out at the Fox cartoon comedy series Family Guy for a recent episode about Jesus Christ trying to lose his virginity.
Sunday’s episode of Family Guy sparked outrage from conservative Christians after characters in the Griffin family met up with Jesus at the mall while shopping for Christmas presents, and realized that he was a virgin.
On his Tuesday radio show, Beck likened the Family Guy episode to America’s problems with race, income inequality and religious freedom.
According to Beck, people who thought that the show was brave for taking on religion had it all wrong.
“Let me explain something about bravery, it is not brave to do the things that the elite and the powerful agree with,” he insisted. “That’s not bravery!”
“You want to be brave, do this about Mohammed,” co-host Stu Burguiere quipped. “Do it about Allah.”
Beck argued that “Saturday Night Live is the biggest group of pussies” because the show’s rendition of President Barack Obama was a “wuss” performance
And Jesus Christ had “done more good on Earth” than any other person in history, the Mormon radio host said.
“Every great act, every great, truly great freeing act was inspired by the teachings of Jesus Christ,” Beck asserted. “Why would we take down just that man? Why would we make him into a joke? Out of all of the people you can joke about, all of the things you can do?”
“Why not just put him up on the pillar again,” he added, referring to the Flagellation of Christ, which Christians believe he was subjected to in preparation for crucifixion.
“Why not just whip him and beat him?” Beck asked. “Why not just publicly humiliate him, why not just tear his clothing from him, spit on him, and when he asks for water, we give him vinegar?”
“I think you could argue this is worse,” Burguiere said.
“Because we know now,” Beck agreed. “Father forgive them, they know not what they do. We do. We do.”
Watch the video below from The Blaze, broadcast Dec. 10, 2014.
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Existentialism
On Being An Existentialist
Stuart Greenstreet chooses to tell us how to become authentically existentialist.
It took almost a century of thought before existentialism came to fruition as a popular movement – almost a craze – in post-war France in the nineteen-forties and fifties. This was the time of its greatest influence, not only on philosophy but also on literature, drama and film-making, extending far beyond France. But here I am dealing with existentialism solely as a school of philosophy – one which arose mainly from the work of five men and one woman: Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir. (Although Albert Camus is often called an existentialist, he himself denied he was one [see later, ed].) Of these, Sartre was the only one to accept the name ‘existentialist’ and employ all of its key concepts: ‘anguish’, ‘bad faith’, ‘facticity’, ‘commitment’, and ‘authenticity’.
All philosophers in the existentialist camp shared the same mission: to make us recognise that human beings are free to choose, not only what to do when faced with moral choices, but what to value and how to live. They want these facts about human freedom to be not merely accepted, but absorbed by each person for him- or herself, so that when they have absorbed them their whole view of life will be different. Existentialism as a cultural movement belongs to the past. But as a philosophy with this utterly practical mission it can be as liberating to us now as it was to men and women in war-torn Europe.
Basics
Cartoon © Thomastoons/Bill Thomas 2016. Please visit thomastoons.wix.com/cartoons.
When readers of the Parisian newspaper Le Monde began to take notice of existentialism, the newspaper published an article in December 1945 to tell them what it meant. Although it did its best, Le Monde finally felt it had to admit that “Existentialism, like faith, cannot be explained; it can only be lived.”
Why is existentialism like faith? Because to base one’s conduct on a belief that one is free to choose is an act of faith, for there’s no way of knowing for sure whether it’s true or false. And what makes existentialism hard to explain? Perhaps it is its claim that no objective moral order exists, independently of humanity. That makes it futile to seek a code for behaviour anywhere outside of ourselves. Each individual has to create his or her own value by living and affirming it, and must do so in a way that satisfies a single governing norm of ‘authenticity’ – in perhaps oversimplistic terms, through always ‘being myself’.
Existentialism is obsessed with how individuals choose to live their lives. Our choices are demonstrated by our acts, and always concern matters within our power. To choose, then, involves deliberating about things that are in our control and attainable by our action. Then by whatever actions we choose to take, we define and create the selves that we gradually become. For example, we become ‘just’ by performing just acts, and similarly as regards other virtues. This is not meant as a moral point – no ‘should’ or ‘ought’ is implied – but as a fact about the nature of the world and of human choice: that my choices of good or evil will determine my character and make me the kind of human being that I turn out to be.
Authentic Being
Existentialism obviously rests on some pretty bold ontological assumptions, then – claims about what exists and how it exists. The first is that values are not part of the fabric of the world, in the sense of existing independently of us. To live your life as if your values were somehow given from outside, as though to adopt the attitude of an uptight, conventional person whose duties all seem to be laid out for them, would amount to a refusal to face up to your freedom. In that case, you wrongly think you can escape your freedom by taking refuge in a fixed role, or essence. But even when people do passively adopt ready-made values in this way, they still choose to do so, albeit in a way that has failed to live up to the standard of authenticity, because it doesn’t recognise their inalienable freedom.
My attitude is authentic when I engage in my projects as my own. My attitude would not be authentic if keeping my promises, for instance, is something I do just because that’s ‘what one does’ – what ‘moral people’ normally do – or because it is what society expects of me. My way of behaving is authentic if and only if my action is a reflection of my choice – that is, when I commit myself to behave in that sort of way because that is what I expect of myself whether or not it is socially sanctioned.
Choosing Value
Existentialism makes every individual responsible for deciding for him- or herself how to evaluate their choices. Sartre further remarked that it is in the nature of values that they make demands on us. I do not just see the homeless person; I encounter him as someone ‘to be helped’. Why ought I help the homeless? The answer can be revealed, Sartre thought, only to a free agent who makes the value exist by the fact of recognizing it as such. You judge a homeless man as someone to be helped only because you have already chosen yourself as a person who helps people. There is an answer to ‘Why ought I help the homeless?’ from within that prior ‘self-making’ choice; but outside of it there is none. Moreover, the principle of helping – say kindliness or compassion – is sanctioned by your action, rather than the action by the principle.
To value a certain way of acting more highly than any alternative is to choose that particular way as a goal – to set it up as an ideal to be aimed at. For although the values you adopt are indeed your values, they do not merely express your private feelings about what is right or wrong. If in some particular instance you judge that tax evasion is wrong then, whether you realise it or not, you have judged that it is wrong in general. For the concept of ‘choice’ entails the idea of whatever is chosen is the right thing to do, and ‘right’ means ‘right for everyone’. As Sartre put it, “when a man chooses for himself he chooses for mankind” (Existentialism is a Humanism, 1946) – meaning that every action that he (and we) choose provides an example for the rest of humanity. If I choose a particular good for myself such as freedom, I am thereby committed to choosing freedom for everyone.
The Facts of Freedom
Condemned To Be Free © Peter Pullen 2016. Please visit www.peterpullen.com.
Existentialism’s most basic premise is that human beings have no pre-existing or set nature or character. We are not essentially anything, except that we are essentially free. We become self-created beings by virtue of our actions and our relations with other people. Hence the existentialist slogan ‘existence precedes essence’.
That each one of us has absolute freedom of choice is an existentialist article of faith – to the existentialist it is a truth so self-evident that it never needs to be proved or even argued for. And who needs theoretical proof of something indispensable to the practical business of living? To an existentialist, “My freedom is my essence and my salvation. I cannot lose it without ceasing to be” (Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy, 2012). So every honest person must recognize my freedom.
Obviously no one chooses entirely what he or she becomes, or is. Each of us has a set of given natural and social properties that influence the kind of person we become. Sartre gave to these features the collective name ‘facticity’. One’s facticity comprises all those properties another person could discover and investigate. They include natural properties, such as sex, weight, height, and skin colour; social facts, such as race, class, and nationality; psychological properties, such as my extant web of beliefs, desires, and character traits; and historical facts, such as my family background, schooling; and so forth.
Our own facticity hardly ever occupies our own minds in this third-person kind of way, even though it does weigh on us and colour our moods and approach to life. However, when I do step back and take a third-person, objective, view of my facticity, then these given facts about me may strike me as precisely what does define who I am. But for an existentialist, to think this would be a radical mistake, not because my factual properties are misleading, but because the person each one of us is cannot be defined in third-person terms. No objective account of my properties could ever describe my subjective experience of what it’s like to be me, the person who has them. So someone observing me can make out my skin colour, class, or ethnicity; but the moment he attempts to identify me in terms of these properties, he encounters a paradox, since the kind of being I am is defined, among other things, by the attitude I adopt towards my own facticity – by how I choose to interpret it – and that is not fixed by the facts. Who I am depends (among other things) on what I make of my facticity, on how I try to go beyond, or transcend it. In other words, whatever my facticity, and no matter how fixed it may be, it does not curtail my freedom. I am still free to decide what values to ascribe to my facticity, and what stance to take towards it. To become the person you choose to be despite the burden of your facticity is the only authentic way to live your life, whereas to live it as though you were at the mercy of your facticity – to pretend that it has robbed you of your freedom – is inauthenticity. It would be to lose both one’s autonomy and one’s integrity, and in this way give in to determinism.
The Price of Freedom
It would be hard to feel otherwise about freedom and choice if you had lived in occupied France between 1940 and 1945, when existentialism came of age as the philosophie officielle of the resistance movement. In those years, and even during the post-1945 reconstruction, it exerted a powerful appeal that was as much emotional as intellectual. If “man is nothing but that which he makes of himself” (Sartre), then no one is bound by fate, or by forces outside their control. By uniting with like-minded people, the individual can challenge authority – even tyrannical power – and change things. He or she can choose to oppose the Nazis, or to create a more just society than had existed before the war. Only by exercising their personal freedom could people regain their civil liberties.
But there is a price to be paid for the freedom to do whatever you choose at every juncture. No one can decide on your behalf; the choice of action is always yours and yours alone. And no one can ever avoid the personal responsibility for judging what the morally right thing to do is. You thus suffer the potential anguish of having to endure an endless series of choices in the knowledge that only you can decide, that you may evaluate anything as you please, and that you have no character to guide your choice other than the one you’re forming for yourself.
Not everyone can cope with the burden of an existentialist approach to shaping their lives and characters. Some may try to flee the tyranny of choice by hiding from themselves the truth that we are all, as Sartre said, “condemned to be free” – which means not free to cease being free. All our acts inevitably presuppose choice; and so we are still choosing even when we think we are not – even when we have deliberately chosen not to choose.
When France was over-run and occupied by the German army in 1940, every French man and woman was forced to think about their values and decide whether to resist and struggle to free their country, or to resign themselves to Nazi domination. They had to choose, and it was a time when they faced their freedom in great anguish. Some were unable to bear the thought of their freedom, and in order to escape its pressure adopted the cover of what Sartre called ‘bad faith’, perhaps the most important concept of his philosophy. (Note how he too turned to the word ‘faith’.) Someone is in bad faith when, in order to protect himself from the anxiety of having to choose, he pretends to himself that he is not as free as he actually is. It is a specific kind of self-deception, a core betrayal of one’s self.
A common type of bad faith is the denial of one’s freedom in the form of an excuse, typically beginning with “I couldn’t help it…” We hear this in the excuse made by those Nazi soldiers who insisted “I could not do otherwise” or “I was just doing my duty.” One can always do otherwise: one can quit, or run away, or even choose to be shot. The cost might enormous – even one’s life – but it is never a case of cannot, always of will not. They chose to continue to obey orders: it was not determined by their nature. Existentialism doesn’t allow excuses. There is never a legitimate reason for denying one’s freedom. No matter how oppressed we may be by our situation or circumstances, we know we can always imagine alternatives – and act on them too, if we’re brave enough. The only way to stay in good faith is honestly to continually own up and respond to being free to choose, and accountable for whatever you decide to do.
Creating Yourself Elizabeth Bevington 2016
Thinking & Living
I detect in the language I use here the characteristic ‘missionary’ tone of existentialism, which implores us all to experience our freedom to choose, and to practice it. Existentialism is a coherent theory rooted in an idealist (that is, a consciousness-based) metaphysics; but it is not enough merely to understand it intellectually in that way. To grasp it properly, one has to engage with it as a practical and committed philosophy – in other words, to commit to being an existentialist. Then you would see yourself as free and autonomous in way you did not recognize before, and by so doing acquire the power to transcend your facticity.
‘Facticity’ and ‘transcendence’ are the grand concepts of existentialism. Our facticity defines our situation and who we are up to this point in our lives. Transcendence opens up the world of possibilities: what we can now go on to make of that situation and of ourselves, given who or what we have become so far.
Existentialism is absolutely not ‘academic’. It is the antithesis of the purely analytical (normally Anglo-American) approach to philosophy, the prime purpose of which seems to be to deliver mental hygiene. The whole point of existentialism is to practice its liberating ideas, to apply them to becoming the person one chooses to be.
That we can be the authors of our own lives and characters strikes me as a very appealing thought. It means that a life can in a sense itself become the stuff of art – something to be shaped according to one’s own vision of oneself.
© Stuart Greenstreet 2016
Stuart Greenstreet earned his living as a business manager and writer and was awarded a diploma in philosophy by Birkbeck College. London. After graduating from the Open University he did further philosophy at the University of Sussex.Scientists tried this recently and discovered that agreeing with people can be a surprisingly powerful way to shake up strongly held beliefs.
Researchers found that showing people extreme versions of ideas that confirmed - not contradicted - their opinions on a deeply divisive issue actually caused them to reconsider their stance and become more receptive to other points of view.
The scientists attribute this to the fact that the new information caused people to see their views as irrational or absurd, according to a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"We truly believe that in most intractable conflicts, the real problems are not the real issues," said Eran Halperin, a psychologist at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel and an author of the study. In reality, he said, both sides know what needs to be done; however, there are many "psychological barriers that prevent societies from identifying opportunities for peace."
To see if tightly held attitudes could be pried loose, the scientists looked to one of the most polarizing issues on the planet, the decades-old conflict between Israelis and Palestinians that flared again violently last week. People on both sides hold strong beliefs that make compromise difficult, as years of failed negotiations have proved.
"You take people's most basic beliefs and turn them into something that is absurd,
The scientists, led by Halperin's graduate students Boaz Hameiri and Roni Porat, recruited more than 150 Israelis and exposed half of them to video clips that related the conflict with Palestinians back to values that many Israelis hold dear. The other half watched neutral TV commercials and served as a control.
But instead of pointing out how the conflict stood at odds with Israeli values _ a common approach in persuasion _ the experimental videos illustrated how the conflict was consistent with many participants' beliefs, taken to their extreme limit.
"For example, the fact that they are the most moral society in the world is one of the most basic beliefs of Israeli society," Halperin said. So when the researchers showed participants a video that claimed Israel should continue the conflict so that its citizens could continue to feel moral, people reacted angrily.
"You take people's most basic beliefs and turn them into something that is absurd," Halperin said. "For an outsider, it can sound like a joke, but for them, you are playing with their most fundamental belief."
Although participants did not enjoy watching the clips, after numerous rounds of exposure over a period of months leading up to the 2013 Israeli elections, participants' attitudes softened considerably; they reported almost a 30 percent increase in their willingness to re-evaluate their position compared with participants in the control group and took a more neutral stance on common political narratives like the idea that Palestinians bear responsibility for continuing the conflict. This shift persisted even a year after the study concluded.
Numerous studies have shown that confronting people with information that challenges their beliefs often has no effect at all
In addition, when the election rolled around, more people exposed to the so-called paradoxical thinking experiment reported voting for moderate parties _ those that favor conciliatory measures like evacuating some Israeli settlements in the West Bank _ suggesting the intervention led not just to changed attitudes, but also to changed behavior.
Traditional approaches for dislodging strongly held attitudes have proved stubbornly ineffective; numerous studies have shown that confronting people with information that challenges their beliefs often has no effect at all, or even strengthens their initial position.
But in this study paradoxical thinking seemed to encourage some people to privately re-evaluate their strongly held beliefs or political narratives, authors said. It may succeed precisely because it sneaks through the psychological security system that protects our deepest beliefs from inconsistent information without tripping the alarm.
The scientists say the method needs further validation in the lab, and they noted several glaring issues that made applying it to real-world situations difficult.
For one, there was the "motivation problem": How do you get people to watch videos they find disturbing? Outside of a lab setting, nothing would force people to sit through more than one or two clips, which probably wouldn't produce the same effects found in the study, Halperin said.
There is also a risk of backfire _- some people in the study took the videos at face value, assimilating the extreme messages into their personal beliefs. And, of course, nothing would stop governments or organizations from employing the same technique to promote their own agendas.
In fact, because the people who receive the paradoxical information know nothing about its intended purpose - an integral component to the method's very success - the approach treads into ethically questionable territory.
"We are not supposed to fool participants," said Gavriel Salomon, a psychologist at the University of Haifa who was not involved in the study. "But the paradoxical approach is still open to ethical debate."
Halperin, however, sees paradoxical thinking as a potentially valuable tool for promoting peace.
"You can say it's a kind of propaganda," Halperin said, "I just see it differently. We all agree that reducing violence and promoting peace is a good cause."
(c)2014 Los Angeles Times
Distributed by MCT Information ServicesThe day I sat in my doctor's office, quietly placing an "X" next to boxes on a paper checklist, he sat placidly across the small room, eyes unfocusedly pointed towards the floor. I felt gratified at this attempt to give me privacy, but I didn't need any more time to think. I had put unquantifiable amounts of physical, mental, and spiritual energy into reaching this moment, into actualizing an inner self within the social realm via bodily transformation.
So I was not anticipating, as perhaps my doctor did, that I would be blindsided by my first biological reason to grieve. About halfway down the page, I paused. Filling out this Informed Consent waiver to access testosterone, I was unexpectedly confronted with the possibility of becoming sterile.
_X_ I understand that it is not known exactly what the effects of testosterone are on fertility. I have been informed that if I stop testosterone, I may not be able to become pregnant in the future. I have been advised to undergo gamete (egg) banking if this is a concern of mine.
Today, my mind returns to this buried moment of my early transition days, in light of a current ongoing lawsuit in Sweden. In the wake of their overturned forced sterilization law -- a mandate that required that trans citizens become infertile (and unmarried) to gain legal gender recognition -- last year, trans Swedes are currently suing the state for compensation and an apology.
A year ago, the final paperwork hurdle to accessing hormone treatment instructed me to bank my eggs if I ever imagined I would desire biological children -- an option I instantly found meaningless. Even if I wanted to undergo this invasive procedure, it's prohibitively expensive for all but the most class-privileged. And it's inconceivable to put off my medical transition for the years that it would take to decide whether or not I wish to give birth. How many people know as a young adult when and how many children they will someday have?
"Do you have any questions?" my provider asked me as I signed off with little fanfare, save the flourish I still excitedly gave to writing my newly legalized name.
After a silently loaded moment, he kindly offered to explain the discrepancy that stands out to anyone familiar with trans male communities: men giving birth after being on testosterone. For the most part, trans men are not jumping to bank their eggs, to the point that my doctor and I both joylessly chuckled at the preposterous financial demand. We both knew that men who do not opt for hysterectomies can choose to temporarily cease hormone therapy should they desire to bear a biological child. And it should go without saying that there are trans men and trans women who desire to have biological offspring. I include myself among this group.
Before this moment, testosterone had, at least to me, never represented an either/or choice between becoming male-bodied and reproducing, just as pregnancy does not represent an either/or choice between being a woman or a man. What was this mutual exclusion suddenly staring me in the face?
My provider succinctly explained that without a study explicitly finding that testosterone doesn't cause infertility, trans men legally must be informed of the possibility that it might. He then reminded me to access a health-care institution open to halting and restarting my hormone therapy should I ever express the desire to become pregnant -- a practice that many non-trans-inclusive practices might erroneously consider "going back" or being "uncommitted" to gender transition. Cue the withholding of trans health care based on a patient being deemed not "trans enough."
Now solidly enmeshed within medical transition, I find myself eagerly imagining a future where I could give birth, should I so choose (and should my phantom polycystic ovary syndrome not thwart me). On the other hand, transgender women's hormone regimens result in infertility, yet the option of indefinitely banking sperm is unrealistically costly for many in this historically low-income community.
It's time to turn our eyes to Sweden. Citizens suing their government over forced sterilization usefully places medical realities alongside the demands of legal transition. In the United States most, if not all, states require a record of "sex reassignment" surgery in order to change the gender marker on one's birth certificate. Some states accept vague references to any transitional surgery; others specifically require genital reconstruction, sometimes with and sometimes without explicit sterilization requirements.
Clearly, state logic generally glosses over the reality that not all trans people opt for surgical intervention, and that there are numerous procedures that affirm gender. Those who require medical transition often find that altering the chest, face, and voice impact daily socializing and policing more regularly and may opt for these surgeries long before the doubly-to-triply expensive genital alignments. Furthermore, altering genitalia is contingent upon previous regular hormone use, which, of course, requires medical access. The hoops go on.
While most trans people cannot afford surgery, we continue to live our true genders daily because being ourselves simply cannot wait for the system to catch up. In the meantime, lacking legal documents that reflect lived experience opens us, particularly trans women of color, to excessive scrutiny and, at times, outright violence.
For those who can access surgery, the pressure to change one's documents and avoid potentially dangerous social stigma can be understandably immense. Legal gender recognition helps mitigate not just to the immediate dangers of violence and self-harm but the slow fatality of chronic unemployment, which influences access to health care, shelter, education, and the need to engage in illegal practices that increase chances of incarceration and HIV/AIDS.
When a state, such as Sweden, offers the option to alter gender on legal documents at the expense of fertility, it is unavoidable that underprivileged trans people will be placed between a rock and a hard place: obtaining what they need now to survive and flourish by foregoing a future biological parenthood they may not even reach if they succumb to transphobic social harms in the meanwhile.
This coercive non-choice constitutes forced sterilization. When a trans woman knows she needs hormone therapy to survive yet is priced out of banking her sperm for a desired future motherhood, this is forced sterilization, "forced" because it is within the power of the state to not exact such demands, but historical prejudices against a marginalized population bias decision making. This resonates with the forced sterilization of other oppressed groups, including low-income African-American, Latino, and American Indian cisgender women in the United States.
The specter of sterilization hangs around trans people in the EU, the United States, and numerous other states, with especially dire consequences for trans women and those at multiply oppressed intersections of race, class, age, language, and ability. When governments offer trans citizens the carrot of altering legal gender markers -- thereby showing support for gender self-determination -- yet maintain a system that requires proof of sterility and fails to support reasonably priced gamete banking practices, they place inhumane caveats on trans people's full life potentials.Steven Acheson, an Iraq War veteran, at his apartment in Platteville, Wis., May 3, 2013. (Andy Manis/For The Washington Post)
For men and women who have fought in the country’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, death behind the wheel is becoming another lethal aftereffect of combat.
After they leave military service, veterans of the two wars have a 75 percent higher rate of fatal motor vehicle accidents than do civilians. Troops still in uniform have a higher risk of crashing their cars in the months immediately after returning from deployment than in the months immediately before. People who have had multiple tours in combat zones are at highest risk for traffic accidents.
The phenomenon has been revealed by various pieces of evidence — research as well as observations of service members, veterans and counselors.
The most common explanation is that troops bring back driving habits that were lifesaving in war zones but are dangerous on America’s roads. They include racing through intersections, straddling lanes, swerving on bridges and, for some, not wearing seat belts because they hinder a rapid escape.
That’s probably not the whole story, however. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), suffered by thousands of veterans, increases aggressive driving. Drunken driving and thrill-seeking also are more common after combat, according to a few studies and the testimony of many veterans.
Steven Acheson drives his |
:Is Ruto a man under political siege
“The proposed Bill requires that every born male child should be circumcised. It will also be helpful to the whole community since it will seek to accommodate the newly born male babies,” he said. Onduru said if passed, the Bill will help in reduction of HIV infection rate by six per cent, adding that most men in Nyanza were exposed to the virus because they are not circumcised. This comes more than five years after the former Prime Minister Raila Odinga launched the campaign to have Luo men circumcised to help contain the spread of HIV. The move saw several men throng health facilities for the cut. It was during the same period that his brother Dr Oburu Odinga who was an assistant minister then, agreed to undergo the cut, a move that was seen as a boost to the campaign. Also in the Bill is the inclusion of extension services by the Community Health Workers (CHW’s) to help in empowering the community on the circumcision issues.
SEE ALSO :Women leaders raise alarm on high number of pregnant girls
Last week, Siaya County Health Director Dr Jackson Kioko urged residents to shun outdated cultural practices in a bid to control HIV infection rate in the area. Kioko said outdated cultural practices such as wife inheritance and failure to go for the male cut are some factors frustrating the fight against the virus in Luo Nyanza. There have been many deaths in the region as a result of opportunistic infections in those infected with the virus but residents have always associated them with Luo culture, saying it is a curse. At the moment, Nyanza region has embraced the cut and out of 450,000 targeted males about 426,000 men have undergone the cut, with 130,000 coming from Siaya County. However, in a recent report titled Kenya Aids Indicator Survey 2012 released by Health Cabinet Secretary James Macharia, HIV prevalence in Nyanza rose by 0.2 per cent over the past five years.
SEE ALSO :Inside Raila party’s push for powerful PM, leaner SenateYahoo Buys Ad Network Interclick for $270 Million
Aha! A Yahoo rumor that is actually true: The portal is buying ad network Interclick for $270 million.
The all-cash deal values each Interclick share at $9, or about 21 percent higher than the $7.4 per share that the New York-based company closed at yesterday. It’s supposed to close “by early 2012.”
Ad tech sources have been buzzing about a big Yahoo M&A play for many months, and several folks have pointed to Interclick as a logical candidate.
You can try to parse the explanation of the deal in the release below, but I’ll try to sum it up here:
Among Yahoo’s many problems is that its once-great sales organization is broken. Yahoo Americas boss Ross Levinsohn believes he can fix it with a combination of new talent and technology, as well as a strength-in-numbers plan he has tried to cobble together with Microsoft and AOL. Interclick fits into this plan because Yahoo intends to use the company’s tech and relationships to help it sell more of the remnant inventory that it currently hands over to ad networks.
It’s also worth pointing out the obvious here — that even as Yahoo’s endless sale-or-maybe-not-who-knows process grinds along, the company still has to keep operating. This isn’t a game-changer for Yahoo, and at less than 2 percent of its market cap, something bigger than a tuck-in, but still pretty small. But whoever does end up with Yahoo will want an ad business that’s not spiraling into a hole, so if this helps Levinsohn pull that off, it will be money well-spent.Quote Master-Nala Quote: Originally Posted by Naw, most of it is fluff. That's not a criticism, Facebook is a perfect venue for fluff. I think this is a way to engage a slice of the customer base that isn't super involved like forum posters. Agreed. Facebook is for fluff, not serious discussion. The posts should have more links to the main site, though. And a mod to clean up the constant referral spam in the comments.
<< Derp :: Questions about SWTOR? SEARCH Alssaran Quote: Originally Posted by Would you care to show me where the evil Bioware touched you? Possibly on this anatomically correct "SonofThulkose" doll? Darth Squeek, Dark Lord of the Skittles, Revan Fanboy<< Derp :: Questions about SWTOR? SEARCH DULFY! :: Obligatory referral link: http://www.swtor.com/r/Kp7S8B ::In the arms race to squeeze more pundits with more laptops into a single stage, CNN has always held the lead. They're for keeping an up-to-the-second finger on the blogosphere's pulse, receiving sordid tips from 21st-century Deep Throats, yes? Tell that to CNN's legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin-what you up to on that screen there, Jeff?
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Yeah, just watchin' a little pitch-by-pitch playoff baseball. Despite being from NYC, looks like Toobin had to keep watch of the Cubs action last night as they continued their epic choke, dropping to 0-2 against the Dodgers at home. But I can't say I blame him-being part of CNN's pundit brigade is probably doable while half in the bag on 45 minutes of sleep. Just ask James Carville. [Thanks Mark for the pic! And Nihal and Alex too]By now, it is practically an article of faith among the commentariat that Russia won the U.S. presidential election. It is an easy case to make. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump repeatedly questioned the post-WWII alliance system during the campaign, claiming that the United States does not benefit from underwriting its allies’ security. He equivocated on whether he would honor Article V of the NATO charter if one of its members was attacked, and has routinely praised the leadership style of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
If Trump’s warm feelings for Putin extend beyond inauguration day and he governs with the same transactional and isolationist approach he campaigned on, he would leave Moscow free to bully its way to hegemony in Eastern Europe. Putin would suddenly find himself able to wield the threat of force with unprecedented credibility. Though Russia will lack the capacity to invade and pacify large swathes of Eastern Europe so long as depressed oil prices continue to constrain military spending, an isolationist United States would still enable a dangerous expansion of Putin’s negotiating toolkit. Even if Putin refrains from annexing or destabilizing any more foreign territories, he would have new latitude to restore Russia’s sphere of influence in Eastern and Central Europe.
Those who accept the intelligence community´s consensus about Moscow’s brazen interference in the presidential race fall into two camps. The first, which is largely composed of the Democratic Party establishment, maintains that the Russian government directly attempted to sway the election in Trump’s favor to bring about a more pliant administration in Washington. Trump’s open admiration for Vladimir Putin, as well the substantial financial relationships linking him and his advisors with Moscow, led more than a few to speculate that the American people were on the verge of electing a Russian agent.
“Putin will no longer be able to count on the superior flexibility and unpredictability that has kept his Western counterparts perpetually off-balance. This role-reversal may burnish his image as a serious statesman, but it will also constrain his ability to seize the initiative and act independently.”
The other camp, which includes a substantial proportion of credible political analysts in both the West and Russia, points out that Trump’s volatile personality and amorphous policy positions make him an unpredictable and potentially destabilizing factor. According to this view, the Kremlin’s propaganda operations were less about promoting Trump and more about painting the U.S. electoral process as corrupt, insecure, and undemocratic. Two teams of hackers—likely affiliated with the Russian government—hammered the Clinton campaign for months with hacked DNC emails showing that the party establishment actively attempted to swing the primary in Hillary Clinton’s favor. Propaganda outlets like Russian-funded RT and Sputnik, both geared to English-speaking audience, kept up a steady drumbeat about how a corrupt, oligarchic elite had rigged the elections in favor of Hillary Clinton. On the eve of the election, RT’s senior editor tweeted, “Democracy RIP” in anticipation of a Trump defeat.
It is true that senior figures in the Russian government greeted Trump’s victory with genuine glee. Members of Russia’s legislative assembly, the Duma, broke into applause at the results; RT’s editor changed her tune to “Establishment RIP”; Putin’s spokesman Dmitri Peskov smugly told reporters that he expected a new alignment of Russian and U.S. foreign policy priorities; and senior Kremlin officials impishly hinted at their nation’s involvement in the electoral process.
Yet Moscow’s propagandists now face an unexpected and unprecedented task. They will have a harder time promoting the “Fortress Russia” narrative that has fueled Putin’s domestic political support since he returned to the presidency in 2012. Spooked by the 2011 protests, he tacked hard to the right in an effort to seize control of the political narrative. Initially this was done through fearmongering about the encroachment of Western moral debauchery (read: homosexuality), although it subsequently blossomed into Cold War-style rhetoric as Russia settled into a protracted phase of confrontation with the West, particularly following its seizure of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and intervention in the Donbas. As that conflict turned into an increasingly dissatisfying quagmire, Putin pivoted to Syria, launching a successful and relentlessly televised aerial campaign to roll back rebel territorial gains.
In Ukraine and Syria, Putin has prospered by creating and exploiting short-term volatility. Now, with a far more impulsive and aggressive man as his counterpart, he will have to tread far more carefully. There is no way of knowing whether a Trump administration will call his bluff in a future standoff. As a result, Putin will no longer be able to count on the superior flexibility and unpredictability that has kept his Western counterparts perpetually off-balance. This role-reversal may burnish his image as a serious statesman, but it will also constrain his ability to seize the initiative and act independently.
“As right-wing populist movements continue to topple mainstream governments across the Western world, riding to power on promises of ousting corrupt, globalist elites, Russia’s assorted nationalists, right-wing populists, and neo-fascists will be increasingly emboldened to attempt the same at home.”
If Trump keeps up a conciliatory tone toward Russia, Putin will find it much more complicated to manufacture geopolitical crises that pit Russia against a hostile West, led by a United States supposedly intent on regime change in Moscow. Without a convenient enemy, Putin will find fewer opportunities to rally support based around an external threat, and will have to rely more on positive measures that involve boosting Russians’ standard of living.
The longer the economy remains in the doldrums and ordinary Russians continue to struggle with declining wages and rising prices, the more he will need to depend on nationalism to bolster his popular support. He will do this as part of a continuing effort to co-opt Russia’s festering far-right, which, in the absence of a credible liberal opposition, represents by far the greatest political threat to his regime. Putin understood that populist nationalism helped fuel the 2011 protests, and his reactionary turn was calculated to appropriate that political energy for his own ends. He has largely succeeded in this effort. However, events abroad threaten to reverse his progress.
As right-wing populist movements continue to topple mainstream governments across the Western world, riding to power on promises of ousting corrupt, globalist elites, Russia’s assorted nationalists, right-wing populists, and neo-fascists will be increasingly emboldened to attempt the same at home. Alexander Dugin, the intellectual godfather of the extreme Eurasianist movement, declared after Trump’s victory that “the part of the Russian elite that is still liberal cannot be blamed as before for being be too pro-American. From now on, it should be blamed for being what it is: a corrupt, perverted greedy gang of bankers and destroyers of cultures, traditions, and identities.” As Putin gradually runs out of credible wag-the-dog scenarios, he will face increasingly vocal demands for the one thing he cannot give: a genuine anti-corruption campaign.
Cracking down on Russia’s corrupt, opulent elite would mean attacking the very foundation of his regime; the Kremlin would come to resemble an ouroboros. In lieu of a serious attempt to institute the rule of law, Putin has tasked the FSB, Russia’s principle state security agency, with putting on a show of draining the swamp. The recent arrest of Economy Minister Alexei Ulyukaev, ostensibly over a $2 million dollar bribe, demonstrates that no one is safe. In addition, two deputy governors from Kemerovo were recently arrested, investigations of three former governors from different regions are currently underway, and several high-ranking members of the Investigative Committee are awaiting trial. If Putin continues down this road, he will bring Russia closer to being the totalitarian regime that his most virulent critics have long accused it of being.
For now, as the Kremlin’s geostrategic aims come closer to reality, its propagandists are tacking to a mix of triumphalism, magnanimity, and downplayed expectations, trying to prepare for everything from full detente to renewed hostility with the United States. Yet the better Russians feel about Trump, the more impatient they will become with Putin. The latter surely knows this. Don’t expect the honeymoon to last.
Image: A Russian military honor guard welcomes U.S. Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow, June 26, 2009. (Chad J. McNeeley, Department of Defense)
Nick Tonckens is a Russian Studies Intern at the American Enterprise Institute. He previously worked at the Wilson Center and the Massachusetts Senate. Nick is an alumnus of Bowdoin College and Phillips Academy, and recently returned from Russia where he served as a Critical Language Scholar.Courts in Russian-occupied Crimea have imposed 10 or 15 thousand rouble fines on 49 Crimean Tatars for solitary pickets in solidarity with victims of repression. Other hearings on December 18 were adjourned, but their outcome is not in question. In all, Russia will have extorted close on one million roubles from up to 86 Crimean Tatars whose protests were in full compliance with the occupying state’s draconian anti-protest legislation.
As reported, over 100 Crimean Tatars came out alone on October 14, in different parts of Crimea. Each held one or two placards with messages such as: “Our children are not terrorists!”; “Give children their fathers back, Crimean Tatars are not terrorists!” and “Fabricating criminal cases – it’s this that’s TERROR”. The Russian-controlled enforcement bodies detained 49 people that day, but eventually released them all which they would certainly not have done had there been any offence they could pin on them.
Later, however, the FSB began summoning individual activists for interrogation, demanding to know who had ‘organized’ the pickets. The administrative proceedings brought were under Article 20.2 § 5 of Russia’s criminal code, for supposed infringements of the rules for holding a picket. The argument applied is that since there were many such pickets, then together they constituted an ‘unauthorized public event’. As Ilmi Umerov, Crimean Tatar leader and himself a victim of political persecution, notes: “It turns out that if there are several INNOCENT people, then they’re GUILTY. This is the logic of occupiers and bandits. The law is meaningless.”
Prominent Crimean Tatar rights lawyer Emil Kurbedinov points to the real sign of “a single intent and organizer”, and that was in the mass nature of the court hearings on one day. Were they hoping to prove that there would not be enough lawyers and people showing solidarity for all the victims?
If this was the “single intent”, then it failed. Kurbedinov notes that “like on the day of the pickets, the persecution has once again united the people. So many court hearings on one day will probably resulted in the emergence of a new human rights movement – ‘the group of 86’. 86 people are on trial today for peacefully expressing their views!” He promises that there will be that many appeals.
“You want and simply long to crush the popular movement and drive everybody into different corners! You have miscalculated! Today 86 people will prove that and we will cope with the fines as one people, as we did before. The Crimean Marathon is continuing! “
The Crimean Marathon arose after Russia began adding crippling fines to its arsenal of repressive measures against Crimean Tatars and other Ukrainians in occupied Crimea. As well as imprisoning 76-year-old Server Karametov, who is frail and in very ill health, for 10 days, the same ‘judge’, Marina Vladimirovna Kolotsei fined him 10 thousand roubles, an amount beyond the elderly pensioner’s means. (Details about how to show solidarity here.)
Our children are not terrorists
It may, or may not, have been coincidence that the mass court hearings were scheduled for 18 December, arousing associations for many Crimean Tatars with that most painful of anniversaries, the Deportation of the entire Crimean Tatar people from their homeland which began on 18 May, 1944.
The huge number of administrative proceedings and fines are a worrying escalation of repression against Crimean Tatars and are openly lawless. Russia is in breach of international law by imposing its own legislation on occupied territory, but is even abusing its own laws through such arbitrary ‘interpretation’ of its rules on pickets.
The pickets on October 14 came three days after the latest armed searches and arrests of Crimean Tatars. Six men, several of them activists from Crimea Solidarity, the initiative launched to help political prisoners and their families, were arrested on that day and are now facing fabricated ‘terrorism’ charges. Around 11 other men were detained and received large fines merely for having come out in solidarity and tried to video and photograph the searches and arrests.
Four other men had been arrested on October 2 on new charges for Russian-occupied Crimea, of supposed involvement in Tablighi Jamaat, a peaceful and apolitical movement which Russia has chosen to label ‘extremist’.
Many of the banners repeated the message on the placard held by Server Karametov before his arrest: “Putin, our children are not terrorists!”
The hunt for the so-called ‘organizers’ of the pickets began almost immediately, with a number of people summoned for questioning. Officers turned up at people’s homes, leaving protocols (illegally) drawn up in the people’s absence.
Lawyer Lilya Hermedzhi is in no doubt that such measures are aimed at intimidating Crimean Tatar activists, at shutting them up so that there are no protests, no streaming of armed searches and arrests, no coverage of the human rights situation in Crimea.Australia needs Chinese Dream
By HailChina! (Australia) ( bbs.chinadaily.com.cn )
Updated: 2013-10-05
Welcome to join us at the China Daily forum for further discussions.
I wish I lived in China where people are more interested in the common good. In China I see calm and sensible 5 year plans. In Australia and the west I see wild and outlandish claims and false promises. It is not surprising that western politician rarely manage to keep their word and make good on their claims and promises.
I blame America for this cold and destructive form of governance. The American Dream is a selfish dream. The American Dream makes people and nations dig their own graves. The American Dream is not sustainable. The American Dream ensures that there are some winners but always many losers.
It wasnt so long ago that Australia was more like China. Australia was very close to being State Capitalist in the 80's. The Australian Government owned all important utilities and managed them in the interest of the common good. Since the 80's we have been slowly Americanized.
Australia must wake up from the American Fantasy and start living the Chinese Dream. Australian culture is more in line with China than America. In Australia we like everyone to have "fair go". Until recently the Australian hero was the "Aussie Battler". The "Aussie Battler" is the common man.
The Aussie Dream has always been much closer to the Chinese Dream in the past. Australia has lost its way. Budget time is always a reminder of how selfish and Americanized we have become. Australia needs to go back to State Capitalism and follow the lead of the most successful economy China. To follow America into economic ruin is crazy.
The real American Dream is to run up $17 trillion dollars in debt that you never intend to ever pay. And that is not to mention the unspeakable figure that the American Government owes itself in Unfunded Liabilities. America doesnt even bother making a budget most of the time because they know they they never pay their bills anyway. All America ever does is live on credit and rack up more and more debt that will never be paid for. America can do this because they maintain the Reserve Currency and a military that tries to protect the petrodolllar system. The rest of us must actually pay our bills.
Even America cannot sustain the American Dream with all of its unfair advantage. It is only a matter of time before all that ever increasing National Debt destroys the Americans entire way of life. Australia and the rest of the west must look to China and the Chinese Dream if we seek prosperity for all. Westerners must learn that what is good for the nation and fair is good for all. Westerners must stop being so selfish and American.
The Chinese Dream is a dream of prosperity for all. This is sustainabe, sensible and fair. The American Dream is selfish and unsustainable fantasy.During a discussion with the Rotary Club of Flint, Mich. on Friday, University president Mary Sue Coleman verbalized the obvious — bringing Rich Rodriguez to Michigan was a mistake.
In three seasons as the head coach of the Michigan football team, Rodriguez's program was marred with a series of NCAA violations and a dismal 15-22 record.
But when Coleman and then-Athletic Director Bill Martin conducted a national search to replace Lloyd Carr in late 2007, they were intrigued by Rodriguez, then at West Virginia. He was gaining rapid popularity as the pioneer of the spread offense.
“He was a hot, young coach with a different approach,” Coleman said in Flint, according to MLive.com.
Rodriguez’s offense was a big factor in Michigan’s decision to hire him, Coleman said, since Carr’s pro-style, old-fashioned offense had been widely criticized as his tenure came to a close.
“We thought, ‘OK, well let's go hire the guy who invented the spread offense,’ ” Coleman said.
So they did. And three years later he was out the door.
He was replaced by Brady Hoke, who was an assistant coach at Michigan under Carr. In 2011, Hoke's first season as head coach, he took the Wolverines to a 10-2 regular-season record and a Sugar Bowl victory.
"(Hoke) has more of the kind of Midwestern ethos," Coleman said.
After working as a college football analyst for CBS Sports during the 2011 season, Rodriguez accepted the head coaching position at Arizona, where he will begin his first season this fall. According to MLive.com, Coleman said she was “very happy” to hear of Rodriguez’s new job and she wishes him luck.
Rodriguez himself admitted a year ago that leaving West Virginia for Michigan was a mistake.
“I think it's easy to go back now and say, ‘Gee, made a mistake,’ ” Rodriguez told CBSSports.com last April. “And you can say that now because of hindsight.
“But at the time, some of the things I was looking to do and the opportunity that was there, you kind of make the move.”
In seven years at West Virginia, Rodriguez compiled a 60-26 record and made two BCS bowl appearances. But in three seasons at Michigan, Rodriguez never beat rivals Michigan State and Ohio State and compiled a 6-18 Big Ten record.
“Hindsight is always easier to look back and say, ‘It was a mistake,’ ” Rodriguez said. “Because we did have a good thing going at West Virginia, and we really enjoyed it. As you look back at it, wasn't the best move. Easy to say now.”
CLARIFICATION: A previous version of this article included a quote from former Michigan center David Molk that was deleted as it was deemed as misleading.Cannibal killers 'cooked Russian schoolgirl with potatoes and ate her because they were hungry'
Police believe Karina Barduchyan, 16, was killed, dismembered and eaten. She disappeared after leaving for school in St Petersburg
A teenage girl may have been killed and partially eaten by two men, Russian prosecutors said yesterday.
Karina Barduchyan, 16, disappeared after leaving for school in St Petersburg on January 19.
Police believe she was killed and dismembered that night.
Body parts believed to belong to her have been found in plastic bags scattered around the city.
Two 19-year-old men have been arrested in connection with the grisly killing.
Karina knew suspects Yuri Mozhnov, a florist, and Maxim Golovatskikh, a street-market butcher and former psychiatric patient.
The alleged killers lured her to a city flat where they drowned her in a bath.
'The arrestees said they ate the girl's body parts because they were hungry,' city prosecutor's spokesman Sergei Kapitonov said.
They told investigators they baked some body parts with potatoes, he added.
They allegedly disposed of her bagged remains in garbage containers and bodies of water.
Yuri Mozhnov is being held on suspicion of murder
Bags with body parts were found in at least two locations, he said.
Both men are being held on suspicion of murder.
St Petersburg prosecutor, Andrei Lavrenko, said investigators believe the suspects decided to kill Miss Barduchyan after an argument erupted between her and Golovatskikh.
Lavrenko said investigators found traces of blood when they ripped out plumbing and floorboards in the apartment.
Mozhnov was convicted of robbery in 2005, Kapitonov said.
He said Golovatskikh had been treated in the past at a psychiatric hospital.*If you found this post interesting, please share. I will be sending an invisible hug your way :-)
We have ADHD in our family. I have ADHD and my some of our kids have ADHD. I was diagnosed as a child and I was medicated during school hours till I was 12. In kindergarten I saw a therapist. I loved it because she played games with me and I left regular class to see her. I don’t know why my parents stopped my prescription medicine when I was older but I think it’s because they believed I could function without it. I maintained A’s and B’s in middle school, with an occasional C in subjects I had no interest in. I never studied. I still hate studying to this day. I always tested for advanced classes, yet I got a D in Algebra and Spanish. Probably because I never did my homework. My Algebra teacher was the most boring teacher I have ever known. Boring is a fail for a school teacher. How do you maintain the excitement of a class of 25 kids? Okay, okay… I know it’s still my fault… I should have studied… I also got a D in Spanish, but here I am, in Mexico, slowly learning to speak the language ;-) I love Spanish and my teacher was awesome in high school. But there was a really cute senior that sat right beside me in class and he was a flirter. Yep, that’s the truth, Mom.
After my freshman year I begged my parents to homeschool me. I had friends that were homeschooling, and I wanted to pioneer in our Bible ministry. Pioneering means we put in 60 or 90 hours a month in the ministry. This was back in the early 90’s. I graduated on time after my parents threatened to take my license away. I was and still am a terrible procrastinator :-( I started pioneering in 1994 and at age 16 my parents gave me the family cleaning business. I was homeschooling slowly but with good grades, pioneering in our Bible ministry, and learning to work and run a business during my high school years, despite having ADHD. That’s what I call, real life experience. Now here I am a mom of four, living in Mexico, homeschooling my kids, putting about 20 hours a month in our Bible ministry and having lots of fun as a blogger and a traveler.
ADHD is part of me. I get distracted easily, I procrastinate, I schedule more than I can do, I always have multiple projects going, I have trouble paying attention at our Bible meetings, I speak or act before I think about it, and sometimes my brain feels like it’s spinning. I also have anxiety issues and panic attacks, which I take medicine for. One of my doctors told me that children with ADHD are more likely to have depression or anxiety as adults. This made a lot of sense for me. If synapses in your brain are not firing correctly, then it’s going to cause you various mental health problems. Sometimes I wonder if I should be medicated for adult ADHD but right now I am in a happy place so why mess up a good thing? Plus the meds are expensive in Mexico when you pay out-of-pocket.
I feel like my parents did the best they could with me. I appreciate the direction they gave me, especially during my high school years. Love you, Mom and Dad! ADHD did not stunt me or hold me back. If anything it constantly pushes me forward, to explore whatever interests me and to take the world by a storm. To medicate or not to medicate? That is a personal question. Maybe it is good for some and not for others. Don’t judge. My ADHD can be very frustrating but I try to manage it the best I can and I never give up, unless I decide backing down is in my best interest. Do you have a story about ADHD or a similar mental health problem? Part Two will be about ADHD and my children. Stay tuned. Signing off, TinaA 59-year-old man who spent 20 years living in caves near Glenwood Springs was sentenced Tuesday to a year of probation on a weapons possession charge, authorities say.
Chief Judge Marcia Krieger also fined Michael Ray Collins $500 Tuesday during a federal court hearing in Grand Junction. As a condition of his probation, Collins can’t possess guns for hunting, protection or anything else. He also was warned the trailer where he now lives can be searched for weapons at any time.
Collins is a man of few words. When asked whether he had anything to say on his behalf he replied, “I just want to go to work. That’s all I ever do is go to work.”
Garfield County sheriff’s deputies spotted Collins on Nov. 25, 2015, during a search in the mountains above Glenwood Springs. Collins told them he “had a cave” where he had been living for three years, court records indicate.
Collins had been convicted on a felony charge of attempted assault on a peace officer in Illinois in 1994 and decided to move to the Colorado Rockies after living on a South Dakota Indian reservation. Collins was a reclusive person who as a teen took care of a baby skunk when it got lost, his attorney David Johnson said.
On Dec. 9, 2015, a Bureau of Land Management ranger searched the cave, which is on BLM property, and found three rifles and a Ruger.44 Magnum handgun and 2,612 rounds of ammunition.
Johnson disputed a prosecution claim that Collins used the guns for protection from wild animals and intruders. Instead, he used the weapons only to kill game and for target practice.
Collins was originally charged in April with being a felon in possession of a firearm and depreciation of public property. The second charge was later dropped during plea bargaining.
“He was originally living in this cave as a fugitive for a long, long time,” federal prosecutor Pete Hautzinger said during Tuesday’s sentencing hearing.
He said that Collins had survivalist-type books and articles in the cave and had lived in several caves during the past 20 years. Six BLM rangers spent about 10 hours each to clean the cave, according to court records. The rangers took eight cubic yards of trash to a landfill.
Originally Hautzinger believed Collins was dangerous, but later became convinced he was a good, hard-working man and didn’t pose a threat to others.
Johnson explained that Collins would hike into Glenwood Springs during the past 10 years to work as a maintenance man for Glenwood Cabins. After his arrest, Collins’ boss allowed him to stay in a trailer.
Krieger told Collins that he wasn’t in court for living in a cave. “It’s not whether your way of dealing with life is wrong or not,” the judge told Collins. She said he was in trouble because he was a convicted felon and could not legally keep weapons.
“You understand that if you live in a cave you can’t have guns,” Krieger asked.
“Yes,” Collins proclaimed loudly.Here's a puzzle: Google appears to have started work on a completely new operating system, but no one knows quite what it's for. The project's name is Fuchsia, and it currently exists as a growing pile of code on the search giant's code depository and on GitHub, too. The fledgling OS has a number of interesting features, but so far Google has yet to comment on its intended function. All we really know is that this looks like a fresh start for Google, as the operating system does not use the Linux kernel — a core of basic code that underpins both Android and Chrome OS.
So what is Fuchsia for? There have been a number of suggestions. Some people think it could be used to "unify" Chrome OS and Android into a single operating system (a plan that was first rumored last year, with the new OS said to be scheduled for a 2017 release), while others say it could be used to power hardware like Google's OnHub router or third-party Internet of Things devices.
Fuchsia's core code is designed to be lightweight
Looking into Fuchsia's code gives us a few clues. For example, the OS is built on Magenta, a "medium-sized microkernel" that is itself based on a project called LittleKernel, which is designed to be used in embedded systems (computers that have a specialized function and often don't need an actual operating system, like the software in a digital watch). Similarly, both of the developers listed on Fuchsia's GitHub page — Christopher Anderson and Brian Swetland — are experts in embedded systems. Swetland is a senior software engineer at Google and Anderson has previously worked on the company's Android TV and Nexus Q projects.
But the OS also "targets modern phones [and] computers"
However, the Magenta kernel can do a lot more than just power a router. Google's own documentation says the software "targets modern phones and modern personal computers" that use "fast processors" and "non-trivial amounts of RAM." It notes that Magenta supports a number of advanced features, including user modes and a "capability-based security model." Further evidence that Fuchsia is intended for more than just Wi-Fi-connected gadgets include the fact that Google already has its own IoT platform (the Android-based Brillo), and the fact that the new OS includes support for graphics rendering. Some users of Hacker News have even suggested that Fuchsia could be use for augmented reality interfaces. (Google itself has yet to respond to requests for comment.)
This is just speculation for now, and the only real description we have of Fuchsia is what it says at the top of the GitHub page: "Pink + Purple == Fuchsia (a new Operating System)." The question of why the project would be revealed in this way is also confusing, although when pressed on the subject during an IRC chat, Swetland reportedly said: "The decision was made to build it open source, so might as well start there from the beginning."
Well, we've certainly got the beginning of Fuchsia, but where it goes next isn't clear. From what we can see, it's currently being tested on all sorts of systems. Swetland says it's "booting reasonably well" on small-form factor Intel PCs (NUCs) as well as an Acer Switch Alpha 12 laptop ("although driver support is still a work in progress"), while another Google developer involved in the project, Travis Geiselbrecht, says they'll soon have support for the Raspberry Pi 3. At this rate, it looks like Fuchsia will be popping up all over the place.
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SALT LAKE CITY -- Utah Governor Gary Herbert has signed a bill lowering Utah's DUI level from.08 to.05, making it the lowest in the nation.
The governor signed the bill late Thursday, hours after announcing to reporters his intention to make it law.
"My responsibility is to evaluate and decide whether in fact going to.05 is in fact good policy. That’s my charge, is it good policy? And I’m here to announce that after thorough analysis that I believe it is good policy and that this new policy will in fact save lives," he said at his monthly news conference on KUED.
However, Gov. Herbert said he would call a special session to address "unintended consequences" of the law, which could also include delaying it's implementation beyond 2019. Some lawmakers (including House Speaker Greg Hughes) have said they would prefer to wait until other states move to.05 so Utah is not alone.
The bill's sponsor, Rep. Norm Thurston, R-Provo, told FOX 13 he was thrilled by the governor's decision.
"We’re first in a lot of things and one thing we can be first in is prioritizing highway safety," he said.
The decision to make the change to Utah's drunk driving law came after a lot of lobbying against the bill. In numbers provided to FOX 13 under a request to the governor's office, 3,818 phone calls, emails and letters had been received as of Thursday morning asking for HB155 to be vetoed (including about 1,000 form emails), while 444 called or wrote in favor of the bill.
Gov. Herbert said he did not believe the policy would hurt tourism as hospitality leaders have claimed, noting that much of the world has adopted a.05 Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) level.
"If we look at the world, we're not weird," he said, adding that Utah could sell the DUI bill as making our state safer than |
believed that Chick Publications has printed as many as 800 million copies of its mini-comics, which continue to be produced in a wallet-sized format eerily reminiscent of Tijuana bibles, illicitly printed pornographic comics often featuring popular cartoon characters or celebrities of the day that enjoyed their greatest popularity during Chick’s Great Depression adolescence and his years in the U.S. Army. The difference here is that, instead of Clark Gable diddling Betty Boop, Chick’s tracts offered text-heavy fantasies of a world where everything was part of a secret conspiracy of Satanist indoctrination, and Bronze Age druids were always on the verge of making a comeback.
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Chick himself claimed that his inspiration came from a news report about Communist propaganda comics in China. Over the years, his widely distributed mini-comics were the frequent subject of boycotts by Christian organizations. They also developed an ironic fanbase who appreciated Chick’s work for its unintentionally absurd plotting and dialogue and its frequent, tone-deaf attempts at appealing to specific audiences, making excerpts from and parodies of Chick tracts common in ‘zines and on punk flyers throughout the ’80s and ’90s.
Your browser does not support HTML5 video tag.Click here to view original GIFThis column originally ran in the Providence Journal.
You have to hand it to Barack Obama when it comes to having it both ways: He never stops serving the ruling class, yet the mainstream media, from right to left, continues to pretend that he’s some sort of reincarnation of Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully committed to the downtrodden and deeply hostile to the privileged and the rich.
The president’s double game was never more adroit than during his most recent State of the Union address. Reacting to the speech, the right-wing columnist Charles Krauthammer spoke on Fox News of Obama’s “activist government” beliefs and his penchant for “painting the Republicans as the party of the rich” while portraying himself as the defender of the “middle class, Medicare and all this other stuff.” Meanwhile, the “liberal” New York Times praised his “broad second-term agenda” as “impressive” and blamed the G.O.P. for “standing in the way” of the many liberal reforms that the president supposedly wants to enact to help the poor and the middle class.
Yet the address contained hardly anything progressive: On the contrary, Obama’s proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to only $9 an hour — and not for two years — was a populist parody. Under the president’s proposal, a minimum-wage worker supporting a family of three (two parents, one child) would make $18,720 a year in 2015 — barely above today’s federal poverty line of $18,480 and well short of the 1968 peak, inflation-adjusted, of $21,840 a year, or $10.50 an hour. Combined with Obama’s mosquito bite of an increase in the top marginal income-tax rate to 39.6 percent — restoring Bill Clinton’s top rate would still put it at way less than the Eisenhower-era top rate of 91 percent — the minimum-wage bill insults the many millions of less fortunate people who voted for the incumbent. So much for “activist government” and an “impressive” agenda.
Of course, I don’t take this sort of hyperbolic commentary seriously anymore. If Obama ever had a “philosophy,” it’s about power sharing — that is, sharing parts of his plastic personality with the powers that be — from the Daley brothers in Chicago who advanced his career, to the bankers and hedge-fund mangers who financed his campaigns, to the lobbyists and party barons in Washington who write his legislative proposals. Never has a leading American Democrat (including the dean of “New Democrats,” Bill Clinton) done less to promote “activist government” in support of less-privileged people while getting so much undeserved credit for “trying” to help them.
But as a student of propaganda and politics, I can’t help but remark on how effective Obama has been at muzzling criticism, or even intelligent analysis, from the liberals who should be revolting against him. The other week I was reading the very pro-Obama Nation magazine when I happened upon “Defeatist Democrats.” It was uncharacteristically critical of the Democratic Party and the president. With no byline at the top of the article, I found myself wondering who (now that Alexander Cockburn is dead) in the left-wing weekly’s regular stable would write something as tough as this: “The decay of the Democratic Party can’t be better confirmed than by the actions of its leader.”
Noting that in the 2008 campaign Obama “championed” an increase in the minimum wage to $9.50 “but after winning fell silent” (even though the Democrats had solid majorities back then in both houses of Congress), the article went on to point out that after the 2012 election “Democrats privately blamed Obama for not running with the Congressional Democrats and refusing to share campaign money from the President’s $1 billion stash.” It quoted former Colorado senator Gary Hart as saying that “Democrats don’t know what the party stands for,” and predicted losses in the 2014 midterm elections if the Democrats pursued their strategy of “raising the money and taking care not to offend business interests by talking vaguely about the middle class and ignoring the growing poorer classes that are the Democratic Party’s natural constituency.”
Who was this mystery writer and why wasn’t his name on the magazine’s cover? At the end of the piece I found the answer, and the byline: Ralph Nader, who is among the last national political figures who will call something what it really is. His name wasn’t on the cover because for liberals the Obama dream dies hard.
Lately, besides talking up “deficit reduction” and creating a “thriving middle class,” Obama is pushing an even more ambitious and destructive “free trade” agenda certain to weaken the middle class even more. The ultra-realistic Financial Times reported last month that Obama had put “trade at the heart of” his agenda. This means we will no doubt see lovely bipartisan cooperation between the two enemy parties when there’s real money on the table for their big donors.
Of the proposed deals, the most damaging for American manufacturing and decent factory wages would be the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which if signed would follow on Obama’s 2011 job-killing trifecta — the “free-trade” agreements with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama. More Japanese and other Asian imports would result, but Obama’s cheerleaders in the media blur the debate by touting a supposed manufacturing revival they cutely call “insourcing.” The insourcing “boom” is another administration fraud (see anything written by Alan Tonelson), but it neatly distracts people from the ever-increasing foreign-trade deficit.
Preposterous though it may seem, Republican leaders in Congress, despite their simple-minded obsession with spending cuts, come off like straight shooters by comparison with Obama. As for Obama, well, as one of the president’s former supporters put it to me, “He’s one of them!” But if liberals like the odds for 2014, by all means, they should stay the course. They might well wind up with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.Cano was ejected for the first time in his major league career after being called out on a checked-swing strike three.
ARLINGTON, Texas — Robinson Cano tried to think back to the last time he was ejected from a game. He couldn’t remember it.
Why?
Because Cano had never been ejected from a Major League Baseball game in his big league career … well, until Wednesday night at Globe Life Park.
In the seventh inning of a 3-1 game, Cano was trying to grind out an at-bat against hard-throwing Rangers lefty Jake Diekman with runners on second and third. He was looking to add to the Mariners lead. Instead, he was forced out of the game and watched his teammates put up a five-run frame in the clubhouse.
On a 2-2 slider in the dirt, Cano started to swing but tried to pull back and check the swing. Home plate umpire Vic Carapazza immediately signaled that Cano had swung, calling him out. Cano seemed stunned and turned to Carapazza to ask why he didn’t ask for help from third base umpire and crew chief Jeff Nelson instead of making the call. The conversation was brief because Carapazza ejected Cano after minimal back and forth. Cano was the third player Carapazza ejected this season. He ejected five last season.
Sitting at his locker postgame, Cano was very upset about what had transpired.
“What he did was so stupid,” he said, his voice raising. “I didn’t say anything. I just asked him why he didn’t check it or you should’ve checked that one. He said, ‘you better go.’ But I said, ‘I was just asking you if you can check that.’ He was like, ‘You better go.’ And I said, ‘I’m just asking you a question.’ And then he threw me out. I’ve never disrespectful to anybody. I’m the first one to say that umpires are human and they make mistakes. But if it’s somebody that just asks you a question, I don’t see the reason you would get thrown out. If I curse or say anything like that, I get it. If I know I’m going to be ejected like that, I should have said something back. You know?”
But Cano wasn’t finished.
“If you ask players to give you respect, you have to show respect to the players,” he said. “You guys know me, I’ve been in this game for so long and I never disrespect anyone. I’m the first to alway say hello to everyone. He should know better because I’ve known him for a long time. He’s known me when I was (a young player) at the Yankees complex. I’ve never been disrespectful to anybody. As a veteran playing this game for so long, I think I deserve the respect that I can ask a question to the umpire. That’s it, I just said, ‘why don’t you check it?’ I don’t see the reason to throw me out especially when we are in playoff-type games. I mean if I curse, then I deserve it. I’ll be the first one to walk away and not say anything.”
Asked if he can remember being thrown out, Cano said he wasn’t certain. He knew he hadn’t been ejected while with the Mariners.
“I don’t remember being thrown out before, not even close to being thrown out,” he said. “I don’t argue anything. And you see, I put my head down when I do talk to them. I know they are human and they do make mistakes, it’s why I don’t show up an umpire in front of everybody. I put my head down and say it. I don’t know. It seems like he had something, like he was waiting for that. And I didn’t argue for the strike or anything.”
Manager Scott Servais was also not pleased with the ejection.
“I thought it was pretty quick to throw him out of the game,” Servais said. “Robbie wasn’t showing him up or anything. You got to have a little bit better feel. We certainly didn’t want to lose Cano at that point in the game. But 3-1 game, you hate to lose your best player. I wasn’t real happy with it either.”Basics
nicknames: Geißböcke (Billy Goats), FC, ‘effzeh’ (local dialect for ‘FC’), Rut un Wiess (red and white)
founded: 13 February 1948
club colors: white and red
primary rivals: Borussia Mönchengladbach, Bayer Leverkusen, Fortuna Düsseldorf
fan friendship: Borussia Dortmund
Stadium
RheinEnergieStadion (formerly Müngersdorfer) opened in 1923 (renovated 2001-2004)
capacity: 50,000
2015-16 attendance: 827,500 (48,676 per match)
Trophies
Bundesliga champion(2): 1963-64, 1977-78
DFB Cup winner(4): 1967-68, 1976-77, 1977-78, 1982-83
Florida Cup winner: 2015
2014-15 Finishes
Bundesliga: 9th with 43 points (38 goals scored, 42 goals conceded)
DFB Pokal: 2rd round (1-0 loss at SV Werder Bremen)
Number of Matches won by 2 or more goals: 5
Number of Matches won by 1 goal: 5
Number of Matches drawn: 13
Number of Matches lost by 1 goal: 5
Number of Matches lost by 2 or more goals: 6
Number of matches in which a led was blown, resulting in loss: 1
Number of matches in which a led was blown, resulting in draw: 4
Number of matches in which a deficit was overcome to earn a draw: 4
Number of matches in which a deficit was overcome to earn victory: 4
Top 2015-16 Scorers
Anthony Modeste: 15
Simon Zoller: 6
Marcel Risse: 3
Leonardo Bittencourt: 3
Summer Test Results
Record: 5-0-2
Goals Scored: 12
Goals Allowed: 5
Arminia Bielefeld 2:3 FC
Fortuna Köln 1:0 FC
FC 0:1 FC Malaga (45-minute match in Aachen)
FC 0:1 Olympique Marseille (45-minute match in Aachen)
FC 1:0 FC Bologna (in Kitzbühel)
FC 2:0 SD Eibar (in Kitzbühel)
1. FSV Mainz 0:3 FC
Transfer Action
IN:
Sehrou Guirassy (LOSC Lille)
Marco Höger (FC Schalke 04)
Artjoms Rudnevs (Hamburger SV)
Konstantin Rausch (SV Darmstadt 98)
OUT:
Yannick Gerhardt (VfL Wolfsburg)
Kevin Vogt (TSG Hoffenheim)
Dusan Svento (Slavia Prag)
Philipp Hosiner (end of loan from Rennes, transferred to 1. FC Union Berlin)
Questions with a Club Fan:
A native of Cologne from the day of his birth in 1985, Mirko Born was raised from an early age to follow the right club. Knowing the glory days of FC only from hearing about them, his FC experience has long been only promotion and relegation battles. Any title of any kind would undoubtedly overwhelm his mental capacities. Yet, he has maintained his space in Köln’s famous Südkurve (South End) for 15 years.
In his online column “Born Staubt Ab” for Köln tabloid newspaper Express, he has covered match-day events in a totally biased manner and made a name for himself among FC fans.
A collection of Born’s columns are also available as a book: Aufgestiegen dringeblieben: Born staubt ab – Zwei FC-Jahre zum Verlieben (Promoted stayed in: Born cleans up – Two FC-years to fall in love with)
Keep an eye out for...
Well, I don’t think there is a clear answer to give. As in the last three years, the team works best as a collective.
But I do think that Leon Bittencourt will play a good season. In the last year, he has delivered some great performances. With the renewal of his contract until 2021, he proved that he has some plans with Cologne.
Another player I am looking forward to watching this season is Milos Jojic. He had a bad run last year, but in the last few matches of the season he showed his potential. Maybe he will be like another “new signing.”
And, of course: What will Sehrou Guirassy do? Is he worth the money Jörg Schmadtke paid?
Terrace favorite...
The FC is becoming more and more the team of Cologne natives. Timo Horn, Marcel Risse, Marco Höger, Thomas Kessler, Lukas Klünter, Salih Özcan, and Marcel Hartel all were born in Cologne or in the surrounding area. With this team of “Kölsche Jungs” it is not too difficult to identify with the team.
But of course there are some favorite players, too.
Jonas Hector: the silent star player. He is the FC’s first national team player since Prinz Poldi (Lukas Podolski) and played a great Euro-Cup. He refused offers from the Premier League and from FC Barcelona, just to extend his contract with the Effzeh. Who would not love this guy?
You also have Timo Horn. He is not only one of the best three keepers of the league (some see him as number two behind Manuel Neuer), he is also a Kölsche Jung par excellence; one of us. Plus, he made us proud in Rio; the Effzeh-face of the Olympics.
Last, but not least, I think most of the little girls (and some boys) on the terrace like Leon Bittencourt. 😉
Player you’d happily drive to another club...
Hey, we have the smallest squad in the league! I must not send anyone anywhere.
The player I was happy to see leave the Effzeh after the season was Kevin Vogt. I could not bear his style of football. Yes, he was tall and a lighthouse in the box, someone you could substitute when you have to defend your lead in the last few minutes. But in my opinion, he often tried more than he was capable of doing. He slowed down the counterattacks. He seemed often to be distracted and destroyed promising opportunities.
Advice you’d give your manager...
Stay calm, just as you have the last three seasons. After being a supporter of an absolutely chaotic club over more than 20 years, i don’t want them to change anything! This is the best effzeh I have ever seen. (Please do not wake me up).
Okay, one thing. Maybe this year, you can try to risk a little more. Sure, a point is a point, but if there is a chance to go for the winner – got for it!
Opposition player you secretly admire...
Are you expecting some realistic players, or am i allowed to dream? Then give me David Alaba and the Beast, Arturo Vidal!
To be more realisitc: Zlatko Junuzovic of Werder Bremen. We still need someone for free kicks and corners.
And, of course I envy Wolfsburg for having Yannick Gerhardt in their team and that they were able to pay 13 million Euro to get him. Though I honestly do not envy Yannick Gerhardt for playing in Wolfsburg now. Have you seen the color of their jerseys? Come on!
Opposition player you despise...
The players with that awful bull on their jerseys...
What will opposing sides underestimate?
I think the time of underestimating the effzeh is finally over.
Really! I have never experienced so much respect for the development of the effzeh than I have in the last year. The work of Werner Spinner, Toni Schumacher, Jörg Schmadtke, Alexander Wehrle, and Peter Stöger & Co. has come to fruition. Cologne is a serious and feared member of the Bundesliga again.
Isn’t that great? Yes, it is!
What are fans overestimating?
Maybe we are not as feared as we wish, but are we not?
Okay, we are not feared, but we are irritating! Yes, that is what we are. Haha! Nasty and irritating!
Tip you’d give foreign fans visiting RheinEnergie for the first time...
Come to the stadium around two hours before kickoff. Come by tube or by bike to inhale the atmosphere, which is notable all over the city.
Then have what I call a “Stadium-Breakfast.” Go to the beer stall and have one or two Kölsch and get your Stadionwurst. With a beer in the one and the bratwurst in the other, go forth among the other Cologne supporters there and chat football! Just wander over and talk to us. Remember: The spirit of Cologne is “Drink doch ene mit” (Drink one with us).
Where will you finish?...
I really hope that we will get another relaxed Bundesliga season. Put to rest sufficiently early any fears of relegation and secure a safe placement anywhere between 9 and 12.
And then, who knows? When we all believe and the effzeh has the luck that was denied them last year and one or two of the favorites goof a bit... maybe then, the breakthrough into Europe won’t seem impossible.
What is your all-time favorite 1. FC Köln memory?
I think it was the match which ultimately made me an Effzeh-Fan!
It was the 10th of July, 1995. I was nine years old when I went to good ol’ Müngersdorfer Stadion with my Dad (to this day, we go to every home match together).
I got tickets for the derby (yes, I consider it a “derby”) against Bayer Leverkusen for my First Communion.
After 60 Minutes, Leverkusen was up 3:0, after goals from Rudi Völler and Ulf Kirsten (2x), and it seemed destined to be a terrible afternoon.
But in the 67th minute, Bruno Labbadia, Patrick Weiser, and Rico Steinmann flipped the script in just 17 minutes, and the effzeh even had a chance to go for the win.
At the end there was 3:3 on the scoreboard and an absolutely stunned little boy who finally fell in love with this very special club in red and white.
When last we saw them
For the second-consecutive season, those in charge at 1. FC Köln set very modest goals for themselves (i.e. Don’t get relegated!) and achieved them fairly comfortably, even flirting with the possibility of finishing in a European spot.
Köln had not finished a first-division campaign as high as ninth since 1992 when they finished fourth, so fans are understandably excited for the upward trend of the club’s current iteration. Even more thrilling for longer-term fans, however, is the sense of peace and stability in the front office, something that had been severely lacking the last 20-some years while this former champion bounced back and forth between the top two tiers.
Aspiration
Because the club was able to hold onto key pieces Timo Horn and Jonas Hector in the face of growing outside interest, there is no reason there should not be some expectation of a continuation of the year-to-year improvement. As the Bundesliga had its top seven clubs earn European competition slots, there isn’t a lot of room, placement-wise, for Köln to improve its placing without also having to look at a trip to the Europa League.
Then again, Köln finished a full seven points behind Hertha BSC for that final European spot. Hence, points-wise there is plenty of room for growth without taking the big step into Europe. If you take into consideration a missed hand-ball here and a momentary defensive lapse while expecting a stoppage for injury there, the points left on the pitch last year close that gap significantly.
Officially, any talk of Europe will be met with a “remain calm” response, but even Hector has publicly said he believes the quality to achieve such a spot is already on the roster.
Reality
Without dismissing the significance of Köln keeping most of its best players, the fact is that almost everyone near them in the table added significant pieces in the summer. Guirassy is a wild card and Rudnevs is still Rudnevs, so the identification of a second goal-scoring threat to complement Anthony Modeste will be the biggest factor in how much Köln improves its standing.
Also, coach Peter Stöger wants to move Hector to defensive midfield and eventually be able to play with a three-man back line. Integrating such a new look for the long-term will take some transitioning in the short-term. There will be growing pains, no doubt.
The Boss
Outside Köln, Peter Stöger is known mostly for his stoic touchline presence and for presenting a very conservative, defensively oriented approach to the game.
FC fans know that Stöger’s demeanor is a huge component of his ability to manage amid the swirl of Köln’s infamously manic media coverage, but have also seen Stöger’s sense of humor at work in promotional videos produced by the club, giving perhaps a glimpse of the personality that helps him field a team that works so well together as a unit.
And there remains some hope that Stöger will eventually bring to Köln the offensive-minded game that made him a champions in his home country with an FK Austria Wien side that scored 84 goals in 36 matches.
For now, though, expect the same no-nonsense, all-business approach that took him from Austrian outsider to one of the Bundesliga’s most-reliable managers.
Philosophy
As noted earlier, Stöger will continue to investigate the deployment of three central defenders in the back row, while always keeping the option of using either 4-2-3-1 or a 4-4-2 with a double-pivot.
Stöger has said he currently is blessed with the deepest team he has had since arriving to Köln. He’s also traditionally held firm to the idea that his eleven best players from the week of training sessions will be the eleven who play on match day. This would technically mean that he could adjust his formation and philosophy based on who earns starting roles, but Stöger is no stickler for positions, either. Strikers Yuya Osako and Simon Zoller often played in the midfield last season. Meanwhile, midfielder Marcel Risse became a full-time right back when personal affairs made Pawel Olkowski a less-than-great option at the spot. Konstantin Raush has seen a lot of time at left back this summer, despite the presence of Jonas Hector and Filip Mladenovic.
Essentially, Stöger does what he thinks is best for the team and club, while tuning out the any chirps of criticism from fans or the press, which is precisely why he’s the best person for the job in Köln.
Personnel Changes
The departures of Kevin Vogt and Yannick Gerhardt necessarily thins the defensive-midfielder ranks. Both men played at the six on a regular basis. Between the arrival of Marco Höger and the continued transition of Jonas Hector to the middle of the pitch, however, Stöger has plenty of quality options at his disposal.
Further supporting Hector’s shift to the center is the arrival of Rausch as another option at left back. The veteran Bundesligist has looked good teamed with Leonardo Bittencourt along he left flank in summer tests.
Artjoms Rudnevs is the latest hopeful at providing Anthony Modeste a proper running mate up front. A legitimate secondary scoring threat would be huge for Stöger and crew, but the real hope rests on young Frenchman Sehrou Guirassy. He’s a bit of an unknown commodity, but his price tag forces an assumption that he can be special. Due to an injury discovered at his medical exam, he’s not yet played with his new club, but when he finally takes the pitch in red and white, he’ll be met with plenty of expectation.
Strengths
Backstopped by Olympic silver-medallist Timo Horn, the defense that gave Köln a 2. Bundesliga title and two relatively comfortable Bundesliga seasons will continue to be the foundation on which all else is built.
Weaknesses
After Anthony Modeste, there is no legitimate proven scoring threat on the roster. Additionally, the attack has oft been limited to getting the ball in to Modeste and letting him figure out how to create chances. Build-up play and offensive creativity are something this team must develop to continue to progress.
There is hope that Milos Jojic will finally provide a spark in attack after a somewhat-lost first season with the club. Leonardo Bittencourt has looked fantastic this summer. And, if Pawel Olkowski is back to his old self, Marcel Risse can move back to midfield and further improve the offensive look from the right flank.
But these are all “if” situations that have yet to be proven.
Crucial Stretch in Schedule
Shortly after returning from winter break, the FC have consecutive home matches against Wolfsburg, Schalke, and Bayern, with trips to promoted sides Freiburg and Leipzig sandwiched between them. February (and early March) has the potential to set a tone for the Rückrunde; this team is either a legitimate threat for a European spot or will find itself scrambling to recover from that stretch to avoid falling into the relegation dogfight.
Verdict
The most-likely outcome for this side is yet another convincingly acceptable mid-table finish because leadership will not overreach too early and jeopardize the long-term plan for one of Germany’s biggest clubs to return to prominence.Florida peeps!!The first week of June (4th-8th) is the time for electing Florida precinct committeeman and committeewoman. These are the people that elect county officers, those county politicians that endorse candidates and basically choose who are our local candidates will be.Here is how to become a Precinct Committeeman:You basically have to fill out this form, have it notarized and turn it in to the Supervisor of Elections between June 4 and June 8th.Do this at your local level:Have a big Ron Paul get together with those groups you have worked with in the past. Meetups, whichever. Have everyone get together Saturday June 2nd. It can be a bar, restaurant, park, whichever. Bring a notary. Get all Ron Paul supporters to sign up in their precinct. Have the sheets notarized. Have someone trustworthy turn those sheets in to their supervisor of elections. Or have each person do it themselves.Hardly anyone ever runs for these positions so most of them go uncontested.Each precinct has a committeeman and committeewoman so make sure guys bring their wives.The term is for 4 years.(sorry don't mind me...just trolling for committeeman and committeewoman.....don't mind me.)Can MGMT see the future? Well before 2017’s unceasing torrent of push notifications turned everyone into full-time news junkies, the group tackled informational excess on their polarizing 2013 self-titled album. “We were going for everything happening at once: chaotic, overwhelming, anxious-feeling music,” singer Andrew VanWyngarden says.
The world’s daily barrage has only intensified since, and it’s a central topic of conversation when VanWyngarden and MGMT bandmate Ben Goldwasser convene to discuss their fourth album, Little Dark Age, due in February, at a nondescript diner in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene neighborhood on a nippy November afternoon. Written largely in 2016, their first full-length in more than four years inevitably addresses current events — “It would be impossible for our political world to not make it into some of the lyrics,” VanWyngarden says — but the anxiety runs deeper.
Take the colorfully baroque funk of new track “T.S.L.A.M.P.” Short for “time spent looking at my phone,” it reflects the discomforts the duo, both 34, have with the modern technologies — YouTube, Facebook, iPhones, and more — that have become omnipresent since their singles “Kids” and “Electric Feel” stormed the alt-rock airwaves in 2008. “It’s a universal feeling these days, where every day I find myself so frustrated that I’m just glued to my phone screen,” VanWyngarden reflects. “It seems like it just keeps getting worse, like constantly. I hate that I can’t go to the bathroom without checking my phone. I have it by me when I’m going to sleep and I look at it when I wake up.”
But with Little Dark Age, MGMT seems to have exorcised some of their fears. “We’ve lived through more apocalypses,” Goldwasser explains matter-of-factly as he and VanWyngarden dig into catfish sandwiches. “I still get a lot of inspiration from British punk music, where all of the songs are just how shitty life is in England, but there’s also a real sense of humor about it, black humor, and just finding this human element in a world that has become so industrial and dark.” Adds VanWyngardeen: “This one was more having fun with how shitty things can be. Its [title is] negative, but the fact that it’s diminutive — that it’s the little dark age — is helpful. It’s not permanent dark age!”
While Little Dark Age is unmistakably MGMT, from caffeinated acid trips (“She Works Out Too Much”) to cinematic psychedelia (“When You’re Small”), its more direct songs could also exorcise the fears of those who’ve struggled to connect with the group’s recent output. MGMT have seemingly spent the better part of the decade since their 2007 debut Oracular Spectacular at odds with fans, critics, and the artistic reputation that first defined them. In April 2010, they released their sophomore LP, Congratulations, a bizarre blast of art-pop that accentuated their stranger side. Days later, they omitted “Kids” from a nighttime Coachella set, contributing to the narrative that they’d spurned their audience.
“The most disappointing part about it is that a lot of people interpreted it as a ‘f— you’ to our fans or an overt reaction to success,” Goldwasser recounts today. “There was an element that was a reaction to success — but it wasn’t a ‘f— you.’ We considered ourselves so lucky that we ever got attention at all and we weren’t trying to squander that.” Congratulations enjoyed a critical reappraisal — singer-songwriter Dan Bejar said it’ll “go down as this overlooked, death-knell-of-rock-‘n’-roll masterwork” — but 2013’s MGMT remains divisive, another symbol that the duo prefers to lean into what VanWyngarden calls their “element of prankster.”
Though VanWyngarden readily concedes with a laugh that Congratulations and MGMT “weren’t commercially successful,” MGMT quash the insinuation that the response shaped their creative direction. But it’s notable that after a little dark age of their own, MGMT reconvened last year with a revamped creative process that emphasized some of their oldest, most beloved traits. Splitting time between New York and Goldwasser’s new home in Southern California, they teamed initially with zany indie rocker Ariel Pink and Chairlift’s Patrick Wimberly to prime their creative juices. “That was the thing that we really needed,” Goldwasser says. “To have people around us who were like, ‘No, that thing you did, that was really cool, you should keep working on that.'”
Afterward, VanWyngarden and Goldwasser polished their ideas with longtime producer Dave Fridmann (the Flaming Lips) in a western New York studio. “The last album kind of ended up being freeform structurally a lot of ways,” VanWyngarden recalls. “This time it was a slightly more focused attempt to write more structured songs.” By mapping out demos before fleshing songs out in the studio, the band split the difference between their meticulously crafted early hits and the jammy impulsiveness of their last album.
For MGMT, Little Dark Age‘s stylistic synthesis and lyrical themes represent a creative step forward that’s still true to their career arc. “We’ve stuck with what felt right to us and doing what we wanted to do,” VanWyngarden says. Goldwasser concurs: “We just wanted to find the people who, like us, grew up digging really deep to find the coolest, craziest music. We wanted to make music for the freaks out there.”
All signs indicate that MGMT will continue to make good on that mission as they embark on the next decade of their career. And even if Little Dark Age dabbles in digital-age paranoia, the duo remains cautiously optimistic about the future. “I kind of love it,” Goldwasser muses with a hint of sarcasm when discussion shifts back to technology addiction. “I’m kind of into the sort of Phillip K. Dick metamorphosis of humanity thing. Maybe we’ll become something better through all this — I don’t know!”An open letter to NFL players: you’re being used
Try being politically INcorrect if you want some real answers
by Jon Rappoport
September 26, 2017
Dear NFL Players:
In case you’ll only read a few worlds of this story, I’ll get right to the point.
You’re being used.
You’re being duped into focusing on the wrong issue: police brutality against black people.
If you actually want to solve what’s happening to black people in inner cities, police brutality is way down on the list.
By focusing only on brutality, you’re leading people AWAY FROM seeing what’s really going on in inner cities. You’re guaranteeing NO ANSWERS. You’re guaranteeing NO CHANGE.
“Let’s not solve the problem, whatever the problem is. Let’s just ramp up the conflict and the polarization between races.”
Let’s go back to the original protestor, ex-quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who made his original kneeling protest about police brutality directed at black people. I want to examine his premise.
Here are bare-bones statistics from New York City, perhaps the only big city in America that issues a detailed annual report of police “firearms discharges.” You may be shocked.
Population of NYC: 8.3 million.
Police officers: 35,000.
2013 incidents of “intentional [police weapon] discharges during an adversarial conflict”: 40.
In those discharges, number of people injured: 17.
Number of people killed: 8.
Source: NYPD 2013 Annual Firearms Discharge Report.
In that same year, according to the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, there were 7,462 “violent crimes by firearm” in New York City.
Who was the busier class of people in 2013? Cops or criminals? Which group caused, by far, the greater amount of human destruction of black people?
Philly.com has reported on several other American cities.
“Philadelphia’s rate of police shootings [2012], when compared against the number of |
remember to set your character tab to public!
The raffle will end on sat, 26 aug! Winner will be announced before the 27th! Good luck guys!
Okay so, I managed to corrupt a pair of +1 gems allelopathy!Instead of selling it, I've decided to give back to the community!To participate, just simply link your character that's playing this build and say what you enjoy about this build!Do remember to set your character tab to public!The raffle will end on sat, 26 aug! Winner will be announced before the 27th! Good luck guys!
INTRODUCTION
Hey there! If you're reading this, please understand it's my first build guide so bear with me a little ya? Let's begin!
After clocking quite a number of hours of poe while following builds, I've always dreamt of creating one of my own. One that serves as a nice little starter build for new leagues, isn't prohibitively expensive yet is able with enough investment to tackle the end game challenges.
So, when I saw the newly released dark pact as well as new gloves allelopathy, I had this really cool idea of merging the two!
For reference,
Also, read: Bragging rights
Uber atziri down too:
Disclaimer: I do understand that the original intention of the gloves is to function as a pseudo 6l - lvl 20 blight + lvl3 empower. I imagine it to be pretty darn good but as I've not test it out, I can't really give an opinion on how it compares. Also blight doesn't leech so meh.
VIDEOS
T12 Vaults Run
T15 Core
Minotaur Run
Hydra Run
Chimera Run
With +1 gems allelo/lvl21darkpact
Uber Atziri
More to come
OVERVIEW
Pros:
+ Super tanky! 9206 life!
+ Cheap as hell!
+ No gem swapping!
+ Whirling blades!
+ All end game viable!
+ Any map mod!
+ Pretty sweet dps!
+ What is reflect again?
+ Rekt sarn/PVP!
+ Hipster!
+ Nice clearspeed!
+ Temp chains actually increases your clear speed!
+ Whirling blades!!!
+ FANCYYYY!
+ Free extra pet and whirling blades mtx!*
*That procs once a second
Cons:
- Lab traps are a bitch (can be mitigated)
- Less dps than pure dark pact
- Leech is used to cover life sacrifice so if you don't take a savage hit, you aren't out leeching the enemy's damage
- Can be a bit messy
- Not the fastest clearspeed in town
SKILL TREE
BERSERKER
Passives Lv 91
Ascendancy Points: Pain Reaver -> Cloaked In Savagery -> Crave The Slaughter -> Aspect Of Carnage
Bandits: Kill all for that sweet 2 passive points
LEVELING TREES
Spoiler Passive Tree (30 Passives)
Passive Tree (60 Passives)
Passive Tree (90 Passives)
SKILL TREE EXPLANATION
Since we are getting the Cloaked in Savagery ascendancy as soon as possible, we need to path from the marauder start all the way to vaal pact. Since the bridge at the witch contains life nodes, I personally find it more superior and efficient to path via the top rather than the bottom.
Pathing to VP directly will leave you with some spare points by the time you get to the cruel ascendancy so use these points to your liking; you may get area + dmg or even more life if you feel like it.
Since dark pact scales pretty nicely from your life pool, I do recommend getting all your life nodes first before getting into the chaos wheel clusters.
JEWELS
Jewels for this build are pretty straightforward; life + chaos/spell dmg are the bare minimum that you would want. In the level 91 tree I had 5 jewel sockets, of which two are the spreading rot threshold jewel. Spreading rot increases damage taken by enemies hindered by blight by 25%. However, once the duration of hinder end, it will not be reapplied until the stacks of blight have run its course. Thus, this jewel excels in clearing packs and bosses that you cant channel continuously for, but loses its effectiveness for sustained channelling.
PANTHEON
Major God: Any is fine
Minor God: Soul of Ryslatha
For a more indept guide to using your pantheon, Eidanx have contributed the following:
Spoiler " Eidanx
Hello :)
First of all, thanks a lot for the guide, currently lvl82 and having a lot of fun just because of the play style (I love the fact of you have to be aware of self inflicting damage with Dark Pact). Still a work in progress but looks really promising for me as a casual player.
I just wanted to post to give a further tip for your uberlab guide.
If you want to be a dedicated uberlab runner, the pantheon system can help you out a bit besides the already stated premises by OP. Imo, these are the powers to choose:
Major Power: (second captured power would be my first to go)
Soul of Lunaris
1% additional Physical Damage Reduction for each nearby Enemy, up to 8%
1% increased Movement Speed for each nearby Enemy, up to 8%
- Captured
Spoiler Capture Arachnoxia in Sewer Map
10% chance to avoid Projectile Damage
Capture Master of the Blade in Strand Map
5% chance to Dodge Attacks and Spells if you've been Hit Recently
Capture Lycius, Midnight's Howl in Lair Map
Avoid Projectiles that have Chained
You can use Solaris as well, but the captured powers does not seem so useful as this one.
Minor power:
2 options, 1 following build synergy another...well obvious phys dmg reduction although captured power is useless due to Vaal Pact.
Soul of Garukhan
+5% chance to Evade Attacks if you've taken a Savage Hit recently
- Capture Rek'tar, the Breaker in Gorge Map
6% increased Movement Speed if you haven't been Hit Recently
Soul of Tukohama
While stationary, gain 2% additional Physical Damage Reduction each second, up to a maximum of 8%
- Capture Tore, Towering Ancient in Marshes Map
While stationary, gain 0.5% of Life Regenerated per second each second, up to a maximum of 2% Hello :)First of all, thanks a lot for the guide, currently lvl82 and having a lot of fun just because of the play style (I love the fact of you have to be aware of self inflicting damage with Dark Pact). Still a work in progress but looks really promising for me as a casual player.I just wanted to post to give a further tip for your uberlab guide.If you want to be a dedicated uberlab runner, the pantheon system can help you out a bit besides the already stated premises by OP. Imo, these are the powers to choose:(second captured power would be my first to go)1% additional Physical Damage Reduction for each nearby Enemy, up to 8%1% increased Movement Speed for each nearby Enemy, up to 8%- CapturedYou can use Solaris as well, but the captured powers does not seem so useful as this one.2 options, 1 following build synergy another...well obvious phys dmg reduction although captured power is useless due to Vaal Pact.+5% chance to Evade Attacks if you've taken a Savage Hit recently- Capture Rek'tar, the Breaker in Gorge Map6% increased Movement Speed if you haven't been Hit RecentlyWhile stationary, gain 2% additional Physical Damage Reduction each second, up to a maximum of 8%- Capture Tore, Towering Ancient in Marshes MapWhile stationary, gain 0.5% of Life Regenerated per second each second, up to a maximum of 2%
Kudos to him!
UBERLAB GUIDE
Spoiler
I personally run 4 life flasks to be safe. You will need at least 1 bubbling eternal and 1 panicked divine.
To destroy totems, use your blight and make sure not to channel for more than 0.35 secs especially if you do not have flasks. If you run outta flasks just find a safe spot and afk until your pots fully refill.
Another very important thing is to get a staunching suffix on your flasks. Lab traps do cause bleeding and due to the reworked bleeding, you absolutely want to prepare for that.
Edit: After running lots of lab, I have a few tweaks to make to the uberlab farming set-up. Since this is a Berserker, taking 10% increased damage along with no regen (VP), the lab experience with its normal mapping setup is not gonna be a smooth one. Hence, we do need to make additional changes-simple albeit with some hassle, to make running uberlab much more seamless.
First is to take off your kaom's heart if you have it equipped. Lesser hp means that labyrinth traps deal much lesser damage, increasing your effectiveness of your health pots. You will still end up with arnd 6-7k hp so worries about getting killed by trash. Of course you would need to equip your chest when fighting izaro.
Secondly, do consider investing in a Bloodgrip if you intend to endlessly run lab during days that it has a good layout. For reference,
The key advantage of using a bloodgrip is the 100% life recovery, which is super nice for running through all the traps without any care in the world. Pop one flask and regen like a motherfaking rf character.
The only thing in lab that you should be scared of are traps. You need to have a lab pot set up which consists of at least 3 life flasks and 1 quicksilver.I personally run 4 life flasks to be safe. You will need at least 1 bubbling eternal and 1 panicked divine.To destroy totems, use your blight and make sure not to channel for more than 0.35 secs especially if you do not have flasks. If you run outta flasks just find a safe spot and afk until your pots fully refill.Another very important thing is to get a staunching suffix on your flasks. Lab traps do cause bleeding and due to the reworked bleeding, you absolutely want to prepare for that.Edit: After running lots of lab, I have a few tweaks to make to the uberlab farming set-up. Since this is a Berserker, taking 10% increased damage along with no regen (VP), the lab experience with its normal mapping setup is not gonna be a smooth one. Hence, we do need to make additional changes-simple albeit with some hassle, to make running uberlab much more seamless.First is to take off your kaom's heart if you have it equipped. Lesser hp means that labyrinth traps deal much lesser damage, increasing your effectiveness of your health pots. You will still end up with arnd 6-7k hp so worries about getting killed by trash. Of course you would need to equip your chest when fighting izaro.Secondly, do consider investing in a Bloodgrip if you intend to endlessly run lab during days that it has a good layout. For reference,The key advantage of using a bloodgrip is the 100% life recovery, which is super nice for running through all the traps without any care in the world. Pop one flask and regen like a motherfaking rf character.
SHAPER GUIDE
Spoiler The random 4 bosses that you encounter before the shaper fight should not be a problem. Bosses to watch out for : Malachai, Daresso, The Goddess, Rigwald. Those are the ones you cant just facetank. Know the mechanics and play accordingly.
Just a quick guide:
Things to facetank: Melee attacks, Golden orbs (Risky to facetank, if it crits you die)
Things not to face tank: Beam, Slam, Bullet Hell, Golden orbs
The first phase of shaper is really simple. You dont need to position the vortexes nor worry about the bullet hell. Try to stay in melee range so he will use the melee attacks on you. Once you move out of melee range, shaper will shoot a set of 3 golden balls which will accelerate towards you.
You should always curse him with temporal chains whenever possible. It will slow him between phases and increases your uptime on dpsing him. It will also make the slam slower, which allows for more forgiving reaction times as well as positioning. Dropping a wither totem should be situational. There is a totem placement time which is quite significant if you don't have 20q spell totem. The totem time can be long enough for 2 consecutive golden orbs to hit you and will definitely cause a rip. That being said, always place a totem when shaper uses his beam; its at least 3 seconds of wither stacking and dpsing which is a lot esp with your sulphur flask up.
Shaper slams have a certain mechanic: Shaper will disappear initially and re-materialise a few moments later at your current location. The key is to wait for the reappearing animation and then whirling away immediately. With temporal chains, you will never get hit this way. You can also spend the time before the reappearing animation to continue channelling; shaper will still continue to take damage.
Once shaper's life has depleted to the halfway mark, he will teleport you to a random tileset. Go to the temple boss immediately and kill him asap.
Cue Shaper, phase two.
Exactly the same as phase one, but vortex balls spawn more frequently and shaper has an additional attack: Bullet Hell.
He does it occasionally, typically after the mirror spawn phase. As a blight cwc dark pact, this phase is really a cakewalk. The mobs wont be able to even take a single step before they die bcoz hinder. As long zana is alive, she will envelop you in a red shield which blocks the bullets.
This is when you need to position the vortex balls in the map. As soon you see a vortex ball floating arnd the corners, trigger it asap if you can. Also, try to overlap as maybe vortexes as possible, as they will restrict your movement. Never trigger the vortexes in the upper middle of the arena as that will be where your shield be. If the vortex homes on you during the shield bullet phase, DO NOT PANIC. you will be able to circle the perimeter of the shield and the slow ass vortex bullets will not be able to catch you. Trigger it in a safe place after the bullet phase has ended.
Phase 3 will begin as soon as shaper gets quartered.
Phase is obviously the most difficult amongst the 3 phases and you should kill the temple boss asap to prevent his life from regening.
He will summon a clone in this phase which can either beam you, melee attack you or shoot golden balls. It will undoubtedly make positioning a lot harder and thus you will need every single opportunity to damage him as the fight will get harder the longer it drags on. Do remember to use a heartseeker/culling strike if you happen to die and shaper falls below 10% hp.
Will be composing a uber atziri guide soon, stay tuned!
SCREENSHOTS
SKILL DPS
https://pastebin.com/BE4hshZ2
DEFENSE
9.2k life
Vaal Pact
100% leech on Savage Hit
Unwavering stance
Immunity to chill/freeze
Immunity to temporal chains
Whirling blades
GEAR
These are the gear that carried me all the way to shaper and guardians - in the videos that you see!
GEAR-GUCCI EDITION
Take advantage of the fact that allelopathy is super unpopular and you can find 4linked gloves with the proper colours for 1c!
I swept all of the 1c allelopathies off the market for a short period of time and corrupted close to 30 pairs! On the day I got the +1 gloves, another +1 gloves was listed on the market for 13c with the right colours and links and I immediately bought it.
I used the ones I corrupted and raffled the other. I also managed to acquire a lvl 12 vuln on hit pair of gloves that I sold cheaply for 40c.
Lvl 21 dark pact will be the second greatest boost to dps after your +1 gem allelopathy. However it is currently pretty expensive to purchase - 160c last i check, and therefore, I would recommend leveling 4-6 of them in your offhand. I got this on my third try and fifth try. Used one and gave my guildie the other.
During my lab runs for the endgame grinds achievement, I managed to get a relevant enchant. Granted, it only increases my hinder duration for an extra.20sec before temp chains but I ain't complaining.
Hinder makes the uber atziri trio such a cakewalk so I'll take what I can get. Fingers crossed for that +2 barrage enchant soon!
GEAR EXPLANATION
Spoiler Weapon
As a spellcaster, weapons are really flexible depending on your preference. Want more blight dmg? Go for dual breath of the councils. Want access to whirling blades? Get at least one sword/dagger. Want lots of damage? Dual apep's. Want to be more defensive? Grab a lioneye's remorse/saffel's frame/rathpith globe.
Ultimately, I went with rippling thoughts cos free pet/whirling blades mtx/free arcane surge yo.
Arcane surge gives 20% MORE spell dmg and 20% cast speed with a 50% downtime. So that works out to be 10% more spell dmg and cast speed. Which is pretty darn sweet for a sword. We are also severely lacking in cast speed so its the cherry on top. Not to mention, it also provides up to 90% spell dmg on the sword! I knew I had to use it. Not to mention, when we do temp chains (negated by kaom's roots), arcane surge has a 90% uptime! Moreover, you can save that 35% mana reservation by just linking curse on hit with enfeeble with the sword. With all those aoe nodes, storm cascade will curse all dem enemies while you whirl! Cool right? Also did I mention whirling blades?
Price: 42c at the time of purchase
Breath of the council is by far one of the best weapons for chaos builds. Not only providing up to 100% chaos dmg, it has 10% aoe and 40% skill effect duration which is YUGE for spreading rot, blight's dps as well as getting that sweet 20 stack wither. It also provides another utility skill - leap slam. Good for reaching places that whirling blades can't. Nuff said.
Price: 40c
That being said, there are a number of honourable mentions as aforementioned. Dual apeps gives a huge boost to dps, both to dark pact and blight. However mana cost increases and you lose whirling blades/leap slam.
Singularity and Heartseeker have pretty good synergy with blight pact and culling strike is definitely nice to have, especially with the newly buffed bosses health. Both are cheap as hell, even at the start of the league. So no worries about burnt pockets! One thing to note tho, the damage buff granted by singularity doesn't apply to blight as blight doesn't hit. I leveled with both to around 80+ before switching. Made it to red maps without a sweat.
Price: Self-found for Heartseeker, 2c for Singularity
If you're lucky enough to get a divinarius early in the league, use it! the aoe is fantastic for clearing and it gives pretty nice spell dmg too!
If you wanna play a lot more defensively, a shield can be used instead. Rathpith/remorse are ideal due to the life that it provides.
Pick your poison guys!
Helm
Rare item slot. Get as much life and resists as you can!
I procured this at 30c. Pretty worth it imo.
If you can't balance resist, a goldrim can help you in the initial stages of the build.
Price: 4c
Other notable uniques for this slot would be brine crown and the gull, which both aren't very cheap.
Chest
Bis would definitely be Kaom's
Kaoms is one of those uniques that get more expensive as time passes for the first week. Not to mention it's super meta atm. Sometimes I hate myself for playing meta buids :|
Price 300c
Since I'm poor and too lazy to do chaos recipes, I stuck with this for quite a while
It's not ideal but it works kinda well. Alternatively, you might wanna get a 130 life chest with 50Str if you dont intend to go kaom's. It's also the most expensive part of the build so if you wanna stay budget then go for the rare instead. It'll be a 600 life or so difference but it isn't the end of the world. Pretty manageable really.
Another really good alternative would be Cherrubim's
The lack of life is kinda meh but it provides 100% leech, pretty big for sustaining against bosses! I think other than belly/kaoms, this is the rare armour to get!
Gloves
Bread and butter. Meat and Potatoes. Steak and salad, well you get my drift.
These pair of bad boys will carry you all the way to shaper.
Also, :(
Boots
Another tricky one here. I went with Kaom's roots cos of the life, unwavering stance. Also cos I fucking hate temp chains. However you lose out on a 4l which would be my cwdt setup. To each his own, but its a compromise that I was willing to make.
If you want the extra 4l, grab a rare boots with at least 100 life, ms if you dont run whirling, some resists and str if you can afford it. Haven't tested with rare boots so I can't really give you an opinion.
Amulet
Generic rare amulet
Priority: Life>Spell dmg>resist/str>cast speed
Price: 15c
Rings
Ideally coral rings with t1 life and decent resists. Both rings are honestly kinda shit so I expect better from you guys.
Price: Free (self-found)
Belt
Same as any other rare gear, life+resists+str
Price: 3c
Flasks
I cannot recommend blood of the karui more. With 9k life, normal life flasks heal so darn little. Sulpur flask for dps, sibnite and basalt for mitigation.
Alternatively, if you're able to get some chaos resistance on your gear, you may also use a forbidden taste for that instant life if you are unable to get blood of the karui. Be sure to take soul of arakaali with 25% chaos resist against damage over time to counteract the effects of the chaos damage over time. It also also synergy with an atziri's promise ( credit to Sabooty for that idea)
As a spellcaster, weapons are really flexible depending on your preference. Want more blight dmg? Go for dual breath of the councils. Want access to whirling blades? Get at least one sword/dagger. Want lots of damage? Dual apep's. Want to be more defensive? Grab a lioneye's remorse/saffel's frame/rathpith globe.Ultimately, I went with rippling thoughts cos free pet/whirling blades mtx/free arcane surge yo.Arcane surge gives 20% MORE spell dmg and 20% cast speed with a 50% downtime. So that works out to be 10% more spell dmg and cast speed. Which is pretty darn sweet for a sword. We are also severely lacking in cast speed so its the cherry on top. Not to mention, it also provides up to 90% spell dmg on the sword! I knew I had to use it. Not to mention, when we do temp chains (negated by kaom's roots), arcane surge has a 90% uptime! Moreover, you can save that 35% mana reservation by just linking curse on hit with enfeeble with the sword. With all those aoe nodes, storm cascade will curse all dem enemies while you whirl! Cool right? Also did I mention whirling blades?Price: 42c at the time of purchaseBreath of the council is by far one of the best weapons for chaos builds. Not only providing up to 100% chaos dmg, it has 10% aoe and 40% skill effect duration which is YUGE for spreading rot, blight's dps as well as getting that sweet 20 stack wither. It also provides another utility skill - leap slam. Good for reaching places that whirling blades can't. Nuff said.Price: 40cThat being said, there are a number of honourable mentions as aforementioned. Dual apeps gives a huge boost to dps, both to dark pact and blight. However mana cost increases and you lose whirling blades/leap slam.Singularity and Heartseeker have pretty good synergy with blight pact and culling strike is definitely nice to have, especially with the newly buffed bosses health. Both are cheap as hell, even at the start of the league. So no worries about burnt pockets! One thing to note tho, the damage buff granted by singularity doesn't apply to blight as blight doesn't hit. I leveled with both to around 80+ before switching. Made it to red maps without a sweat.Price: Self-found for Heartseeker, 2c for SingularityIf you're lucky enough to get a divinarius early in the league, use it! the aoe is fantastic for clearing and it gives pretty nice spell dmg too!If you wanna play a lot more defensively, a shield can be used instead. Rathpith/remorse are ideal due to the life that it provides.Pick your poison guys!Rare item slot. Get as much life and resists as you can!I procured this at 30c. Pretty worth it imo.If you can't balance resist, a goldrim can help you in the initial stages of the build.Price: 4cOther notable uniques for this slot would be brine crown and the gull, which both aren't very cheap.Bis would definitely be Kaom'sKaoms is one of those uniques that get more expensive as time passes for the first week. Not to mention it's super meta atm. Sometimes I hate myself for playing meta buids :|Price 300cSince I'm poor and too lazy to do chaos recipes, I stuck with this for quite a whileIt's not ideal but it works kinda well. Alternatively, you might wanna get a 130 life chest with 50Str if you dont intend to go kaom's. It's also the most expensive part of the build so if you wanna stay budget then go for the rare instead. It'll be a 600 life or so difference but it isn't the end of the world. Pretty manageable really.Another really good alternative would be Cherrubim'sThe lack of life is kinda meh but it provides 100% leech, pretty big for sustaining against bosses! I think other than belly/kaoms, this is the rare armour to get!Bread and butter. Meat and Potatoes. Steak and salad, well you get my drift.These pair of bad boys will carry you all the way to shaper.Also,:(Another tricky one here. I went with Kaom's roots cos of the life, unwavering stance. Also cos I fucking hate temp chains. However you lose out on a 4l which would be my cwdt setup. To each his own, but its a compromise that I was willing to make.If you want the extra 4l, grab a rare boots with at least 100 life, ms if you dont run whirling, some resists and str if you can afford it. Haven't tested with rare boots so I can't really give you an opinion.Generic rare amuletPriority: Life>Spell dmg>resist/str>cast speedPrice: 15cIdeally coral rings with t1 life and decent resists. Both rings are honestly kinda shit so I expect better from you guys.Price: Free (self-found)Same as any other rare gear, life+resists+strPrice: 3cI cannot recommend blood of the karui more. With 9k life, normal life flasks heal so darn little. Sulpur flask for dps, sibnite and basalt for mitigation.Alternatively, if you're able to get some chaos resistance on your gear, you may also use a forbidden taste for that instant life if you are unable to get blood of the karui. Be sure to take soul of arakaali with 25% chaos resist against damage over time to counteract the effects of the chaos damage over time. It also also synergy with an atziri's promise ( credit to Sabooty for that idea)
LINKS AND GEMS
Okay my resolve is faltering so its gonna get a lil skimpy
Main DPS Setup
Conc eff doesnt boost the damage of blight as per patch 3.0 so no point slotting that in.
Best 2 dps gems as per PoB were void and cont. dist.
wither setup. Since I already have increased skill effect duration, faster casting seems like the way to go.
CWDT Setup
I don't use one but if I would,
CWDT-IC-Summon flame/lighning golem/-enfeeble/tempchains/warlordsmark/vortex
I'd recommend a lvl 20Cwdt
Mobility Setup
Aura Setup
Again, this is where the flexibility of the build shines. I personally ran haste and a blasphemed temp chains but after my haste turned into vaal haste, I rocked an arctic armour instead. Its really up to you. Running arctic armour also allows you to run an addition purity, depending on the circumstances. For instance i ran Purity of Ice for shaper.
You can also use curse on hit with temp chains on the sword to curse enemies! neato huh
Golem
I used to run a flame golem, but that sucker kept dying on me. Since I do not have enough sockets for a cwdt setup I let him be the one that got away.
LEVELING
Used these two till arnd level 58 or so with sunder then swapped to kaom's primacy cos it dropped
Alternatively you can start with dark pact once you reach the normal ascendancy. Dunno how that works out cos i didnt try it. But be sure to bring along a motherload of life flasks.
Do remember to level dark pact and cast when channeling at early levels.
Once you hit lvl 69, equip allelopathy and as you level up, upgrade your other gears as well. The dps will increase as you change your gear to better ones. Experiment with different weapons to see which are you the most comfortable with.
Leveling Guide by noxcx13
Spoiler
"
Hello!
So after quickly leveling with sunder i decided to buy the gear and see how good this build was and i was really impressed!
It's fun, nervous & it does a ton of damages!
I recorded a quick video of me quickly running a T12 while being level 71 :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6h-WsaXayg
Gear during the video:
"
Total cost : ~80c
I will keep leveling the beast and tell you hows it's going, i will try to record more HD videos if you want OP. Feel free to include them in guide.
Quick leveling tips while i'm at it :
If you already have some currencies get a Tabula + Goldrim leather cap + Onslaught flask + 2x Quicksilver Flask :
6L
Sunder - Melee Physical Damage - Multistrike - Concentrated Effect - Ruthless - Damage on Full Life
2L
Vaal Haste - Increased Duration
4L
Flame golem / CWDT / Immortal call / Inc Duration
Buy :
"
You will OS everything and the leveling will be very fast and smooth. Took me around 6H from 1-70.
There's also around 15 points at the start of the tree for two handed weapons / axes / maces that you can invest to speed up the leveling process. Respec them later
Thanks for the build bro!
Hello!So after quickly leveling with sunder i decided to buy the gear and see how good this build was and i was really impressed!It's fun, nervous & it does a ton of damages!I recorded a quick video of me quickly running a T12 while being level 71 :I will keep leveling the beast and tell you hows it's going, i will try to record more HD videos if you want OP. Feel free to include them in guide.If you already have some currencies get a Tabula + Goldrim leather cap + Onslaught flask + 2x Quicksilver Flask :Sunder - Melee Physical Damage - Multistrike - Concentrated Effect - Ruthless - Damage on Full LifeVaal Haste - Increased DurationFlame golem / CWDT / Immortal call / Inc DurationYou will OS everything and the leveling will be very fast and smooth. Took me around 6H from 1-70.There's also around 15 points at the start of the tree for two handed weapons / axes / maces that you can invest to speed up the leveling process. Respec them laterThanks for the build bro!
THE END
Guys, if you intend to try this build or are already playing it, please give some feedback on whether you like it or not, or what things you feel needs to be improved. Thanks for staying til the end and
hope you enjoyed the guide as much as I disliked writing it.
Raffle has ended! thanks all for participating!Hey there! If you're reading this, please understand it's my first build guide so bear with me a little ya? Let's begin!After clocking quite a number of hours of poe while following builds, I've always dreamt of creating one of my own. One that serves as a nice little starter build for new leagues, isn't prohibitively expensive yet is able with enough investment to tackle the end game challenges.So, when I saw the newly released dark pact as well as new gloves allelopathy, I had this really cool idea of merging the two!For reference,Also, read: Bragging rightsUber atziri down too:Disclaimer: I do understand that the original intention of the gloves is to function as a pseudo 6l - lvl 20 blight + lvl3 empower. I imagine it to be pretty darn good but as I've not test it out, I can't really give an opinion on how it compares. Also blight doesn't leech so meh. --> Shaper Kill <-- - Died once due to lag --> Shaper Kill II <-- - Now in 720p. In hindsight, 480p was simply unwatchable.More to comeSuper tanky! 9206 life!Cheap as hell!No gem swapping!Whirling blades!All end game viable!Any map mod!Pretty sweet dps!What is reflect again?Rekt sarn/PVP!Hipster!Nice clearspeed!Temp chains actually increases your clear speed!Whirling blades!!!FANCYYYY!Free extra pet and whirling blades mtx!**That procs once a secondLab traps are a bitch (can be mitigated)Less dps than pure dark pactLeech is used to cover life sacrifice so if you don't take a savage hit, you aren't out leeching the enemy's damageCan be a bit messyNot the fastest clearspeed in town: Pain Reaver -> Cloaked In Savagery -> Crave The Slaughter -> Aspect Of Carnage: Kill all for that sweet 2 passive pointsSince we are getting the Cloaked in Savagery ascendancy as soon as possible, we need to path from the marauder start all the way to vaal pact. Since the bridge at the witch contains life nodes, I personally find it more superior and efficient to path via the top rather than the bottom.Pathing to VP directly will leave you with some spare points by the time you get to the cruel ascendancy so use these points to your liking; you may get area + dmg or even more life if you feel like it.Since dark pact scales pretty nicely from your life pool, I do recommend getting all your life nodes first before getting into the chaos wheel clusters.Jewels for this build are pretty straightforward; life + chaos/spell dmg are the bare minimum that you would want. In the level 91 tree I had 5 jewel sockets, of which two are the spreading rot threshold jewel. Spreading rot increases damage taken by enemies hindered by blight by 25%. However, once the duration of hinder end, it will not be reapplied until the stacks of blight have run its course. Thus, this jewel excels in clearing packs and bosses that you cant channel continuously for, but loses its effectiveness for sustained channelling.Major God: Any is fineMinor God: Soul of RyslathaFor a more indept guide to using your pantheon, Eidanx have contributed the following:Kudos to him!https://pastebin.com/BE4hshZ2These are the gear that carried me all the way to shaper and guardians - in the videos that you see!Take advantage of the fact that allelopathy is super unpopular and you can find 4linked gloves with the proper colours for 1c!I swept all of the 1c allelopathies off the market for a short period of time and corrupted close to 30 pairs! On the day I got the +1 gloves, another +1 gloves was listed on the market for 13c with the right colours and links and I immediately bought it.I used the ones I corrupted and raffled the other. I also managed to acquire a lvl 12 vuln on hit pair of gloves that I sold cheaply for 40c.Lvl 21 dark pact will be the second greatest boost to dps after your +1 gem allelopathy. However it is currently pretty expensive to purchase - 160c last i check, and therefore, I would recommend leveling 4-6 of them in your offhand. I got this on my third try and fifth try. Used one and gave my guildie the other.During my lab runs for the endgame grinds achievement, I managed to get a relevant enchant. Granted, it only increases my hinder duration for an extra.20sec before |
trip, Trillanes said he was puzzled as to why it became a "big deal" when other Philippine senators have also gone on foreign trips. (READ: Trillanes says he only presented 'facts' in meeting with US senator)
In September, the senator filed criminal charges – including cyberlibel – against another pro-administration blogger, Palace Communications Assistant Secretary Mocha Uson, for spreading "fake news" that he owned offshore bank accounts and for other alleged unlawful acts committed by the official. – Rappler.comNetflix, JFrog, and CloudBees are excited to host a Devops in the Cloud Meetup this Thursday! Taking place for the first time at the Silicon Valley, Devops in the Cloud will put the spotlight on cloud computing best practices, tricks and tips from those who have been there.
Where: Netflix campus in Los Gatos, CA
When: Thursday, December 15th, 5:30 PM to 8:30 PM (PT)
Details: Full invitation here, but it’s sold out and the waiting list is full. So…
Live Stream: Attend virtually via live-stream!
You’ll hear about thoughts, solutions, tools and visions of future development practices in the cloud. Even better, a Netflix case study will demonstrate how many of these powerful processes are already possible.
Featured Presentations
Building Cloud Tools for Netflix – Carl Quinn, Joe Sondow, Netflix
– Carl Quinn, Joe Sondow, Netflix Where are my runtime artifacts?! Cloud Deployment Using a Smart Repository – Frederic Simon, JFrog
Cloud Deployment Using a Smart Repository – Frederic Simon, JFrog Maintaining reliability in an unreliable world – Jeremy Edberg, Netflix
– Jeremy Edberg, Netflix DEV@cloud, Behind the curtain – Kohsuke Kawaguchi, Jenkins founder and CloudBees Architect
Whether you’re a Software Developer, a Release Engineer or a DevOps, this event is your opportunity to take a glimpse into the future of CI in the cloud.
Don’t miss the live stream!A few hundred people rallying Saturday night at Habima Square in Tel Aviv against the military operation in the Gaza Strip refused to break up even after the police declared the gathering illegal. The crowd dispersed only after the police arrested fourteen protesters, but continued to protest at several other places nearby.
Participants in the protest, which was organized by the Da’am Workers Party, carried signs condemning the continued military action in the Gaza Strip and civilian casualties, as well as condemning Hamas strikes against Israel.
According to the police, which sent a large contingent to the scene, the protest did not have a permit. The police said they broke up the rally also out of concern for the safety of the demonstrators.
Protesters were pushed back by rows of police to a nearby street, but refused to move further and blocked it. After a number of warnings by officers at the scene that the gathering was illegal, the police began making arrests.
Protesters then continued on foot along the central streets of Dizengoff and King George. A police contingent accompanied them, and in coordination with the rally’s organizers, directed them to the Gan Meir park, where the demonstration continued uneventfully.
The right-wing demonstrators usually seen attempting to disrupt rallies against the Gaza operation were hardly present at Saturday's demonstration.
Organizers of a larger rally called Strengthening the IDF and Democracy canceled the event after learning that extremist groups were planning to disrupt it. The rally was to be attended by groups such as the Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism, the Dror Israel Movement and the right-wing Im Tirtzu.
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Leftists have criticized Dror Israel, which is linked to a socialist youth movement, for agreeing to cooperate with Im Tirtzu. The Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism has been criticized for the same reasons.
Planners backed goals such as “freedom of expression is a value that the home front must fight for,” “Hamas is a murderous terror organization that seeks to annihilate Israel” and “the IDF is a moral army.”
“The rally was intended to bring together groups from the right and left, educators and students, to examine... the possibility of conducting the debate in a democratic and respectful manner,” the organizers said in a statement.
Gilad Kariv, head of the Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism, said his group was “deeply disappointed by the threatening tone coming from senior members of Meretz” – a left-wing party.
Im Tirtzu said it joined the planned rally “in an attempt to give voice to the sane, Zionist and centrist sentiments of Israeli society. We will not succumb to pressure from the extreme and anti-Zionist left, which is trying to muzzle people while tarnishing the IDF and the State of Israel. The people of Israel must defend democracy against such extremist groups.”New research says the most popular public high schools are highly segregated. Credit:Virginia Star We aren't allowed to tell it how it is. Even though we've been drowning in a sea of paperwork we've done our best to come up for air and actually teach our students. We've tried to give them one-on-one tutelage but the size of our classes has made this impossible. Then there are the NAPLAN tests that we aren't meant to prepare our students for but do because "bad" results will reflect badly on our schools and give those who want to bag us a free kick. On top of this we've been filling in the host of forms that make taking students on excursions, to sporting events and into the woods prohibitive.
Into the woods? That's where William Doyle's son was sent when he spent some time in a Finnish school. Doyle wrote that his son was given a compass and told to find his way back to school. In Australia his teachers would be hauled over the coals for abrogating their duty of care let alone failing to comply with risk-management strategies. Why is this relevant? Because there has been a lot going on outside the classroom too. With an election looming and school funding well and truly on the agenda, we are having yet another debate about how to lift our educational standards. Politicians and commentators who haven't been inside a classroom since they left school (apart from photo ops) have been pontificating about what is wrong with our schools. The clarion call is, of course, "we need better teachers". Better teachers? Better at what? Filling in forms? Disciplining oversized classrooms? Raising standards with inadequate resources? Does this imply that teachers like me aren't any good?
Hot on the heels of this comes the lament that we are falling behind the rest of the world: "why can't we be as good as the Finns?" I'll tell you why. The Finns don't spend their time arguing about who should fund their schools. They don't waste any ink on public versus private arguments. They don't bag their teachers. As Doyle discovered they regard their teachers as "the most respected and trusted professionals next to doctors". That's not the case here. I have yet to find out what is wrong with the training, just that it needs to be "better". Finnish teachers complete masters degrees. Our unis and colleges are lucky to receive adequate funding to enable them to complete any sort of training. They are forced to lower entrance scores to attract students who will pay the HECS fees that fund the courses. It's Pythonesque.
We want "better" training but we don't want to pay for it. Not only are Finnish teachers respected and trusted, they are recognised as being the experts when it comes to education because they actually work at the coalface, not in an office. I haven't even mentioned comparable pay rates because a country that can't find the will and resources to implement a report that every educator in the land backs is never going to pay teachers what they deserve – let alone the kind of salary that will attract the "best and brightest". We are still arguing over class sizes when the Finns make opportunities for one-on-one teaching by having manageable class sizes. The Finns have virtually discarded standardised testing. We have become more and more reliant on NAPLAN results for meaningless and costly data that enables us to identify the "best" schools.
We actually have great curriculums, as impressive as anyone's – we just don't have the resources to implement them. We burden our teachers with piles of pointless assessment procedures that mask our students true results but satisfy bureaucrats' need for "accountability". As for sending our students into the woods with compasses, we won't let them get a bus to a cricket game without a 10-page risk assessment. Spare me the comparisons. We know exactly how to lift our educational standards. It was outlined in the widely revered Gonksi report. Until we are capable of putting our children's needs in front of anything else we will continue slipping down the educational league table. It's got nothing to do with "better teachers". It's got everything to do with "protecting our children from politicians".
Ned Manning is a high school teacher with more than 40 years of experience. He wrote Playground Duty about teaching.Boston College joined the Atlantic Coast Conference prior to the 2005 season, giving the ACC its 12th team and allowing the conference to join the SEC and Big XII as major conferences to play a championship game. Miami and Virginia Tech joined to expand the conference from nine the previous season. Prior to the implementation of a title game, Florida State had dominated the ACC, winning it in 11 of the 13 years it had been a member of the conference.
The ACC has held 10 championship games and while the Seminoles’ level of domination has certainly declined, FSU has still been the class of the conference over the first decade since it was split into divisions. Virginia Tech took stranglehold of the conference early on and Clemson has recently emerged as a perennial top 15 team, but Florida State has still been the team to beat in the ACC over the last decade.
Opponent FSU Record Versus Winning Percentage Average Margin Duke 5-0 1.000 +30.6 Maryland 8-1.889 +19.9 Miami 8-2.800 +6.2 Boston College 7-3.700 +8.9 Wake Forest 6-4.600 +15.2 N.C. State 6-4.600 +9.6 Virginia 3-2.600 +12.2 Virginia Tech 3-2.600 -1.8 Clemson 5-5.500 +2.3 Georgia Tech 2-2.500 0 North Carolina 1-1.500 +0.5
Despite three 7-6 seasons including a 3-5 ACC campaign in 2006, Florida State doesn’t have a losing record against a single team from the ACC over the last 10 years. The ‘Noles have split with Clemson, Georgia Tech and North Carolina. Virginia Tech is the only team to hold a scoring edge over the Seminoles while Georgia Tech is even. The ACC again expanded in 2013, adding Pittsburgh and Syracuse. Louisville replaced Maryland prior to 2014. Against those three teams, FSU is a combined 4-0.
Opponent FSU Record Versus Winning Percentage Average Margin Syracuse 2-0 1.000 +37.0 Pittsburgh 1-0 1.000 +28.0 Louisville 1-0 1.000 +11.0
Since 2005, Florida State has also won more ACC titles than any other team. Only Virginia Tech has as many ACC Championship appearances.
ACC Championships since 2005
Florida State – 4
Virginia Tech – 3
Clemson – 1
Georgia Tech – 1
Wake Forest – 1
Division Titles since 2005
Florida State – 5
Virginia Tech – 5
Georgia Tech – 4
Boston College – 2
Clemson – 2
Duke – 1
Wake Forest – 1
Though the last decade for Florida State has paled in comparison to the previous one, the Seminoles have still managed to be the class of their conference. Over the last 10 years, only Ohio State, Oklahoma, Oregon, West Virginia and USC have won as many major conference titles as the Seminoles and no one has won more. While the ACC is sometimes maligned as a football conference, getting back to the top of it was a key step in FSU’s return to prominence and over the last decade, no team has stood at the top of it more often than the Seminoles.Even though Collins is now director of the National Institutes of Health, the love of Jesus is still welling up inside him like an oil well that can’t be capped. He’s now emitted another gusher.
I was under the impression that when Collins came aboard as NIH director, he was going to give up the public religious proselytizing, or at least his penchant for telling everyone the Good News: science proves the existence of God. I was wrong.
Collins has just issued a new edited volume, Belief: Readings on the Reason for Faith (HarperCollins, release date Mar. 2).
Here’s the publisher’s description:
“Is there a God?” is the most central and profound question that humans ask. With the New Atheists gaining a loud voice in today’s world, it is time to revisit the long-standing intellectual tradition on the side of faith. Francis Collins, New York Times bestselling author of The Language of God and renowned physician and geneticist, defends the reason for faith in this provocative collection. Collins is our guide as he takes us through the writings of many of the world’s greatest thinkers — philosophers, preachers, poets, scientists — both past and present, including such luminaries as C. S. Lewis and Augustine, and unexpected voices such as John Locke and Dorothy Sayers. Despite the doubts of a cynical world, this essential companion proves once and for all the rationality of faith...
Francis Collins, New York Times bestselling author of The Language of God and renowned physician and geneticist, defends the reason for faith in this provocative collection. Collins is our guide as he takes us through the writings of many of the world’s greatest thinkers — philosophers, preachers, poets, scientists — both past and present, including such luminaries as C. S. Lewis and Augustine, and unexpected voices such as John Locke and Dorothy Sayers. Despite the doubts of a cynical world, this essential companion proves once and for all the rationality of faith.
It’s a bit disconcerting to hear that he’s going to prove, through the lucubrations of C. S. Lewis (!) and others, that faith is rational. This implies that we faithless are the irrational ones, but also that Collins continues to blur the line between science and faith. Well, this all might be publisher’s hype, but it isn’t. It continues in Collins’s introduction, which you can read here:
Faith and reason are not, as many seem to be arguing today, mutually exclusive. They never have been. The letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament defines faith as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Evidence! Down through the centuries, humanity’s greatest minds have developed interesting and compelling arguments abouth faith, based on moral philosophy, arguments about nature, and examination of sacred texts. But outside of limited academic circles, these deeper perspectives are not heard from much these days. The goal of this anthology is to present some of these points of view, to spur on a more nuanced and intellectually rich discussion of the most profound questions that humanity asks: Is there a God? If so, what is God like? Does God care about me? And what, if anything, is the meaning of life?
Uh oh. “Evidence”, with an exclamation mark! What is the evidence?
As I began to absorb the arguments [of C. S. Lewis!], the door to the possibility of God began to open, and as it did I began to see that the signposts had been around me all along. Some of the evidence derived from nature itself. As a scientist, I was then and am now deeply invested in the idea that nature is ordered, and that science can discover it. But it never occurred to me to ask why order exists. Going even deeper, I had never really considered the most profound philosophical question of all—why is there something instead of nothing. And if there are realities called matter and energy that behave in certain ways, what about those mathematical equations I had been so in love with as a student of quantum mechanics—why should they work at all? What, to use Nobel Laureate Wigner’s classic phrase, accounts for the “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics”? Could this be a pointer toward a mathematical mind behind the universe? And then there was the Big Bang....
If you’ve read Collins’s The Language of God, you already know where he’s going.
To posit a creator that is also part of nature provides no solution. Instead, one seems obligated [my emphasis] to yield to the logic of the cosmological argument (called Kalam by Islamic scholars) that there was a First Cause, a supernatural Creator outside of the laws of nature, and outside of time and space.
Yes, it’s all scientific, folks. Logic and scientific evidence says that we must—we must—accept a supernatural creator.
The rest follows predictably. Collins brings up the “fine-tuning” of the universe (“The conclusion is astounding: if any of these [physical constants] were to vary by even the tiniest degree, a universe capable of sustaining any imaginable form of life would be impossible.”)
God of the gaps! Fine-tuning, therefore Jesus. Collins is not a man who can live with doubt, with the idea that perhaps there is some deeper physical theory (or, indeed, the possibility of multiple universes) that might explain this “fine-tuning.”
And of course, we can get more scientific evidence for God from “The Moral Law”:
When we break this Moral Law...we make excuses, only further demonstrating that we feel bound by the law in our dealings with others. How can this be accounted for? If God actually exists, and has an interest in humans—a unique species with gifts of consciousness, intelligence, and free will—wouldn’t the existence of this law, written on all our hearts, be an interesting signpost toward a holy and personal God?
“Interesting signpost”? What he means, of course, is “EVIDENCE”!
Responding to the argument that morality could have evolved, since we see apparent rudiments of morality in our primate relatives, Collins simply asserts that evolution couldn’t lead us to admire altruists, or to perform altruistic acts ourselves. Well, maybe, but reciprocal altruism could have evolved in small groups of interacting hominids. And there are many people, including myself, who think that morality comes from a combination of an evolved mentality and a non-evolved, social extension of that mentality to other people—indeed, to other species. (That’s the point of Peter Singer’s The Expanding Circle.) Collins claims that the New Atheists haven’t dealt with the subtleties of theology, but he surely has not dealt with the multifarious arguments for the secular development of morality. And while he claims he’s “not arguing that the existence of the Moral Law somehow proves God’s existence,” that’s disingenuous. He is, and he has done.
For myself, the arguments from the nature of the universe and the existence of the Moral Law led me, with considerable initial resistance, to a serious consideration of the possibility of a God who not only wound up the clock but who also has an enduring interest in a relationship with humans.
Enough is enough. Collins is director of the NIH, and is using his office to argue publicly that scientific evidence—the Big Bang, the “Moral Law” and so forth—points to the existence of a God. That is blurring the lines between faith and science: exactly what I hoped he would not do when he took his new job.
And to those who say that he has the right to publish this sort of stuff, well, yes he does. He has the legal right. But it’s not judicious to argue publicly, as the most important scientist in the US, that there is scientific evidence for God. Imagine, for example, the outcry that would ensue if Collins were an atheist and, as NIH director, published a collection of atheistic essays along the lines of Christopher Hitchens’s The Portable Atheist, but also arguing that scientific evidence proved that there was no God. He would, of course, promptly be canned as NIH director.
Or imagine if Collins were a Scientologist, arguing that the evidence pointed to the existence of Xenu and ancient “body-thetans” that still plague humans today. Or a Muslim, arguing that evidence pointed to the existence of Allah, and of Mohamed as his divine prophet. Or if he published a book showing how scientific evidence pointed to the efficacy of astrology, or witchcraft. People would think he was nuts.
Collins gets away with this kind of stuff only because, in America, Christianity is a socially sanctioned superstition. He’s the chief government scientist, but he won’t stop conflating science and faith. He had his chance, and he blew it. He should step down.An incredible video has emerged online of Australian conservative commentator Andrew Bolt being attacked by Antifa goons in Melbourne, Australia, and fighting back hard. The masked thugs attacked Bolt with a "glitter-bomb" (consisting of glitter, dye, and shaving cream) outside a Melbourne cafe on Tuesday, after a woman asked him for a selfie.
The video shows Bolt immediately responding with a haymaker, being pushed into a pole and falling over chairs and tables outside the restaurant. But he recovered quickly and charged his assailants, kicking and punching one of them in the face and groin before they scurried away.
Bolt explained his reason for punching back:
We must intimidate and humiliate the enemies of free speech, and not let them intimidate and humiliate us.
The video was taken by a photographer at the scene “who claims he wasn’t part of the ambush.” But Bolt says he "has trouble believing him":
How come he was so well placed? Why did he run away when the attackers did? Why didn't he offer help or tell me he had the vision?
He said on Thursday morning that he would pursue a monetary settlement from his attackers, as well as a donation to a charity of his choice, if and when police nab them.
Via the Australian:First Impressions of Mageia 2
Mageia began its life not so long ago by being a community fork of the Mandriva Linux distribution. The future of Mandriva, as a company, has been in question for years prompting several developers and users to push for an independent, community-oriented distro. The first release of Mageia, version 1, got off to a fairly good start. It didn't vary much technologically from Mandriva and felt a bit like a test run, as though the developers were making sure all the proper infrastructure was in place.
This May Mageia returned with version 2 and it looks as though the community has filled in any missing gaps. The distribution is available in many different editions. There's a DVD edition, GNOME and KDE editions, 32-bit and 64-bit builds and live CDs featuring a variety of language packs. In total I counted about 20 different download options, not including the torrent files. This variety is very much in line with the Mandriva tradition and may be, in my opinion, the biggest hurdle to trying out Mageia as the array of options is likely to be overwhelming to new users. However, the release notes are well laid out and detailed which will hopefully level out the experience for newcomers. I decided to try the 32-bit KDE edition of Mageia in the form of a live CD.
Booting from the live CD brings up a menu asking if we'd like to try the live environment or launch the system installer. I opted to try the live environment and, a few minutes later, was shown a series of option screens where I was asked to provide my preferred language, accept the distribution's license, choose my time zone and confirm my keyboard layout. Shortly after entering my information I was shown a blue-themed classic desktop environment. An application menu, quick-launch icons and task switcher sat at the bottom of the screen. Along the left side of the display were icons for browsing the file system, launching the installer and visiting Mageia's website. The application menu, as it turns out, is presented in the classic fashion and I found it to be both compact and easy to navigate.
Mageia's installer provides us with a graphical interface and takes us through a series of screens which are fairly simple in layout. The disk partitioning section comes first and we can either instruct the installer to use the existing layout as it wishes or proceed with manual partitioning. I thought it was a nice touch that the installer recommends we backup existing files before continuing with the installation. Manual partitioning I found to be nicely arranged. At the top of the window we're shown a visual representation of our disk. Clicking on parts of the diagram or various action buttons allows us to create, format, delete and resize sections of the disk. Supported file systems include ext3, ext4, ReiserFS, JFS, XFS and NTFS. We can also make use of LVM layouts and RAID configurations. The installer also supports partition encryption. Yet, with all of these options, the developers have managed to keep the layout uncluttered and one action tends to flow seamlessly into the next. After setting up our partitions we're given the option to remove unused hardware support and extra localization files to free up disk space. Then we wait while the installer copies the files it needs to our local disk. When it is finished we're asked if we would like to install the GRUB boot loader or the LILO boot loader and we can set the location where we'd like the boot loader installed. We also have the option of editing the boot options the installer detects for us. Then the installer advises us to reboot the machine.
What I especially appreciate about the Mageia installer is each screen is simple. We are typically asked one straight forward question and offered reasonable defaults. For more experienced users almost every screen has an "Advanced" button which brings up more options. The approach makes for a clean design while allowing for more fine-tuned installations.
Mageia 2 -- System installer
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The first time we boot our local copy of Mageia the distribution downloads a series of files. The notice that a download was in progress went by quickly and no explanation was given -- I suspect the system was downloading repository information. Then a first-run wizard appears, asking us to set a root password and to create a regular user account. With our account created we're handed over to a graphical login screen. The login screen allows us to login as our regular user and also provides the option to login as a guest user. The guest account requires no password and wipes out any changes made to the account when the user logs out, leaving the account in a pristine state. Not only is this feature useful for when friends wish to borrow our computer, but the guest account can be managed (and deleted) just like any other user account via the system's control centre. The login screen also offers us the option of logging into either a KDE desktop or into IceWM, a useful fall-back option for lower-resource machines or to rescue the system if a problem develops with KDE.
Exploring the application menu we find Mageia comes with Firefox and Konqueror for web browsing, the LibreOffice suite and a document viewer in the default installation. We also find the GNU Image Manipulation Program, a system monitor and the Drake Network Centre (draknetcenter) for managing network connections. In the Multimedia section we find the Amarok music player, the KsCD audio CD player and the Dragon video player. The application menu includes the usual small apps such as a text editor, calculator and archive manager. The system comes with the KDE System Settings panel and a system control centre. The application menu also features a copy of the KDE documentation. While using the distribution I found some multimedia codecs were installed by default, mp3 files could be played on a fresh install for instance. Some video files would play, but generally opening a video file brought up a dialog box saying the proper codec could not be found and gave the option of searching the repositories for the proper software. With the default (free) repositories enabled these searches could not locate the required codecs. To get the required package the user must manually enable the extra (non-free) repositories. Adding the repositories is fairly easy to do, but I feel it's something the search software should offer to do for us automatically. Offering to search free repositories we know do not include the required packages isn't helpful in itself. The default install from a live CD doesn't include Flash, nor Java, nor a compiler, though each of these things may be installed from the repositories. Mageia ships with the 3.3 version of the Linux kernel and it is one of the few distributions shipping with up to date software which still installs the Legacy version of the GRUB boot loader.
The Mageia package manager presents us with a fairly simple graphical interface. Down the left side of the window we see application categories and, down the right side, we see a list of software in the selected category. Packages are displayed with a name and description and items can be added or removed from the system by checking a box. Actions we want to perform are queued together and run in batches. One nice feature of the package manager is it provides a collection of easy to understand filters. Software can be displayed by type (meta package, GUI application, all applications, updates) and by status (installed or available). I found the package manager to be quick to respond and, like most utilities in Mageia, straight forward to use. There is a secondary graphical package manager in Mageia called Apper. Apper feels less structured, presenting all categories and items in one large pane in the manager's window. Though Apper worked well for me and also provided clear software categories, I found the structure of the main package manager more appealing.
Mageia 2 -- Managing software packages
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I ran into some problems when it came to updating software on the system. Shortly after installing Mageia I went to the control centre and launched the update manager. It informed me there were no updates available at the time. I went into the package manager and refreshed the repository information. Again, both the main package manager and the update manager reported no updates were available, a claim they maintained during the course of the entire week. However, when I went into the Apper package manager and clicked the Updates icon it informed me there were over a dozen packages waiting to be updated. Apper downloaded and installed the updates without any problems. This pattern continued as the week went on where updates would appear in Apper only.
The Mageia control centre is probably the most distinct feature of the distribution. It provides an excellent way to configure most aspects of the operating system and does so in a way which should be either familiar, or at least easy to learn, for new users. The control centre is broken into several sections including software management, hardware, booting, security and the general system. Opening one of these sections presents us with labeled icons which launch specific modules, much the same way the KDE System Settings panel works. Through the Mageia control centre we can handle adding and removing software, timing checks for updates and enabling or disabling 3D visual effects. We can set up printers and scanners, connect to UPS devices to monitor the available power, configure our keyboard and mouse and adjust network settings. We can also set up proxies and virtual private networks. We can adjust our login authentication, enable or disable system services and manage user accounts (including the guest account). There is a module for importing documents and settings from a Windows partition, another for viewing and searching through log files. We find modules for creating NFS and Samba shares, a module to manage disk partitions and a firewall utility. There is a section for enabling website filtering and parental controls, a module for configuring the boot loader and a tool for enabling more fine-gained system-wide security. Though fine-tuned security models like SELinux and AppArmor can be intimidating to new users, Mageia comes with preset profiles which are easy to understand and enable. Some optional security profiles include "standard", "netbook" & "webserver" and each comes with an explanation to help users get started.
I did run into a few problems when working with the control centre. For instance, when trying to launch a module called "snapshots", presumably a backup tool, the module instantly crashed and offered to send a bug report. This happened each time I tried to access the snapshot module. Another utility which didn't appear to work as expected was the parental control for blocking access to specific applications. For example, I installed Kate and blocked my user from having access to the text editor. If I opened a virtual terminal and tried to launch Kate I'd get an access denied error and the application wouldn't show up in my path. However, if I went to the application menu and simply clicked on the Kate icon, the editor would open. Apparently there is a hole there which hasn't yet been plugged. These two bugs, and the issue of the missing package updates aside, I found things in the control centre worked as expected and I found all of the tools easy to use.
Mageia 2 -- System and desktop settings
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I tried running Mageia on two test machines, my HP laptop (dual-core 2 GHz CPU, 3GB of RAM, Intel video card) and a desktop box (2.5 GHz CPU, 2 GB of RAM, NVIDIA video card). On both machines Mageia ran well. The desktop was responsive, even with effects turned on. The operating system correctly detected and utilized my laptop's Intel wireless card and I encountered no hardware compatibility issues. I did note that Mageia is a bit slower to boot than some other modern Linux distros, such as Ubuntu and Fedora. However, once up and running Mageia performed well. Running the KDE desktop without any applications open typically used around 220MB of RAM. I also ran Mageia in a VirtualBox virtual machine and found the experience to be nearly identical to running on physical hardware. Though desktop responsiveness did suffer in the virtual environment if visual effects were enabled.
Going into this review one of my internal questions was whether the community around Mageia had managed to introduce a significant amount of documentation and infrastructure to the project. Mageia, after all, having come from Mandriva was bound to contain the same useful, polished technology, the same excellent control panel and up to date desktop environments, but what about the project's website, its support? If we were to look strictly at the wiki and the documentation provided there we would soon see there is still work to be done. The release notes are quite good, but instructions and how-tos are in short supply. The flip side to this is Mageia's active forum community. We might assume from this situation support is less likely to come from the top down, but rather from users helping each other. As for the distribution itself, its quality is, for the most part, well above average. The CD is a bit light on software (there doesn't appear to be any default e-mail client, for example), but most of the basics are present. The control panel is easily the nicest and (nearly) the most complete in the Linux ecosystem, its only real rival being the very powerful, but notably less novice-friendly, YaST from the openSUSE project.
I did run into some minor issues while using Mageia, the snapshot utility and the main software update utility being the notable areas of concern, but mostly my time with Mageia was smooth, pleasant, largely complete and welcoming. I write "welcoming" because Mageia's greatest strength may not be its technical merits (though those are good), but in its design. The Mageia developers have produced one of the nicest feeling distributions I have experienced in a while. The Mageia developers really appear to understand the reasoning that just because a feature is available that doesn't mean it should be enabled by default.
Take, for example, the desktop. It's a modern KDE 4.8 desktop, yet windows don't change shape or size when they bump into the top of the screen, there are no desktop widgets and the few effects which are enabled by default are minor. The application menu is presented in the classic style and is cleanly laid out, without clutter or redundancy. Even little things like the way the virtual terminal is a plain white on black with no transparency nor flashing cursor are a nice change from what I've experienced recently. The theme is interesting without being distracting and the Mageia developers have provided GRUB Legacy for a boot loader, making managing the boot options less complicated for the user. All in all, the distribution provides a modern environment in which to work with all the modern conveniences, but with most of the frills turned off by default and it makes for a quiet, productive workspace. I found I enjoyed the combination of having a lot of options, but having them turned off at the beginning as opposed to many other environments where the options either do not exist, or they do exist and every bell and whistle is enabled.
Despite a few bugs, most of which I hope will be fixed in the coming months, I found Mageia to be solid, useful and novice-friendly. The team's infrastructure appears to be in place and working well. Once the wiki gets padded out with additional documentation I suspect Mageia will float to the top of my recommendation list.Any online shopper knows the feeling. That frustrated impatience you get while waiting for an order to arrive. Uggh, come onnn, I want it noooooww! The week before last I was waiting for my new sunscreen, and my Oz Naturals 20
%
Vitamin C
cannot be allowed to touch my unprotected skin. I will get wrinkles. I will get a tan and then my face won't match my make-up, let alone the rest of my body. Rummaging in the bathroom, I found my tube of SPF50 face lotion from last year. I thought to myself. "It's a year old, but I'm sure it'll be fine." Those were my famous last words. & Amino & Hyaluronic Acid serum *. THE AGONY. I was especially irritated because the sun had really started to shine, and my SPF 20 moisturiser had ran out. I needed to do something because I had to leave the house, and sunlightbe allowed to touch my unprotected skin. I will get wrinkles. I will get a tan and then my face won't match my make-up, let alone the rest of my body. Rummaging in the bathroom, I found my |
police to obtain court warrants to destroy property, enter private buildings and wiretap phones.
What is different, however, is that those police actions, if they lead to a criminal prosecution, are examined in open court. CSIS operations would presumably be covert and courts would hear testimony from government officials in secret to determine whether to issue such warrants.
– The establishment of an all-party national security oversight committee.
Both Easter’s failed Bill C-551 and Murray’s Bill C-622 proposed a committee of parliamentarians to oversee the government’s expanding spying operations. They suggested a committee composed of three members of the Senate and six members of the House, all sworn to secrecy for life. No more than four members could be from the same political party.
The Liberals proposed calling it the National Security Committee of Parliamentarians.
The committee would have access to any information under federal control that relates to the performance of its duties and functions, including compelling federal employees to divulge information, reports and explanations it deemed necessary to do its job.
The committee would report annually to the prime minister, who would table a copy, likely redacted, in Parliament.
Murray’s bill said the report must include a sufficiently detailed account of the committee’s activities, findings and recommendations so as to meaningfully inform Parliament and the public on matters identified by the committee as being of particular public interest, subject to national security protections.
– Ensuring Canadians are not limited from lawful protests and advocacy.
The only significant C-51 change agreed to by the government in March was a Liberal amendment clarifying that the definition of “terrorist activity” does not include “advocacy, protest, dissent and artistic expression.”
It’s not immediately clear how the Liberals plan to go further with this, though different legal wording might underscore their commitment to allowing peaceful dissent.
– Narrowing some overly broad definitions, including defining “terrorist propaganda” more clearly.
C-51 allows government officials to seek court orders to seize or delete from the Internet terrorist propaganda, defined as “any writing, sign, visible representation or audio recording that advocates or promotes the commission of terrorism offences in general.” There is no legal defence for possession of such material or an almost identical C-51 law against speech that advocates or promotes terrorism “in general.”
The “in general” bit has some people concerned. Terrorism offences are already clearly spelled out in law. As national security law experts Kent Roach and Craig Forcese argue, terrorism offences “in general” are unknown in Canadian law, “and its exact meaning is impossible to assert with certainty.”
– Limiting the powers of the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) by requiring a warrant to engage in the surveillance of Canadians.
The CSE, a foreign signals intelligence service, is generally not allowed to spy on Canadians. The global nature of terrorists and terrorist operations can mean CSE spies sometimes have to eavesdrop on Canadians’ private electronic communications in order to track a foreign terrorist. In those cases, the minister of National Defence, responsible for the CSE, can authorize such intercepts.
Murray proposed amending the National Defence Act to take away the minister’s power to secretly authorize the interception of Canadians’ “protected information,” including metadata, and putting it in the hands of Federal Court judges. That would a major and complex change in the way CSE operates.
Other Liberal platform promises on C-51 and national security include a statutory review of the full Anti-Terrorism Act after three years; requiring that government review all appeals by Canadians on the no-fly list; and prioritizing community outreach and counter-radicalization, by creating the Office of the Community Outreach and Counter-radicalization Co-ordinator.
imacleod@ottawacitizen.com
Twitter.com/@macleod_ianWe could hardly agree more with Prof. Daniel Lynch’s appraisal of the situation across the Taiwan Strait—let’s not mistake happy talk and economic agreements for a durable cross-strait status quo. Beijing shows no sign of relenting on its goal of imposing its rule on Taiwan, and Chinese spokesmen are admirably forthright about this.
Nonetheless, when we discuss cross-strait relations with senior US military officers, they often inform us that China evinces little desire to use the formidable military it’s constructing to achieve longstanding political aims. We fully agree with them on this point. Where we do part ways with them, though, is on the sweeping conclusions they draw from this trivial point—namely that Beijing so abhors the prospect of armed conflict that it will accept the cross-strait status quo more or less indefinitely, and presumably compromise on national unity.
Doubtful. As we see it, Beijing is attempting to amass such military superiority over the island’s armed forces, along with such an overbearing deterrent against outside intervention, that Taipei has little choice but to acquiesce in unification on the mainland’s terms while Taipei’s friends have little choice but to stand aside. If so, China is building a strong People’s Liberation Army (PLA) precisely to avoid using that force in combat. Armed conflict is a perilous enterprise. Accordingly, Sun Tzu portrays winning without fighting as ‘the acme of skill’. Western sage St. Augustine teaches that even those who disturb the peace through warfare have no intrinsic hatred of peace. They simply want to transform the existing peace into one that suits them better, and they are prepared to use arms to effect such a transformation—accepting the risks entailed by violent conflict.Force is a last resort, then, even for those who use force.
As Lynch implies, the task before Taipei is to combine political measures with artful deployment of military force, presenting such a hard target that Beijing never concludes it can win without running unacceptable risk. Thucydides illuminates the dynamics at work in the Taiwan Strait. When the island of Melos appeared likely to defect from the Athenian Empire to rival Sparta 2500 years ago, the Athenian Assembly dispatched an embassy to make the islanders an offer they couldn’t refuse. They could bow to Athenian wishes or see their male populace slaughtered, their women and children enslaved. As the ambassadors informed the Melians, questions of justice only arise between rough equals in physical might. The strong do as they will, the weak do as they must.
Unable to resist an Athenian assault, and with the Athenian navy barring any overseas reinforcements, the Melians had little recourse. They could surrender or die fighting. They opted for battle, and lost their city after a short, bloody siege. Does China want to impose a Melian fate on Taiwan? Not in a strict sense, but Beijing—whether it realizes it or not—is relying on the inexorable logic of power explicated by the Athenian emissaries. Antiquity holds valuable lessons despite the passage of time.
All this means that Taiwan can’t expect justice from China from a position of weakness. Too grave a power mismatch across the Strait will leave Taipei with few options while disheartening the island’s inhabitants and their leaders. A PLA powerful enough to command the waters and skies adjoining the island could deter, delay, or defeat outside succour, presumably from US Pacific Fleet units operating across great distances from Japan, Guam, and Hawaii. To give themselves the time Prof. Lynch rightly says they need, the Taiwanese government and armed forces must apply their energies and ingenuity to devising a naval and aerial strategy that denies the PLA control of the Strait, holding off an invasion force, and that helps US reinforcements fight their way into the theatre.
Only by doing this can Taiwan preserve its de facto independence for long enough to matter. China doesn’t yet boast the overwhelming supremacy of Athens over its environs. The United States is by no means as powerless as Sparta. And Taiwan’s plight does not yet approach that of Melos.
But Taipei must act lest things degenerate that far.
James Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara are associate professors of strategy at the US Naval War College, where Yoshihara holds the Van Beuren Chair of Asia-Pacific Studies. The views voiced here are theirs alone.Daniel Ray Whitten (May 8, 1943 – November 18, 1972) was an American musician and songwriter best known for his work with Neil Young's backing band Crazy Horse, and for the song "I Don't Want To Talk About It", a hit for Rod Stewart and Everything but the Girl.
Biography [ edit ]
Early years [ edit ]
Whitten was born on May 8, 1943, in Columbus, Georgia. His parents split up when he was young. He and his sister, Brenda, lived with their mother, who worked long hours as a waitress.[1] His mother remarried when he was 9 and the family moved to Canton, Ohio.[1]
Musical beginnings [ edit ]
Whitten joined Billy Talbot and Ralph Molina among others in the doo-wop group Danny and the Memories. After recording an obscure single, "Can't Help Loving That Girl of Mine", core members of the group moved to San Francisco where they morphed into a folk-psychedelic rock act called The Psyrcle. Whitten played guitar, Molina drums, and Talbot played bass and piano.
By 1967, the group took on brothers George and Leon Whitsell on additional guitars and vocals, as well as violinist Bobby Notkoff, the sextet calling themselves The Rockets. They signed with independent label White Whale Records, working with producer Barry Goldberg for the group's self-titled album in mid-1968. The album sold poorly.
Connection with Neil Young [ edit ]
Songwriter Neil Young, fresh from departing Buffalo Springfield, with one album of his own under his belt, began jamming with the Rockets and expressed interest in recording with Whitten, Molina and Talbot. The trio agreed, so long as they were allowed to simultaneously continue on with The Rockets. Young acquiesced initially, but imposed a rehearsal schedule that made that an impossibility. At first dubbed "War Babies" by Young, they soon became known as Crazy Horse.
Recording sessions led to Young's second album, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, credited as Neil Young with Crazy Horse, with Whitten on second guitar and vocals. Although his role was that of support, Whitten sang the album's opening track "Cinnamon Girl" along with Young, and Whitten and Young shared lead guitar on "Down by the River" and "Cowgirl in the Sand". These tracks would influence the grunge movement of the 1990s,[citation needed] and all three songs remain part of Young's performance repertoire.
Drug addiction [ edit ]
During this period, Whitten began using heroin; after finding that it mitigated his longstanding battle with rheumatoid arthritis, he quickly became addicted. Although he participated in the early stages of Young's next solo effort, After the Gold Rush, Whitten and the rest of Crazy Horse were dismissed about halfway through the recording sessions, in part because of Whitten's heavy drug use. Whitten performs guitar and vocals on "Oh, Lonesome Me", "I Believe in You", and "When You Dance I Can Really Love". He was also brought in at the end of the sessions to provide harmony vocals on "Tell Me Why", "Only Love Can Break Your Heart", "Cripple Creek Ferry","Southern Man" and "Till the Morning Comes". Young wrote and recorded "The Needle and the Damage Done" during this time, with direct references to Whitten's addiction and its role in the destruction of his talent.
Acquiring a recording contract and expanded to a quintet in 1970, Crazy Horse recorded its first group-only album, released in early 1971. The debut album included five songs by Whitten, with two standout tracks being a song co-written by Young which would show up later on a Young album, "(Come On Baby Let's Go) Downtown", and Whitten's most famous composition, "I Don't Want To Talk About It", a heartfelt ballad that would receive many cover versions and offer the promise of unfulfilled talent.
Death [ edit ]
Whitten continued to drift, his personal life ruled almost totally by drugs. He was kicked out of Crazy Horse by Talbot and Molina, who used replacements on the band's two albums of 1972. In October of that year, after receiving a call from Young to play rhythm guitar on the upcoming tour behind Young's Harvest album, Whitten showed up for rehearsals at Young's home outside San Francisco. While the rest of the group hammered out arrangements, Whitten lagged behind, figuring out the rhythm parts, though never in sync with the rest of the group. Young, who had more at stake after the success of After The Gold Rush and Harvest, fired him from the band on November 18, 1972. Young gave Whitten $50 and a plane ticket back to Los Angeles. Later that night Whitten died from a fatal combination of diazepam, which he was taking for severe knee arthritis, and alcohol, which he was using to try to get over his heroin addiction.[2] In 1973, Charles Perry of Rolling Stone reported that Whitten died of a methaqualone overdose.[3]
Neil Young recalled, "We were rehearsing with him and he just couldn't cut it. He couldn't remember anything. He was too out of it. Too far gone. I had to tell him to go back to L.A. 'It's not happening, man. You're not together enough.' He just said, 'I've got nowhere else to go, man. How am I gonna tell my friends?' And he split. That night the coroner called me and told me he'd died. That blew my mind. Fucking blew my mind. I loved Danny. I felt responsible. And from there, I had to go right out on this huge tour of huge arenas. I was very nervous and... insecure."[4]
Years later, Young told biographer Jimmy McDonough that for a long time after Whitten died, he felt responsible for Whitten's death. It took him years to stop blaming himself. "Danny just wasn't happy", Young said. "It just all came down on him. He was engulfed by this drug. That was too bad. Because Danny had a lot to give, boy. He was really good."
Discography [ edit ]
Songs written by Danny Whitten [ edit ]
"Dance To The Music On The Radio" (Whitten, Billy Talbot)
"Dirty, Dirty" (Whitten)
"(Come On Baby Let's Go) Downtown" (Whitten, Neil Young)
"Hole in My Pocket" (Whitten) 1968 single, produced Barry Goldberg, rerecorded by the Barry Goldberg Reunion
"I Don't Need Nobody (Hangin' Round My Door)" (Whitten)
"I Don't Want to Talk About It" (Whitten)
"I'll Get By" (Whitten)
"Let Me Go" (Whitten)
"Look at All the Things"" (Whitten)
"Love Can Be So Bad" (Whitten, L Vegas)
"May" (Whitten, Billy Talbot)
"Mr Chips" (Whitten)
"Oh Boy" (Whitten)
"Wasted" (Whitten, L Vegas, P Vegas)
"Whatever" (Whitten, Billy Talbot)
"Won't You Say You'll Stay" (Whitten)
See also [ edit ]• Syriza on course to win 35pc of vote; form coalition with nationalist ANEL • Voter turnout lowest ever recorded at just 55pc • Opposition leader Meimarakis concedes defeat • Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn emerge as third largest party • Alexis Tsipras emerges as clear winner in shock result • Jittery Greek creditors welcome Tsipras triumph
That's where we'll end tonight's coverage. On Monday, Mr Tsipras will be sworn into office for the second time this year by the Greek president. His coalition partner is all but a done deal but will be announced by Wednesday at the latest we expect. Meanwhile the official votes are still tricking in.
Thanks for joining. Here's a summary of the best of the day:
Good night.
21.50
Greece's international lenders welcomed the resounding re-election for former prime minister Alexis Tsipras on Sunday night amid fears that the Leftist premier would fail to stick by his promises to stay in the euro.
Mr Tsipras's much moderated Syriza party was on course to gain around 35pc of the national vote - making them clear victors in a closely fought campaign with the conservative New Democracy party.
The continued presence of the popular prime minister will cheer investors who had been braced for a period of prolonged political uncertainty and fractious coalition talks after polls predicted a deadheat.
Eurozone officials welcomed the re-election of Mr Tsipras as the man to oversee the country's third bail-out deal in five years, rather than undermining attempts at reform in opposition.
President of the European parliament, German Martin Schulz congratulated the Leftist premier, tweeting: "Now a solid government ready to deliver is needed quickly".
The EU's economics chief Pierre Moscovici said he was confident that any new coalition would abide by the reform package.
"From Monday, we are ready to collaborate to implement the programme to reform the Greek economy," he told Italy's La Stampa before the results came in.
Brussels however has repeated there will be no flexibility for the government to renegotiate the punishing terms of its €86bn rescue.
EU spokeswoman Olga Gerovassili said the result was still "the beginning of a battle" for the country which faces three more years of draconian budget targets and a root-and-branch overhaul of its tax and pension system.
Mujtaba Rahman, head of Europe practice at the Eurasia Group, said the prospect of another Mr Tsipras-led government would not enthuse creditors.
"Given how challenging the bail-out agenda is between now and year-end, a return of the previous coalition isn't great news," he said.
"It was spectacularly incompetent last time around. Tonight's result will worry creditors."
Ahead of the election, analysts had warned that a weak minority government and even the threat of fresh elections could prove devastating for the ravaged economy.
Greeks bonds and equities have rallied since a snap vote was called on August 20, in the hope that the country's eurozone future would be secured under a consolidated Syriza shorn of its radical Leftist MPs.
But investor relief at some semblance of political stability in the country is set to be short-lived.
Despite Mr Tsipras promising to stick to the grueling terms of the new "Memorandum of Understanding", there is still a high risk that his party will begin to slide on the implementation when in office, warned analysts.
He has also allied up with his old junior coalition partner, the Independent Greeks, who have promised to over-turn creditor demands to cut defence spending and abolish tax privileges for the country's islands.
"A weak government could put at risk the €86bn programme execution, further disbursement of official funds, official debt relief and, ultimately, could re-ignite exit risks", said Antonio Garcia Pascual at Barclays.
21.15
The dawn of a new age...
Well sort of. Still the same two men in government tonight
Tsipras & Kammenos a few minutes ago, confirming another 4 years of the Syriza-ANEL coalition #ekloges2015_round2 pic.twitter.com/v0zS5x4XLj — Omaira Gill (@OmairaGill) September 20, 2015
Here's Mr Tsipras’s victory speech tonight, courtesy of Reuters.
“In Europe today, Greece and the Greek people are synonymous with resistance and dignity, and this struggle will be continued together for another four years...
We have difficulties ahead, but we are also on firm ground.
We won’t recover from the struggle by magic,but it can happen with hard work.
21.01
The new PM is appearing with his coalition partner and former defence minister, Panos Kammenos of ANEL.
21.00
Tsipras: we can "get rid of all the things that are keeping us stuck in the past"
The Syriza leader is addressing the crowds right now and making promises for a new future.
A clear mandate to cast aside those forces that have been holding us back. #GreekElections #Greece — Alexis Tsipras (@tsipras_eu) September 20, 2015
Meanwhile, his long-time Spanish comrade, Pablo Iglesias of Podemos has tweeted his congratulation, courtesy of James Badcock in Madrid.
Podemos' Pablo Iglesias: Greeks have stated clearly who they want as their PM. Congrats and strength @tsipras_eu https://t.co/KZ9k51TMSo — James Badcock (@jpfbadcock) September 20, 2015
Podemos' international secretary Pablo Bustinduy: Greek gov has not fallen despite this being a main aim of Troika https://t.co/4tZEhwhDuS — James Badcock (@jpfbadcock) September 20, 2015
20.42
"The worst possible outcome"
Mujtaba Rahman, head of Europe practice at the Eurasia Group, has been speaking to our Europe editor Peter Foster in Klathmonos square. He thinks the prospect of another Mr Tsipras-led government will not inspire many of Greece's creditors.
"Given how challenging the bail-out agenda is between now and year-end, a return of the previous coalition isn't great news," he said.
"It was spectacularly incompetent last time around. Tonight's result will worry creditors."
"There is no space for any renegotiation or concessions from creditors, especially with Angela Merkel distracted and struggling with refugees. Out of all of the plausible coalition scenarios, this is by far the worst."
20.40
Brussels: this is just the beginning of the battle
EU spokeswoman Olga Gerovassili is under no pretensions over today's shock trimph for Syriza. She told Reuters today:
"This will be a four-year term government with a strong parliamentary majority, which will implement the programme it promised."
"It will continue the tough negotiations with the lenders, realising that this is the beginning of a battle."
20.20
Tsipras to be confirmed in office tomorrow
Peter Foster is out in Syntagma Square tonight waiting for Mr Tsipras and his new coalition partner Pannos Kammenos of the Independent Greeks to address supporters.
Terence Quick, a spokesman for the nationalist junior coalition partner has told Peter his party would form a coalition with Mr Tsipras.
"Tsipras will be the PM and we will be the guarantee of stability," he said on the sidelines of a victory rally in Klafomonos Square in Athens.
The Syriza leader is expected to be sworn in tomorrow as PM with the formal coalition announced by Wednesday at the latest.
20.15
Just over half the votes counted, and its a sea of pink. Syriza are just shy of the 38pc needed for an outright majority, currently at 36.5pc.
20.02
Hollande congratulates Tsipras
The result of the Greek election represented a "significant" success for re-elected premier, said Mr Hollande on a trip to Morrocco and vowed to visit Athens soon.
"Greece will have a period of stability with a solid majority," he told reporters.
20.00
Summary
With nearly 55pc of the votes counted, here's where we're at tonight:
Syriza have won a resounding shock victory gaining around 35pc of the popular vote in tonight's elections They are just shy of an overall majority but have kept on to their national vote share despite predictions of a close vote Young voters looks to have swung it for Alexis Tsipras, but turnout fell to an all time record of 55pc Syriza are set to form a coalition with their previous partners, nationalists ANEL Alexis Tsipras will address crowds in Syntagma Square tonight
19.55
Syriza rebels fail to make the grade
With just over 50pc of the vote counted, it looks like the rump Syriza rebels will not get enough support to pass the 3pc parliamentary threshold.
Singular Logic announces that the Lafazanis, Konstantopoulou party (supported by @yanisvaroufakis) fails to get in the Parliament. #Greece — Stratos Safioleas (@stratosathens) September 20, 2015
19.55
Turnout expect to be lowest on record at 55pc
Biggest 'winner' in #GreekElections is abstention w 45% of Greeks said not to have voted (comp to 36% in Jan). Turnout at record low of 55%. — NikiKitsantonis (@NikiKitsantonis) September 20, 2015
19.30
Brussels welcomes Tsipras win
Relief all round among eurocrats today. German social democrat and European parliament leader Martin Schulz is the first to congratulate Mr Tsipras
I've just congratulated @tsipras_eu for #Syriza victory in #Greece elections. Now a solid government ready to deliver is needed quickly — EP President (@EP_President) September 20, 2015
19.26
Syriza celebrate shock victory
At Syriza HQ they're celebrating a sensational second election win. They lost just 4 seats despite massive u-turn + reputational hit. — Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) September 20, 2015
19.05
Anel to take part in new government
More of the same. Former deputy of nationalists Anel, Terens Quick has told Greek media that his party will be in parliament and also participate in the next government.
18.55
The paradox of today's results, where Greeks seem to have voted for the same government but with an entirely different set of policies, from Yale professor Stathakis Kalyvas.
18.50
Results coming in - Syriza with healthy lead
A quarter of the votes have been counted and Syriza (in pink) have a 7-8pc lead over New Democracy (blue) at around 35pc.
Here's how the smaller parties look: To Potami 3.8pc; Independent Greeks 3.7; Centists Union 3.5pc and Popular Unity 2.8pc
18.42
New Democracy concedes defeat to Syriza
Leader Evangelos Meimarakis is speaking and has congratulated Alexis Tsipras, conceding defeat to the former PM.
Speaking outside his party headquarters, Mr Meimarakis said: “ND has not been destroyed, it is not finished, it is a pillar of stability."
New Democracy leader Evangelos Meimarakis congratulates SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras, concedes defeat in #GreekElections #Greece — MacroPolis (@MacroPolis_gr) September 20, 2015
18.40
A re-run of the last election?
If exit polls are to be believed, Syriza will just be 7-9 seats short of an 151 seat-majority. That might be enough for them to team up with their previous coalition partners, ANEL, in a repeat of January's election results.
Seat in Parliament (estimate): SYRIZA 143-145 ND 75-76 GDawn 19 PASOK 16-17 KKE 15 Potami 10-11 IndGrks 10 CentUnion 9 #GreekElections — MacroPolis (@MacroPolis_gr) September 20, 2015
18.38
What does Brussels want?
Shorn of his radical Leftist MPs, Mr Tsipras now cuts a much more palatable figure for Greece's creditors in Brussels, Frankfurt, and Washington.
In fact, they're probably secretly rooting for the former PM to head up a new government, rather than cause a headache to any new leader, while in opposition. Mr Tsipras has publicy disavowed the bail-out terms he signed up to and may well begin to backslide on its implementation if he gets back into the Maximos Mansion.
But for the country's lenders at least, it might be a case of better the devil they know.
18.30
New exit poll gives Syriza wider margin for victory
More good news for Tsipras. The latest exit poll out of Greece is now showing a slightly more comfortable win or up to 35pc of the vote.
Final exit poll sees SYRIZA lead over New Democracy widening & Popular Unity probably out #Greece #GreekElections https://t.co/kaoKE76JQ4 — Nick Malkoutzis (@NickMalkoutzis) September 20, 2015
18.25
Greece set for uncertain coalition future
Our man Peter Foster summarises events in Athens tonight.
Greece was heading for the uncertainty of a coalition government on Sunday night after the country’s radical former prime minister Alexis Tsipras failed to win an outright mandate to govern.
After a tepid campaign that saw Mr Tsipras’s personal popularity fall sharply, preliminary exit polls showed the 41-year-old’s far-left Syriza party would have to find coalition partners in order to return to power.
The snap-polls showed Syriza narrowly beating conservative rivals New Democracy to become Greece's largest party, but falling far short of the 38 per cent of the vote needed to form a majority government.
Having ruled out forming a national unity coalition with New Democracy, Mr Tsipras will need to govern with other, centrist parties.
Whatever coalition is formed, the government will be faced with the daunting challenge of implementing the stringent reforms demanded by the €86bn bail-out package agreed to in July.
The programme has already split Syriza and in recent weeks cracks have begun to appear even among those MPs who remained loyal Mr Tsipras.
“This is a fragile party, although one third of the members broke off there are still radical elements left who can create problems for Tsipras,” said Marco Vicenzino, a Greece expert at the Global Strategy Project, a risk consultancy.
The disappointing result for Mr Tsipras came at the end of a month-long campaign that failed to engage weary Greek voters who were making their third trip to the polling booths for a major vote in just nine months.
17.55
Syriza rule out Grand Coalition
Nikos Pappas, close aide of Alexis Tsipras, has told Greek media the party will not form a coalition with New Democracy. That maintains the line they've held throughout the campaign, despite ND's insistence they can work with the Leftist party.
Alexis Tsipras's No. 2 Nikos Pappas says there's no chance of SYRIZA working with New Democracy #Greece #GreekElections — Nick Malkoutzis (@NickMalkoutzis) September 20, 2015
Syriza celebrate
A gathering of Syriza supporters have cheered this evening's exit poll. It's not quite a mad raucous affair by the looks of things.
17.45
Greek socialists call for Grand Coalition
Pasok are in line to be one of the kingmakers in this election. The social democrat party could well get into bed with both Syriza and New Democracy. But following that tight exit poll, they seem to be favouring a 'Grand coalition' of Left and Right, which would likely mean they are excluded from government.
17.30
How the unemployed voted: 16.6% for Golden Dawn 5.1% for Pasok pic.twitter.com/LxYtLKZzXT — Damian Mac Con Uladh (@damomac) September 20, 2015
17.30
Record number of parties set to enter parliament
Greece has a 3pc threshold for parliamentary representation, and of the 19 parties that contested this election, nine could well make the grade. This would be the highest number since post-war elections 65 years ago.
If 9 parties make it to parliament, this will be highest number since 1950, when there were 10. In May 2012 were 8. #ekloges2015_round2 — Damian Mac Con Uladh (@damomac) September 20, 2015
17.25
Should Mr Tsipras be declared tonight's winner, Syriza would gain a bonus 50 seats in parliament and be handed three days to find some coalition partners.
#Tsipras saying a government will be formed within next 3 days (h/t Euronews) while New Democracy say waiting for final results #Greece — Open Europe (@OpenEurope) September 20, 2015
17.18
Waiting for results
If you were a follower of the referendum coverage, this will be a familiar sight.
Todays' official election website is up and running. The results will be dropping from constituencies around the country in a few hours. You can follow them all here.
17.12
Syriza rebels have failed to make much headway with the electorate on their promises to tear up the new Memorandum. They're set to gain just 2-3pc of the vote.
Still, they have one outspoken supporter in the form of Yanis Varoufakis (as we reported earlier today).
No jubiliation at Syriza HQ
Channel 4's Paul Mason reports on a subdued atmosphere among the party faithful after that exit poll
Syriza wind, say exit polls - but relief rather than ecstasy in the campaign base - left split Pop Unity down around 3% — Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) September 20, 2015
17.05
Here's the breakdown of the various exit polls combined. Syriza's lead is still skirting the margin of error and is below the 38pc that would translate into a majority.
#Greece exit poll: Syriza 30~34 ND 28.5~32.5 GD 6.5~8 PASOK 5.5~7 KKE 5.5~7 Potami 4~5.5 EK 3.2~4.2 ANEL 3~4 LAE 2~3 #ekloges2015 — Yannis Koutsomitis (@YanniKouts) September 20, 2015
17.00
Breaking: Exit polls predict narrow Syriza win
Leftist party are on course to gain around 30-34pc of the vote, say exit polls.
16.53
We'll be getting a raft of exit polls from the main Greek media outlets in just under 10 minutes.
Greek exit polls in 10 mins - high abstention means less accurate but Syriza activists predicting tight win. — Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) September 20, 2015
Zappeion press centre filling up as we approach first exit polls #ekloges2015_round2 pic.twitter.com/eV3bKK0Asj — Omaira Gill (@OmairaGill) September 20, 2015
16.40
Fighting in the pro-euro ranks
There's still 20 mins to go before voting closes, but the leaders of Greece's two main pro-bail-out parties have already started griping on social media.
The dispute was kicked off when a New Democracy party official called on voters to turn their back on the centrist party of To Potami and vote for ND, on Facebook.
The leader of To Potami Stavros Theodorakis called has now responded, calling the intervention "aviolation of electoral law". "It's a shame for a party that claims to be democratic,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
16.30
Here's a rough guide to what the eventual outcome could look like (based on polling last week) and the possible coalition permutations that could emerge.
16.30
How will it all work?
The biggest party will get a bonus of 50 seats in the parliament, but that is still unlikely to be enough to gain the 151 majority needed. In which case, the country's president will hand a mandate to form a majority government to the winners.
Should they fail to do so, this is then handed to the second largest party, and so on until we get a viable coalition.
16.22
A reminder that exit polls are due out at 5pm. Low turnout could well skew the reliability of the polls however
Given low turnout & tightness of race between #Syriza-ND, I suggest treating Exit Polls with caution. Remember 2000 elex... #GreekElections — The Greek Analyst (@GreekAnalyst) September 20, 2015
16.15
Looks like the theme of this election will be voter disillusion
Returning officer in one Athens polling station: 600 registered voters; 200 showed by mid-afternoon; usually 300+ by now #Greece #ekloges — jon henley (@jonhenley) September 20, 2015
16.00
Young voters turned off by Tsipras
One hour before polls close and there have been plenty of scenes of sleepy polling booths in Greece today. If the pictures are anything to go by, most of the voters have been elderly Greeks.
Around 100,000 members of the electorate are aged between 18-19 years old and are a key electoral battle-ground for Syriza. This morning, Mr Tsipras appealed to the country's youth to back him to secure a fresh future for the ravaged country. But it looks like they may well have switched off to his more moderate message, in what would be a significant blow for his re-election hopes.
Looks like very low turnout in Greek election. SYRIZA's young voters on strike - unsurprisingly — Alex White (@AlexWhite1812) September 20, 2015
15.40
Greece on course for lowest turnout in history
Today's election could see less than half the electorate turning up to the polls. Anything under 50pc would mark one of the lowest ever participation rates for a general election. By contrast, June's referendum and January's previous vote saw a healthy 62-64pc turnout.
Low voting levels could also skew the results, but in whose favour we do not yet know. It could also jeopardise the process of compiling exit polls which are expected at 5pm, reports Helena Smith of the Guardian.
#Greece #ekloges 2015 low turnout is worrying pollsters - at this point not sure if exit polls feasible — Helena Smith (@HelenaSmithGDN) September 20, 2015
15.30
Anarchy in Athens
It's been a good few years since scenes of mass rioting and violent demonstrations filled the streets of Athens.
The country's anarchists are now a more subdued force as widespread public anger of their treatment at the hands of lenders has given way to weary resignation, nearly six years on from the start of the crisis.
Photo: AFP/GETTY
But pockets of anarchists are still happily fighting their fight in Greece. Back in April, former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis was attacked by a group of hooded youths at a restaurant in Athens. More recently, there have been reports of groups attacking the offices run by bail-out forces.
Our Europe editor Peter Foster has been speaking to one |
2019-02-25
#920030 python3-pygame python3-pygame: ships headers in /usr/include/python3.7/ 2019-02-23
#920037 src:openjdk-8 Don't include in buster remove:#915620 [ M ] 2019-02-06
#920209 src:galera-3 galera-3: FTBFS on mipsel 2019-01-30
#920269 groff groff: gropdf can execute arbitrary commands 2019-01-24
#920369 src:boost1.62 boost1.62: do not release with buster remove 2019-01-25
#920442 src:libcaca libcaca FTBFS in unstable 2019-02-23
#920459 texlive-latex-extra tabu: breaks with color and/or xcolor when spread or negative X coefficients are used 2019-02-27
#920547 src:linux Crashes every few hours 2019-02-22
#920584 python-plastex python-plastex: cannot correctly import PIL; cannot process images 2019-02-23
#920725 pki-base-java pki-base-java: Depends on openjdk-8-jre-headless which will not be in buster 2019-01-30
#920811 wfrog wfrog: Depends on removed pygooglechart 2019-01-29
#920844 src:node-react-audio-player node-react-audio-player build depends on node-react that is currently not in buster 2019-01-29
#920862 xorg xorg: Input doesn't work on LTSP clients while X is running, works otherwise 2019-01-30
#920991 sysbench sysbench: needs to be rebuilt against libmariadb3 remove:#923276 2019-01-31
#920992 src:qt4-x11 qt4-x11: FTBFS against libmariadb3 on amd64,i386,armhf 2019-01-31
#921030 ansible-lint Fails to import the ansible module since its migration to Python 3 2019-02-24
#921114 firmware-amd-graphics no display on GL applications 2019-02-02
#921145 libglx-mesa0 no display on GL applications 2019-02-02
#921179 src:coquelicot FTBFS: several test failures 2019-02-02
#921195 libloudmouth1-0 libloudmouth1-0: does not support IPv6 (fails Squeeze release goal) 2019-02-18
#921232 mono-mcs mono: Internal compiler error building libsbml on s390x 2019-02-03
#921266 linphone linphone: Segfault and crash with "error 4 in libc-2.28.so" on password entry 2019-02-04
#921284 dh-golang build-using should only include copylefted files 2019-02-06
#921363 src:ejs.js Not suitable for buster, package unmaintained remove:#923294 2019-02-27
#921488 libmariadb3 libmariadb3: OpenSSL license contamination of GPL reverse-dependencies 2019-02-24
#921542 src:linux tc qdisc kernel crash 2019-02-11
#921558 lsb-base lsb-base: killproc does not pass name parameter to start-stop-daemon 2019-02-06
#921590 xen-utils-4.11, xen-utils-common xen-utils-4.11: pygrub bails out with "ImportError: No module named fsimage" 2019-02-22
#921682 src:binutils-mipsen binutils-mipsen: FTBFS sid (Version in Debian Archive >= Version in debian/changelog) 2019-02-12
#921704 src:tortoisehg tortoisehg: uninstallable with mercurial 4.9 2019-02-18
#921718 ruby-spring spring is broken /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/spring/client/run.rb:76:in `spawn': No such file or directory - /usr/lib/ruby/bin/spring (Errno::ENOENT) 2019-02-15
#921759 src:sdaps sdaps: FTBFS (Error running "pdflatex" to compile the LaTeX file) 2019-02-23
#921762 src:timeshift timeshift: FTBFS (error: The type name `AppExcludeEntry' could not be found) 2019-02-26
#921778 src:deap deap: FTBFS (Could not import extension sphinx.ext.pngmath) 2019-02-09
#921790 libcamlimages-ocaml-dev liquidsoap: FTBFS (ld: cannot find -lexif) 2019-02-20
#921798 src:node-mocha node-mocha: FTBFS (Module not found: Error: Recursion in resolving) 2019-02-18
#921837 src:mopidy mopidy: FTBFS (dh_installman: Could not determine section for./docs/_build/man/_static) 2019-02-17
#921850 src:binutils-arm-none-eabi unnecessary b-d's libisl-0.18-dev and libcloog-isl-dev, to be removed for buster 2019-02-11
#921897 src:morse-simulator morse-simulator: FTBFS (Could not import extension sphinx.ext.pngmath) 2019-02-22
#921904 src:win-iconv win-iconv: FTBFS (wine: chdir to /tmp/wine-I6miLw/server-29-3583b06 : No such file or directory) 2019-02-11
#921924 fakechroot fakechroot: mv(1) cannot be used inside fakechroot 2019-02-10
#921926 pki-base pki-base: Does not work with Java 11 2019-02-10
#921952 src:libsass Don't include in buster without proper commitment to update in stable 2019-02-10
#921953 apacheds apacheds: Apacheds fails to start after clean installation 2019-02-22
#922028 src:linux Can not start on Thinkpad X1 Carbon 5th (can not find its PCIe SSD?) 2019-02-11
#922179 shim-signed shim-signed depends on packages not in repos 2019-02-26
#922218 gnome-shell gnome-shell fills up logs with an stack trace 2019-02-14
#922252 src:ganeti-2.15 ganeti-2.15: FTBFS (ImportError: cannot import name Directive) 2019-02-14
#922253 src:hamradio-maintguide hamradio-maintguide: FTBFS (Could not import extension sphinx.ext.pngmath) 2019-02-18
#922256 src:nitime nitime: FTBFS (Could not import extension sphinx.ext.pngmath) 2019-02-21
#922257 src:pyfr pyfr: FTBFS (dh_installman: Could not determine section for./build/man/_static) 2019-02-23
#922261 src:python-sunlight python-sunlight: FTBFS (Could not import extension sphinx.ext.pngmath) 2019-02-23
#922263 src:turbogears2-doc turbogears2-doc: FTBFS (ImportError: cannot import name flatten_arguments) 2019-02-23
#922279 debconf debconf: Can't select long choices in dialog (whiptail) multiselect 2019-02-26
#922288 src:ruby-rails-assets-chartjs ruby-rails-assets-chartjs: doesn't build from upstream source 2019-02-21
#922306 src:linux linux: btrfs corruption (compressed data + hole data) 2019-02-26
#922313 kopano-search kopano-search: missing an end of line character in /etc/apparmor.d/usr.sbin.kopano-search 2019-02-19
#922328 libblockdev-swap2 libblockdev-swap2: Swap seems to freeze the system 2019-02-14
#922346 libgl1-mesa-dri eog: Opened an image and my display server crashed 2019-02-14
#922390 src:hydroffice.bag hydroffice.bag: FTBFS (Could not import extension sphinx.ext.pngmath) 2019-02-21
#922395 smokeping smokeping: fails to stop and to upgrade: start-stop-daemon: matching only on non-root pidfile /var/run/smokeping/smokeping.pid is insecure 2019-02-26
#922404 freeipmi freeipmi install fails 2019-02-26
#922457 fonts-roboto-hinted fonts-roboto-hinted: update broke reverse-dependencies without notice 2019-02-21
#922502 plasma-desktop plasma-desktop: regional settings allow do select system incompatible locales 2019-02-18
#922507 wml wml: Missing depends on libgd-perl 2019-02-17
#922625 grfcodec grfcodec build loops indefinitely on failure 2019-02-18
#922678 src:openjdk-11-jre-dcevm openjdk-11-dcevm ftbfs on i386 2019-02-25
#922692 src:galax galax: FTBFS - ERROR: unable to find camomileLibrary.cmi in /usr/lib/ocaml/camomile 2019-02-23
#922719 src:libpdfbox-java src:libpdfbox-java: FTBFS in buster and sid after recent update to lcdf-typetools 2019-02-19
#922724 src:zoneminder Lots of security issues 2019-02-19
#922741 grub-efi grub-efi: grub-install indicates "no errors" when there's insufficient disk space in EFI partition 2019-02-27
#922745 src:gdb gdb needs a backport for PR binutils/23919 2019-02-22
#922755 src:groovy groovy: FTBFS on Buster 2019-02-20
#922773 src:adequate FTBFS since the acl/attr uploads of 2019-05-15+16 2019-02-21
#922804 src:makehuman makehuman: FTBFS (Could not import extension sphinx.ext.pngmath) 2019-02-25
#922805 src:strophejs strophejs: FTBFS (ERROR: module path does not exist: /usr/lib/nodejs/node-almond/almond.js) 2019-02-23
#922831 src:node-es6-promise Uninstallable build dependencies 2019-02-21
#922936 ganeti ganeti: KVM/QEMU Virtual machines won't start after the last qemu-system-x86_64 update. 2019-02-22
#922953 src:bind9 bind9: CVE-2018-5744: A specially crafted packet can cause named to leak memory 2019-02-22
#922954 src:bind9 bind9: CVE-2018-5745: An assertion failure can occur if a trust anchor rolls over to an unsupported key algorithm when using managed-keys 2019-02-22
#922955 src:bind9 bind9: CVE-2019-6465: Zone transfer controls for writable DLZ zones were not effective 2019-02-22
#922995 src:pycsw pycsw: FTBFS: dh_installman: Cannot find (any matches for) "debian/man/pycsw-admin.1" 2019-02-22
#923010 src:fauhdlc fauhdlc: FTBFS (FAUhdlParser.yy:13.9-27: error: syntax error, unexpected string, expecting identifier) 2019-02-22
#923011 src:nuxwdog nuxwdog: FTBFS (/usr/include/keyutils.h:204:48: error: expected ',' or '...' before 'private') 2019-02-23
#923012 src:squirrel3 squirrel3: FTBFS (Could not import extension sphinx.ext.pngmath) 2019-02-22
#923016 systemtap systemtap: scripts fail to compile with recent kernels 2019-02-23
#923125 src:sssd FTBFS: cannot find files in override_dh_install 2019-02-24
#923164 src:leiningen-clojure leiningen-clojure: FTBFS (Could not resolve dependencies for project leiningen-core:leiningen-core:jar:2.8.1) 2019-02-24
#923182 src:icu4j FTBS: javadoc: error - The code being documented uses packages in the unnamed module, but the packages defined in file:///usr/share/doc/default-jdk/api/ are in named modules. 2019-02-25
#923185 src:isorelax FTBS: javadoc: error - The code being documented uses packages in the unnamed module 2019-02-26
#923207 lxsession lxsession has false dependency on systemd 2019-02-25
#923208 libengine-pkcs11-openssl libengine-pkcs11-openssl: libengines-pkcs11-openssl is installing to the wrong engine directory on x86 2019-02-27
#923226 ioquake3 openarena: startup fails on Intel Ironlake Mobile: Couldn't compile shader 2019-02-26
#923238 libmarc-charset-perl libmarc-charset-perl: needs a rebuild on 32bit architectures? 2019-02-25
#923246 src:pacemaker binutils: ld segfaults building pacemaker in unstable 2019-02-27
#923284 gradle FTBS: Doesn't handle depencencies that were build using openjdk 11 2019-02-26
#923307 coquelicot coquelicot: Uploading file fails 2019-02-26
#923330 jajuk jajuk: Fails to start with Java Runtime Environment 1.7 minimum required. You use a JVM ext.JVM@23fc625e 2019-02-27
#923341 libradare2-dev Doesn't depend on -dev it uses 2019-02-26
#923346 linuxptp linuxptp breaks sshd 2019-02-26
#923347 src:mysql-connector-python No sensible security support due to Oracle's policies 2019-02-27
#923364 libitext-java FTBS: Can't build against bouncy-castle build with newer jdk 2019-02-26
#923376 src:slapos.core Should only be in unstable 2019-02-27
#923382 src:libseqlib libseqlib: FTBFS (dpkg-gensymbols: error: some symbols or patterns disappeared in the symbols file) 2019-02-27The Intercontinental Hotel planned for the parking lot of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport will take at least two years to complete, according to an interview Mayor Kasim Reed gave the AJC. Plans for the glassy hotel were unveiled back in July. There is speculation that John Portman & Associates will lead the design for the building, slated to occupy 10 acres just steps away from the domestic terminal.
In addition to the hotel, the airport plans to add a travel plaza and office-anchored mixed-use development on 16.5 adjacent acres. The land will be leased to a team of developers including Carter, Majestic Realty Co. and GPM Investments LLC as part of an "Airport City" to rise at the western end of the domestic terminal.
While the adjacency to the airport might be unique, the Intercontinental is hardly the only hotel slated to rise on that side of town. Visuals were released for the Solis to be located next to the recently opened Porsche facility just to the east of the airport. And in October, the groundbreaking took place for the Gateway Renaissance to be located near the Georgia International Convention Center, just a quick Skytrain ride away from the terminal.
· Atlanta mayor: InterContinental hotel at Hartsfield-Jackson will diversify revenue [AJC]Thierry Henry is a fabulous player, as technically gifted as the June day is long. Those long legs provide ample pace. He’s obviously competitive; practice reports say the Red Bulls attacker has that “win-everything” mentality, determined to be victorious on every single training-ground activity.
So in one sense, it doesn’t matter where Henry lines up on the field. If Red Bulls manager Hans Backe asked the rangy French international to perform at left back, Henry could probably put that big soccer brain to work and figure it out lickety-split.
Still, that doesn’t mean that Backe, his assistants and Henry himself shouldn’t put heads together and determine the man’s optimum role at Red Bull Arena, where Henry finally broke the goal-scoring seal last Saturday. There are some subtle choices, after all, as the Frenchman has successfully deployed in slightly different roles throughout his storied career.
Henry has always been somewhat unconventional in that his starting position is close to goal—but he’s most comfortable operating further from goal than traditional 6-yard box poachers. He’s no Ruud van Nistelrooy, for sure.
So he often starts as the lead man, but rarely finishes there.
READ: Henry says first MLS goal was "coming for a couple of games"
At Barcelona, Henry frequently operated as such. His starting positions at the Nou Camp were perhaps more withdrawn than similar types. So he ended up playing very close to versatile attacker Leo Messi or midfielder Andrés Iniesta. The shape, ostensibly a 4-2-3-1, ended up looking like something closer to a 4-2-4. Anyone remember the old 4-2-4 used so successfully by some fabulous and flummoxing Brazilian sides of the 1960s and 1970s?
In this formation, Henry drifted so far into the midfield—maintaining the fluid movement and beautiful spacing that make Barcelona so special under coach Pep Guardiola—that he was frequently behind his wide players upon receipt of possession.
He doesn’t tend to drift as far back in New York. Rather, he plays a little further ahead, usually a little left of Juan Pablo Angel. Mostly, Henry can be found somewhere just beyond the penalty area as the ball moves into New York’s offensive half.
[inline_node:317138]From there... well, it’s all still in the works. Henry has appeared in just six league games so far. But so far his relationship with Joel Lindpere on the left is developing differently than his relationship with Dane Richards to the right.
Henry moves toward the ball and then sets up quickly, looking to spring Richards on the right. Or he looks to combine with Lindpere in a way that moves the Estonian down the left side in stages (as opposed to the flashing, dashing runs of Richards on the right). Or he’ll “throw a change-up,” combining with Ángel within the middle channel.
No one has benefited more than Richards from Henry’s arrival. (Also from the arrival of Rafa Márquez, of course.) Richards may have had his best game yet as a Red Bull with a terrific goal and equally worthwhile assist in the home team’s commanding 2-0 win last Saturday over San Jose.
WATCH: Henry opens MLS scoring account for New York
Going forward, Henry could possibly begin moving his starting positions just a little closer to goal. With Ángel around, the pair would need to be careful not to become redundant inside the penalty area. On the other hand, the closer Henry gets to goal, the more he becomes an immediate threat, the initial focus of nearby defenders. That would create more room still for Richards to run at defenders from the right.
It would also give Ángel more room to check back toward the midfield. That’s sometimes the way it worked for Barcelona. When Henry played nearer to goal, Messi or Pedro had more operating room on the right and in the center-right areas of the field.
Or, Henry could even line up a little further left, more as he did back in the day at Arsenal. On those teams (circa 2002-04), Henry drifted left, waiting for Dennis Bergkamp to gather the ball and make smart, early passes to the wing. (On the right side of those teams, by the way, was none other than fast Freddie Ljungberg.)
Henry has obviously lost some pace. But to watch him glide by defenders as he has occasionally in MLS matches, you know he’s still got it in him—at least a few times a game if not as consistently as before.
But given that fading pace, he does seem best-suited for the more central withdrawn role. He won’t play it the way Landon Donovan does; when the LA Galaxy’s main man lines up there, he drifts wider and deeper in order to get the ball and then run at defenders. Rather, Henry will look more like Bergkamp, gathering and distributing, while remaining capable of the occasional menacing turn.
What’s great about watching Henry is his timing. On the one hand, the way he’s playing at the moment, defenders usually know where to find him: near the top of the penalty area. That’s where he starts and, as the play develops, that’s mostly where he hangs out.
Until, that is, the moment of truth arrives. His timing of separation from defenders and on runs to the near or far post is something to behold.
That’s how he scored his first MLS goal over the weekend. And that’s how he’s likely to score plenty more before this season is done.But despite LePage’s victory last November, the last few months have marked something of an unraveling for the famously filter-free conservative—even before the veto mess. A bipartisan legislative committee is investigating whether he forced a charter school not to hire the Democratic speaker of the house, liberals are calling for LePage’s impeachment, and his standing within his own party has deteriorated to the point where the legislature overrode his veto of the state budget with help from the Republican senate president (averting a government shutdown). In retaliation, a LePage-aligned political organization run by his daughter began recording robocalls in Republican districts, accusing legislators of siding with Democrats. In recent days, a veteran GOP operative has launched a group for Republicans who oppose LePage’s approach.
What’s clear, then, is that outside of a few loyal allies in the House, LePage’s relationship with the legislature has reached a new low. And yet: How do you screw up a veto?
It’s not as if this was the first time the governor was breaking the pen out of its box. In fact, LePage has issued more vetoes than any governor in the 195-year history of Maine, and the legislature has, in turn, overridden a record number of those vetoes. For most of June, the governor had been carrying out his threat to reject any bill sponsored by a Democrat (and that expanded to some Republicans as well), so as the legislature’s session drew to a close, lawmakers had grown accustomed to accepting the hand delivery of veto messages by the bucketload from a member of the governor’s staff, often near the end of the 10-day window he has to issue them.
So when, earlier this month, the deadline passed for LePage to veto the first batch of 71 bills that the legislature had approved in the final days of the session ending June 30, lawmakers were confused. “We thought, ‘Wow, what a crazy mistake,’” Jeff McCabe, the Democratic House majority leader, told me in an interview. LePage had spent the July 4th weekend campaigning with Chris Christie, so Democrats thought he might simply have lost track of time. But then the veto deadline passed for the rest of the bills, and it became clear, McCabe said, that LePage “was really doubling down and he was pretending that his interpretation of the [state] constitution was way different than our interpretation.”
The rules for issuing a veto are not, it turns out, quite as simple as the famous Schoolhouse Rock video makes it seem—at least in Maine. The state constitution gives the governor longer than 10 days to veto bills when the legislature’s adjournment prevents a bill’s return. After initially giving a different explanation, LePage’s office has argued that because the legislature left without setting a firm date to reconvene, the governor could exercise a provision in the constitution allowing him to return vetoed bills when the legislature next meets for three-consecutive days. So on July 16, he delivered veto letters for 65 of the 71 bills. But both Democratic and Republican leaders refused to accept them, saying that both chambers had clearly set a return date for the express purpose of voting to override or sustain the governor’s vetoes. LePage had missed the deadline, they said, and the bills had become law. “We made it very clear,” McCabe said, noting that even Republicans had mentioned the mid-July session before they left in June. (The Bangor Daily News has an even more detailed explanation of the dispute here.)Christendom is dead. Now let’s set aside our differences and get to work telling people about Jesus.
If you wanted to sum up Mark Driscoll’s new book, A Call to Resurgence, in a sentence, that’d be the way to do it. And make no mistake, pronouncing Christendom, the age of cultural Christianity, dead is no overstatement, even if declaring the American church dead is. A quick survey of the cultural landscape in America (and the West in general) shows how much has changed, and it’s definitely not in favor of Christianity. So what are Christians to do? Are we to retreat and wait for Jesus to return? Are we to give up our distinguishing characteristics and blend into the culture?
We do not need more retreat, Driscoll says. We need resurgence:
This is not a time for compromise but rather courage. The fields are ripe. And as Jesus says, “the laborers are few”—in part because the prophets of doom are many.… This is no time to trade in boots for flip-flops. The days are darker, which means our resolve must be stronger and our convictions clearer.
A strong cultural critique
There is much to appreciate about A Call to Resurgence, starting with its intent. Driscoll’s greatest strength has always been his appraisal of the cultural climate in North America, and this is no less true in the case of this book, which is why chapter two shines. Here Driscoll offers a succinct description of many of the contributing factors to the death of Christendom—pornography, the acceptance of homosexuality, bad dads, a lack of generosity, intolerant “tolerance,” and the resurgence of paganism in its many forms.
I believe it’s no overstatement to say this is the book’s standout chapter, especially his breakdown of the “new paganism,” which owes a massive debt to Peter Jones’ excellent book, One or Two. Driscoll explains well its roots as described in Romans 1:18-32, and its various expressions, from atheistic one-ism (the idea of a pure naturalism) to pale imitations of Christianity (notably moralistic therapeutic deism).
A confused message on the essentials
While Driscoll is often insightful in identifying cultural issues, his assessment of biblical ones is too often simplistic. This is especially clear when he describes the various “tribes” within evangelicalism. These, he says, are united by their common agreement on the following black-and-white issues:
The Bible as God’s perfect and authoritative Word one God in three persons (Trinity) human sinfulness by nature and by choice Jesus as fully God and fully man who lived without sin, died in our place for our sins, and rose from the dead salvation bestowed by the grace of God when a sinner turns from sin and trusts in Jesus alone through faith new birth through the Holy Spirit eternal heaven for believers and eternal hell for unbelievers
These, he says, are the essentials. Everything else is secondary (which apparently includes every aspect of ecclesiology and sacraments, which is troubling). And yet, if you look at some of the “tribal leaders” (a term we need to expunge from our collective vocabulary by the way), you’ll likely be shocked—possibly terrified—to see some of the names on the list. Among those apparently agreeing with the central truths of the faith? Joel Osteen. Joyce Meyer. Paula White. T. D. Jakes. Joseph Prince. I can’t help but wonder how Bill Hybels or Stanley Hauerwas would feel learning they’re on the same team as people who declare God wants his people to see every day as a Friday while enjoying their best life now?
Now, Driscoll’s no dummy—I have to believe he knows just how dangerous prosperity theology is. I have a hard time imagining him not being aware of Osteen’s unwillingness to answer straightforward questions on the issue of salvation, Meyer’s declaring she is not a sinner, Jakes’ health-and-wealth message and allegiance with modalism… So why on earth would Driscoll suggest these people who are leading tens of thousands astray agree on the essentials of the faith?
“I’m not talking about tolerating false-teaching wolves who, in the name of false-unity, love the sheep in order to feast on them,” he later writes. And yet this appears to be exactly what he’s doing by even including them as within the bounds on the so-called black and white issues.
Driscoll later compounds the reality that he knows not that of which he speaks by including Kevin DeYoung and Mark Dever in the “fundamentalist/non-missional.” Calling Dever or DeYoung fundamentalists is like calling Twilight quality literature. To quote the great theologian Inigo Montoya, “You keep using this word; I do not think it means what you think it means.”
A pragmatic approach to methodology
As troubling as all this is, a larger issue is Driscoll’s justification of his own methodology. The final chapter of the book is devoted to describing “principles that cover a wide range of situations and can be used to build or fix a church or ministry.” These principles include:
preaching the Word; loving the Church; contending and contextualizing; being attractional and missional; receiving, rejecting and redeeming aspects of the culture; considering the common good; and evangelizing through suffering.
As principles, these are certainly all well and good. But where I struggle is in Driscoll’s description and application of the methodology he advocates. I’ll give two examples:
Preaching the Word. Driscoll correctly asserts that the Holy Spirit gladly empowers preachers to proclaim the Word and illuminates the understanding of the hearer to receive and obey it. The results, he says, are “more Christians and better Christians. Lost people get found, and found people get closer to Jesus,” which is more or less true (except when it isn’t). Although a bit simplistic, I don’t really have a major beef with this. But then I kept reading:
This explains why even video preaching works—because the power is in the Word of God, not the method of delivery. So long as the Word of God is in a room along with the people of God and the Spirit of God, it does not matter if the servant of God is there.
It does not matter if the servant of God is there, so long as the Word of God, the people of God and the Spirit of God are in the room together.
Really?
If it does not matter if the servant of God is present, why then does it matter if the people of God are in the room together? As long as the Word is being faithfully preached, why does it matter if I’m in a room with a bunch of other believers or in my car listening to a radio ministry or podcast? The Holy Spirit’s going to work through it, isn’t He?
While I certainly don’t discount the effectiveness of radio ministry, podcasts, books, blogs and the like, these are helpful add-ons to our spiritual growth, not our primary outlet of worship—and that includes the preacher’s worship. My concern with this notion is twofold:
First, you don’t find it modelled in Scripture. In fact, you find John explicitly stating the opposite. “Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink. Instead I hope to come to you and talk face to face, so that our joy may be complete” (2 John 12). Even in Paul’s ministry, his desire was to be present with the believers; he wrote because it was necessary.
Second, Driscoll seems to overlook an important truth: the people of God are to gather together, yes; but the servant of God is one of the people of God! In the Church, the shepherds are also sheep. When a pastor forgets he’s also part of the flock, he sets himself up for disaster. Can a pastor who doesn’t know the people shepherd them? Can a pastor who isn’t part of the community of believers have accountability?
While Driscoll warns his readers of the dangers of methodolatry—losing sight of the principle and remaining committed a particular method—he would do well to take his own advice. Based on what he’s presented, the argument is totally grounded in pragmatism. Driscoll advocates for video preaching because he does it and it “works.” But let’s not pretend it’s anything more than that, okay?
Loving the church. This notion of doing what works, this pragmatic approach to ministry, comes up again in his dealing with church planting. Here, he emphasizes urban church planting over suburban and rural planting because there are more people present, and the city is “upstream” culturally.
“The key to actual change is to start upstream,” he writes. “We need to lead politicians, artists, judges, musicians, and the like to Jesus.”
Now, this is true, certainly; we need politicians who love Jesus, musicians who serve Jesus and judges who bow before Jesus. But we need farmers, homemakers, grocery store owners and the like to do the same, too—not because of their perceived influence in society, but because they’re sinners in need of redemption.
Imagine if Jesus only selected key members of society to follow Him? Imagine if He only went to the people who were “upstream” culturally? But what did he do? He called uneducated fishermen, shady government agents, and religious weirdos as his Apostles. He reached out to the poor, the marginalized, the unlovely. Jesus was murdered by the people “upstream” in his culture. And what happened? Within a few centuries, half the Roman Empire was following Jesus. Remember, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong” (1 Cor. 1:27).
To be clear, I’m not against urban planting—wherever there are people, we need to be planting churches. But we must be careful not to let pragmatism guide our mission; left unchecked, this approach leads to a type of ministry that looks completely unlike that of Jesus Christ.
Driscoll is right that we should always evaluate our practices in light of biblical principles—but from what he’s written, I’m not certain he practices what he preaches.
A final question
Finally, there’s the elephant in the room: Driscoll himself. I’m all for a call to greater unity in the West. But is Driscoll—who has made a name for himself by being divisive—the right person to be issuing the call? I’ll be honest, I’m not sure.
In short, A Call to Resurgence is everything you’d expect from Driscoll: it’s occasionally insightful, frequently funny and, unfortunately, often foolish. While we most definitely need a call to resurgence, this book doesn’t represent the call we truly need.
Title: A Call to Resurgence: Will Christianity Have a Funeral or a Future?
Author: Mark Driscoll
Publisher: Tyndale House/Resurgence Publishing (2013)Statistical Advice for A/B Testing
Insight Data Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jul 9, 2015
Slater Stich, 2013 Insight alumnus and data scientist at Square, provides a short guide to using statistics for A/B testing. This content originally appeared on his personal website.
A/B testing is awesome. It’s fun, it’s lucrative, and it’s an extremely visible and impactful way that you can create value as a data scientist. It’s both thrilling and deeply satisfying to see a change you proposed make a multi-million dollar difference. If only you could get paid on commission!
Before you write that email to your boss asking for a raise, though, it’s worth making sure that your A/B test evaluation process is correct. It would be… unfortunate if it turned out that your decision to color all your call to action buttons hot pink wasn’t worth the “mad stacks” that you claimed, and was in fact actively harmful. To avoid such embarrassments, you’d like to implement some sound statistical practices for evaluating your A/B tests.
Unfortunately, good statistical methods for A/B testing are more complicated than they might seem at first. (Check out the whitepaper “Most Winning A/B Test Results are Illusory” and Evan Miller’s “How Not to Run An A/B Test” for some interesting examples.) Statistical errors are easy to make, and these mistakes can fatally bias your A/B testing program. So here are four recommendations for avoiding some common statistical difficulties, and for achieving a successful and sound A/B test evaluation plan. Happy testing!
1. Use the Beta Distribution
The Beta distribution is preferable to its normal approximation when modeling a k-successes-out-of-n-IID-trials test, e.g., a conversion-rate-based A/B test. Hopefully your sample size is large enough for this not to matter, but it’s worth being aware of — especially when |
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